Ack! Now What?

Posted on November 14, 2017 by SusanG

This is how I feel after I finish any project. It doesn’t matter what it is or how big or small it is. My projects take so much of my attention that when I’m finished it takes a bit for me to figure out what to do next. Yes, even when I have several things lined up to work on. Because, now I have to choose which one will take over next.

The project I finished was my puzzler project for the Udacity VR class. I finished tweaking the look of the dungeon and surrounding scene and hooked up all the code for the puzzle to work just in time for my colleague at the day job to play test it for me. It was close because testing was Friday and I had to turn in the write up by Monday. It all worked out and I spent Friday night doing the write up, and choosing pictures, and getting the videos put together so I could embed them in the post.

I learned a few things in the process. I found out that I need more information before I use my Adobe Media Encoder. It didn’t work quite like I had hoped. But maybe the next time I put together an animation from 3DS Max or Maya or whatever, I might want to use it to encode the video before I upload it to YouTube. I also learned how to use OBS Studio to capture my game play video. That took a little work but not too much and it worked like a champ. I like that I can set it up to only record the one area of the screen. That’s kind of cool. So I used OBS to record me playing through the dungeon in the Unity editor since recording the game play on the phone would have looked really ugly. Not that I know how to do that. Fortunately that’s not really necessary.

So. In case you missed it over the weekend because you were out helping ‘Thor: Ragnorok’ stay number one at the box office, I posted the complete write up for the Dungeon Puzzler here on this site. It’s the next article down. There are lots of pictures and even some video.

One of the things you may, or may not, notice in the video is the sky and ground look a lot different than they did before. It was always my intent to add some sort of ground and to change up the skybox. That basic blue sky look just wasn’t doing it for me. So before I finished it all up and published it to my phone for testing I took care of those. First I found a nice space type of skybox and downloaded it to use. Then I used a basic terrain component in Unity to create the ground and then I adjusted the height in some areas to create mountains. Then I found a couple of textures online that I liked. I started to import them and my computer crashed. I forgot to save after adding the ground and the new skybox so as soon as the computer came back up, and I added those back, I saved. Then I tried again and it crashed again. It appears that one of the textures has some bad meta data and that is what kept causing the crash. After starting again, I downloaded just the one.

Of course since I have the lights under the room I had to lift everything off the ground a little or the lights would not have worked. At that point I had completely changed up all the light maps that I’d already created so I had to create all the light maps again. This took over a half an hour and it pegged my CPU at 100% usage probably half of that time at least. My computer is no slouch and it was still working really hard. The final result looks a bit like this.


And here are a couple more screen shots that I took while putting together the write up.

I submitted my project for review and got back a response a few hours later. I was done with the Dungeon Puzzler. I didn’t need to make any edits or corrections. I have my mentor and my sister to thank for that. They both reviewed it before I submitted it so that I could make it the best I could. I am very grateful for their help. While my mentor was able to review it for completeness for the assignment my sister was able to review for clarity. She didn’t know anything about it so if she wasn’t able to understand the write up then I hadn’t done my job.

And that was my week and my weekend. And yes, I had time to start or return to something else if I had been able to decide on what that was going to be. I wasn’t able to commit so I took the few hours as a refresher in between the projects and just goofed off. No, I was not out helping “Thor: Ragnorok” stay number one at the box office.

Next up, I start the next project. It’s a bit more involved and I have a feeling it’s going to take a lot more to come up with something really good, especially having seen some outstanding examples from other students. You will be seeing plenty about it here so stay tuned.

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My Dungeon Puzzler Project

Posted on November 10, 2017 by SusanG

The brief was to create a puzzler game inside a dungeon room. I’ve called it The Dungeon Puzzler.

The Dungeon Puzzler

The Dungeon Puzzler is a simple ‘Simon Says’ type of game set in a deserted and somewhat irradiated location on a far way dessert.

 

Process

The Dungeon Puzzler is a Mobile VR application for new VR users which challenges them to solve a familiar type of puzzle in a new way.

Persona

 

Meet Jack.

Name: Jack

Age: 25

Occupation: Tech Support Engineer

Quote: “I wonder about people all the time. smh”

Motivation:

Jack works all day with people that he just doesn’t understand. They ask for help on such simple things and ask such basic questions that he doesn’t understand how they manage to get through life. He really looks forward to the end of his shift so he doesn’t have to deal with them for a while. He’s tech savvy and he likes games. He just wants to get his paycheck and go play something new and fun. He’s just starting to get into VR but has all the consoles and plays PC games sometimes. He likes causal games too. They give him something to do in between service tickets.

VR Experience: Beginner

Sketches

Some sketch ideas for the Dungeon.

