Uploaded for this week was a particle system simulation and the endless possibilities your’re able to do with it. This component allows the ability to make smoke, fire, bursts , shots, and numerous other creative implements. I LOVE particle systems. It brings a to life element again to the game which I love. You are able to change shape and upload or code different aspects of these systems to get exactly what you’re aiming. Im sure i’ll be using MANY in my MV final project.
As far as UI I am unsure if will be implementing hand features just yet. I am still feeling a bit timid working though Unity as a medium and assigning these inputs seems extremely daunting, but I have confidence i’ll be able to complete at least with a visual for my music video.
This week we got into lighting and different types of light, how they can be altered through their variables and how to essentially pull these attributes into code. I was able to follow Antoines’ uploaded content on how to rig a the directional light and make somewhat of a sunset which was fun and aesthetically pleasing, especially when you fine tweaked everything and got the light just right. I also started testing out my ability to animate here
Getting my character from maximo was straight foward however getting their textures mapped was not- For some reason did not think that this “naked” character had any textures or materials at all and I would have to re-download them however communicating with Anne that the materials had for certain already downloaded and what I needed to do was Extract Materials from the Inspector of my character.
Through coding the rotation of the directional light, I saw the real relevance of public variables. This enabled categories of the x,y,z positions to be altered through the unity platform itself. Logically you are listing components used, when to run them and how many times to run them. There are an infinite amount of variables that work within this frame but the frame from what I gather consistently stays the same. I feel a bit of confidence knowing this frame fact as coding still seems a bit scary but also extremely logical.
Sorry for the very late post(s)- going into week 4 the loading information I have absorbed is astounding. After going through many motions of AR application in Unity using Vuforia I am starting to see that instead of only seeing mindless buttons that I have no understanding of, now I’m starting to see a path of logical computer behavior. This has helped me understand the platform a bit better and have overcome an intimidation level that I thought might not ever leave. As a group we had an AR assignment to make a game- ours was a little “follow the clues” segment of Sesame Street characters that gave statements, then based on those statements a person would choose who was the cookie criminal. Here is a little example below.
To further this concept we learned about character downloads into Unity and how to animate them using services like Maximo, Turbosquid and RADiCAL. This was a bit of relief as I was worried I would have to make all own characters for my final project music video. These providers help seamlessly download characters then rig them (animate them) into Unity so as you press play the character will move.
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Using the Animator you’re able to connect movements and elements in a maze of your choosing. At this point in my learning, a lightbulb came on and saw yet again that animating a scene is completely within my ‘control’ and again that gave me some relief. When I am putting my elements together for my final project I see this is where a lot of final tweaking will occur.
This week we all received our Oculus Headsets. So exciting! I have very little experience using a headset at all; so I’m very happy we are at a point in our course that we will finally be able to apply our knowledge thus far into this. Antoine has been doing our pre-recorded content for class and week 5 was an introduction to coding in application to Unity. I expected to come to this segment at some point during my studies at LCC however I didn’t expect to just dive right in. Coding has been a little bit of a taboo subject that a.) I know nothing about coding b.) it looks scary c.) refer to point a.)
In his pre-recorded content he showed us how “simple” coding can be used to animate an object within the C#. I learned that depending on what you want to accomplish there are certain areas of the code where you want to write. If you want to only run an animation or something once through the program its best to write it in the “Start” however if you want it to be run throughout the program to write it in the “Update” are where it is read once per frame (fps=frame per second) and in this particular code there are 60 fps.
Through his basic tutorial it was clear that C# code is able to become somewhat of a calculator, which when manipulated can become a clock and if you can make a clock then, what I gather is you can have animation go at a certain time, frame, or condition. Though I am still very unsure of coding and the language of C# I do I see its importance and purpose in relation to how it would save someone a lot of time in animation, even within the animator if they were to simply code their way. By the end of the tutorial I was able to make a cube rotate and add the component of the directional light rotation to mimic a sunset. (I was pretty proud of myself) Coding in C# however is a skill that I will need learn the language of in order to understand more clearly where and why I am writing within the code frame.
