Assignment 2 – First VR Scene

Assignment 2 – First VR Scene


By: Kristen Powers

Dear Unity, 

It's a love/hate relationship. I can not wait to get to know you more, but the first time we met I could tell you were going to be a bit difficult. However, we managed to make this first one work, so cheers to more. 

That is basically how I feel after completing this first assignment. I can't say it is a masterpiece, but I am pretty happy that I managed to add the requirements. I also had some fun messing with the terrain and testing out different assets. I managed to play around with a different sky, mountains, some random animals and objects. I pat myself on the back for that one. (It's the little wins that get you through!)

The first class we started to work with Unity, I went a little mountain crazy. I know you can make the mountains smaller, but I had so many that I decided to start from scratch during the second class.

On day two of Unity I really liked the scene I created. I discovered the asset store and created a scene of a broken down neighborhood with dinosaurs attacking it. That was really fun. However, my attempt at creating a city that was being attacked by dinosaurs failed. I guess the assets were outdated or something when I imported them, so I could not actually play the scene. Even though it was useless, it was fun to make and it allowed me to mess around with the different basic functions we learned on Unity.

This week I started fresh for this assignment. My scene had some grass and mountains/hills. I added some water with fish in it, and an old boat. In the grass I also added some horses, an old truck and a well. It is a calm scene, but it allowed me to be sure I knew how to add in everything we learned. I figure I should try to get the basics nailed down before I go crazy with it. I'm sure once I am more comfortable with Unity I can get more creative, but this was my first time ever working with a program like this for VR.

One thing I noticed is that all of the cool assets cost money. I also had a hard time downloading assets from the outside websites as many didn't work. I did have some trouble with the first person character. It was a struggle for me to place it in right spot in order to make it as if the person was walking through my scene. I finally got it, but then I couldn't figure out how to make the person walk. I then realized I didn't have the "is walking" script checked in the inspector. I'm sure questions will come up as I work on different projects!

This assignment just got me more excited to create more-- but it is definitely going to be a challenge for me to really grasp the program. I have a hard time thinking in 3D and the terrain directions confuse me a lot (I get turned around a lot and think I am making something touch the terrain, but then it ends up floating in the sky), so this is going to be my biggest challenge when creating VR worlds. Nothing I can't overcome though! Lynda.com will help and just using Unity more, so I know I am going to have to make that a priority. I'm interested to see how the next one will go.

 

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