   

These were some of the ideas for the dungeon room. Ultimately I went with a modified version of the fourth idea combined with the background look of the first idea.

For the project we were given some dungeon assets to work from that looked more like a medieval or castle dungeon but as I wasn’t happy with the look and wanted something a little more unique, I chose to model the dungeon assets myself. Just the room. The props within were free assets obtained from the Unity Asset Store.

Here are some in progress pictures of creating the dungeon and setting it up.

  

 

User Testing

User Test Environment

User response:

It’s cool. The lighting of the barrels is pretty good but some of them could use a little more light. The orbs stand out pretty good. The shadows with the green lights are a little too sharp. I like the room size it feels right.

Changes made:

To fix the lighting on the barrels I turned on two more green lights under the building on the side that has the most barrels. To tone down the sharp shadows of the green lights, I changed the shadow cast on all of the green lights so that they cast soft shadows.

User Test UI

User response:

The camera is a little too close to the start card. Maybe move it back? Otherwise it’s clear. But the height is distracting. Maybe make not as tall. The text is clear and easy to read and the instructions are pretty clear.

Changes made:

I adjusted the camera so it was a little farther away from the start card. I made note of the distance so when I setup the camera and the restart card they would be a similar distance from each other.

The original intent with the card was to have it a tall card, however, since it was distracting for the user I shortened both the start and restart cards to the same height so they are wider than they are tall.

User Test Motion

User response:

Oh that’s a good speed. Not too fast and not too slow. That’s fine. Oh. There’s sound. That’s cool. I think the inside sound could be a little louder.

Changes made:

I turned up the sound inside the dungeon from .25 to .3 and that helped.

Note: My tester plays first person shooter games and doesn’t have an inclination towards simulator sickness. I on the other hand do have an inclination towards simulator sickness. I did slow the motion speed down a little so that I did not get sick while testing the mechanics.

User Test Game Play

User response:

Note: My tester was confused on what to do once inside the room. I had to explain to him that he was to follow or repeat what he was seeing. Once he understood that he could complete the puzzle. I think this could be resolved with a basic description on the start canvas, then again, if you give away what needs to be done, it’s not a puzzle.

Break Down of Final Project

Start UI

I kept this very simple. Just something to tell the player what game they are playing and how to get going.

Layout and Design

The general idea was to have the room be more like metal box sort of room. The initial thought was for something sort of submarine-esque. However I decided not to go with an arched ceiling. Instead, I kept the ceiling flat.

Lighting:

I used vents around the top of the wall to direct some red colored lighting into the scene and create some interesting shadows. I also used grates in the floor around the edges of the room to shine green lights up from below. These created some really nice shadows and were the brightest thus providing the primary light for the room.

Dressing:

I added some distressed barrels in various locations in the room to add interest. With out them the room would be very stark, uninteresting, and really, just a shell.

Game Mechanics:

I stuck with the basic mechanics that were provided. The only change I made really was to adjust the color of the orbs. With the lighting in the room as it is, the contrast between the color of the orbs when they were lit up and the color when they weren’t was not great enough. So I adjusted the non-lit up color to something a bit darker and different enough from the room coloring that they now stand out.

The Atmosphere/Setting:

There was nothing really suggested in the brief regarding the setting of the scene. But as this is supposed to be a 360 degree experience it seemed really odd to not at least create a location for the dungeon. I chose a dessert looking scene with a sky that definitely makes it look like it’s on a different planet. I found, and my tester found, that having a ground reference and a more interesting sky completely transformed and enhanced the experience.

Conclusion

The Dungeon Puzzler is complete and ready for players to have fun. The puzzle sequence is randomized so the same puzzle does not repeat over and over. This means the game can be played again and again without having the same patterns repeat. This keeps it interesting and always a different challenge. It’s great for practicing concentration and paying attention without taxing the player too much.

Next Steps

Some next steps or enhancements to the game could be to add some sort of counter showing how many times in a session the puzzle was completed the first time. Or a second level of it could be added, either in the same room or a different looking one that would make it harder by adding an additional item to the sequence. With additional levels there could be even more enhancements to the game such as keeping track of the levels. Even storing the last completed level and being able to start at the next one at a later play session.

Links:

Here are some links to additional discussion of creating the Dungeon Puzzler.

Ok, So Not Quite

My Brain Might Have Exploded

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Ok, So Not Quite

Posted on November 7, 2017 by SusanG

But still a good solution.

I spent most of the week finishing building my dungeon. I didn’t get to anything else. Even with the extra day, that freed up, I still feel behind and like I’m scrambling a bit. That said. Building a dungeon is a lot of fun. It really is.

I finished the build out of the dungeon in 3DS Max. It was easiest for me to add the last bits there and get some materials attached. In addition to finish laying out the floor and walls I decided to make vents to go all the way around the top of the walls just under the ceiling. Then I just made 3 slabs for the roof. I thought about making it arched like in a tin can or submarine and decided not to this time.

Then I started adding materials to everything. This was a little tricky as my intention was to have two different materials on the walls. One material for the trim sort of work and another for everything else. I can do that. It just means that I have to assign the material to the face or polygon. And I end up with different material groups. Not usually and issue but a little messy for this project. I thought I was doing good. I got all the materials applied and was ready to export it to go into Unity.

It turns out that the export from 3DS Max to the .fbx file type for Unity don’t quite take all the materials as I thought. I loaded my dungeon up into Unity and…wait. Huh? That’s not right. Yep everything looked wrong. It looked like the color of the materials came over just not the texture part. I poked at it in Unity for a bit with no luck. Then I tried several times, to create UV’s in 3DS Max to see if that was the problem. That was even less helpful. I did consider finding a tutorial on the process. I fully intend to watch one at a later time. However, for now I decided I’d see if I could find some materials on the Unity Asset Store. I thought I had seen something there that might work.

I did. I found a lovely set of free PBR metal materials. As a friend said, at least something close to this, people who post free materials online are gods. They are awesome. I agree with her. Oh and before I forget. The PBR stands for physically based rendering. It’s the type of render system Unity uses and several other programs as well. It essentially means much better textures, and more realistic. They tend to beat some of the scanned  textures from ages and days of old. A mere, what two to five years ago?

Armed with my materials I set about making my dungeon look good. It took so much longer than I expected. Finding the right metal pattern and then getting the right tiling and also coloring. It took the rest of that evening just to find the right materials for the walls and the grates in the floor. I had to finish applying them to the rest of everything the next day before I moved on to the lighting.

So lighting is probably a whole story all on its own. I’ll try to keep it short. It’s another process that took so much longer than I expected. I prefer the look of the realistic lights, at least on the PC. But when I put them on the phone, they didn’t show up. It took me many hours of refining the lights, creating more lights, getting them bright enough and properly placed and then, oh so many light baking sessions to finally figure out, that for the phone, I have to bake all the lights. It gives me closest to the look I want. Baking the lights just means that all the lighting effect is composited into the wall material when the application is built and not calculated and displayed when the application is running. It makes the application run a bit faster. However, because I’ve got so many lights in the scene and so many walls, the light processing time takes a good 10 minutes. So I hit the button and go get something to drink.

I’m now to the point that I’m ready to add some movement and the interaction to the dungeon. I’m getting close but my user testing tells me I need to go back and tweak a couple of things. Most notably I need to tweak some of the lighting. Yes, I cringed inside at this suggestion. However, I understand the reason and I’ll give it a go. Maybe I’ll get ice cream while it’s processing.

As I said. This is all I’ve had a chance to work on this week. I’ve even tried to work on it in my sleep. No. Seriously. At least once, maybe twice this week I’ve woken up thinking about this project. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I don’t have a lot of art to show this week but I’ve got some work in progress screen shots that I’ve poked throughout this post. I’m coming up on the due date so I’ll be working hard on it again this week as well so there will be more to see next week. And hopefully a triumphant note of having finished it.

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My Brain Might Have Exploded

Posted on October 31, 2017 by SusanG

Have you ever had someone tell you something that so opened up possibilities for you that you felt like your brain exploded? Mind blown? Amazingly, it takes a few hours to recover from this experience.

Like a few months ago when I started term one of the VR class, most of my time is taken up with that. I don’t find a lot of time for working on other things. However, this week turned out a little different.

First up, I refined my business card. I chose a different font that has a bit more thickness to it which, I think makes it easier to read. It also needed a little better spacing. Then a little adjustment to the art was needed. I reduced it’s opacity to 35% which really helps. It actually makes the art a little more readable and not as overpowering.

This week was time to get started on the project for term 2 of the VR class. The cool bit is I get to build a dungeon. However, I’m not very fond of the textures on the prefabs in the starter project. Ok. I’m a little more than not very fond of the textures. I really don’t like them. They appear to have lighting baked into them and they just don’t line up well. I was lamenting this in my weekly check in. For the part that asks what I’m stuck on? I said I was stuck on the really ugly textures.

I was then informed that I don’t have to use the models they give us. So I thought about cruising the Unity Asset Store to see if I could find something better. Then I was asked about if I had tried exporting things from ZBrush to Unity, followed by a YouTube link to someone demonstrating how to do that. It’s a little involved because of the need for dealing with UV’s and such, however, in the end it gives you a prefab with the mesh and all the textures. Yeah, my mind was blown. However, try as I might, my ZBrush skills are not a good as I would like. I usually find it easier to make things using a box modeling program like 3DS Max or Maya or Blender. So as exciting as the prospect of using ZBrush to make a model and export it to Unity is, it’s going to be a painful experience for me.

That stated. It did get me to thinking. The same conversation had referenced Blender. Which I have. It’s free and a little more difficult for me to use than 3DS Max. Still, I could do something simple and test if I could do the same thing as with ZBrush. It turns out that I can. It’s the .fbx export and it does the same thing, though not with all the additional maps like you can get with ZBrush. But it still gets me something I can work with. If I can do it with Blender, maybe I can do it in 3DS Max. I had to test it. And yes indeed, I can export from 3DS Max using the Game Exporter option and I get a nice asset for Unity that when imported comes in as a prefab with it’s texture already there. I think my brain exploded at this point.

It took a while for me to recover but I came up with a slightly different idea for my dungeon and for the material it would be made of. Instead of brick or stone I’m going to use a metal look and I think I’ll handle the lighting a little differently. If I can make it work. I’m going to try to get the ambient lighting to come up through some floor grates.

So this week’s VR class work and my 3D modeling practice turned out to pretty much be the same stuff. I’ve got a little more than half the pieces I need modeled and textured. I have a few items to still apply texture to and a few things to model still. I need a roof and I’m thinking of doing something a bit arched. Maybe. I also need a spot sort of light. And Some vents for around the ceiling. Here are some in progress shots of the dungeon pieces. I hope to have the rest done in a day or so and then back to putting it all together in Unity.

   

This week will be more dungeon modeling and more VR class. I expect to get the dungeon all setup so I can start the user interface and then making it all work. I also intend to get my business card uploaded for printing. I should have better screenshots of the dungeon next week and who knows what else so come back to see what’s up. And before I go…

Happy Halloween!

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Foiled Again

Posted on October 24, 2017 by SusanG

Once again I fell victim to the best laid plans curse. You know the one where you have these great plans to get several things done because you normally get home at a certain time. Except because you have planned on getting home at that time, nothing goes the way you planned. That was my Friday and it put quite a crimp in what I had expected to get done this weekend.

Before I get to that. Term 2 of my VR class has started and I’ve already jumped into the lessons. It’s not like the first term where we jumped right into making things work. We’re doing a bit more analysis and commenting so far. I had read some people complaining about it so I was a little concerned if I could stay interested. I do understand what the people with complaints didn’t like. I would like a bit more use and learning on the coding techniques and such as well. However, 20 some years ago, when I first studied VR we didn’t even think about where to put user interfaces or how far we might be asking our players to turn to see something and if that was appropriate for the scenario, or not. And since I’m already thinking about my final capstone project for term 3, I figure it’s better to know some of this and think about it early so I can design with it in mind instead of have to redesign or worse have a project that no one wants to experience.

And then there was Friday. The project for the day at the day job did not go well. We had everything so that it should have only taken a couple of hours. That is not at all how it went and instead of leaving at 1:00 pm like we normally do on Friday, it was after 6:00 pm when we finally finished. My plans to hit the gym, the bank, and then pick up some things for an event the next day all by 5:00 pm and then home to dive into my VR class, all gone. I managed to pick up what I needed for the event and that was it.

Thankfully I was able to salvage things some on Sunday. I finally got to sit down and work on one of the many things on my artistic to do list. My business card. Originally I had intended to create a set for SusanG Productions except I ran into some market research issues that need to be addressed before I do those. In the interim, I need new personal business cards with my blog address so I don’t have to write it on the back of the card I currently give to people. So I found a piece of my art to use and came up with a couple of ideas. This is the design I think I’m going to to have printed. Of course, without the water mark and replacing the smears with a phone number and email address.

Not only did I get the business card worked on, I also started adding the string, for the string of lights, to the Christmas tree model. First I tried using clay tubes in ZBrush to see if I could figure out how to get them placed around the tree. I wasn’t having a lot of success with that but it gave me an idea to try in 3DS Max. I used a spline in the shape of a helix with different size radii so it is cone shaped. I tried in just on a cone first. Once I saw it was going to work I tried it on the tree. Now I can move it into place by vertex. I can weave it over and under the branches just like I do for my own tree. There is still quite a ways to go and I may add a second string, possibly going the other direction. After that I will model some sockets for the bulbs and then I’ll model the bulbs. Of course lighting it will be the fun part. I have a feeling I’m going to have some long render times at that point.

   

For this coming week, in addition to getting the business card uploaded and ordered, I’ll be working on my VR class. It’s not likely to be as consistent as I want but I’m sure going to try. I have a few things it looks like I need to get done sooner rather than later. I also have some things I want to test for that capstone project. If all that goes well I might have some time that I can work on some modeling. Come back to find out how things play out.

 

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