For my final project I had an idea - I wanted to create a gym or locker room that I could make look like a practice facility and then I wanted to incorporate different Lakers and Kobe Bryant elements to tell a story of his career. To say I encountered some problems completing this project may be the understatement of the semester.

My first step was to see what assets I could find online to make my project work. I got very excited because I found literally every asset I was looking for (I should have known then it was too good to be true). I downloaded all the files: the gym, the locker room, trophies, basketball uniforms, etc. I took all the files and dropped them into Unity and had no problems importing, but that was the end of my good luck. I found that Unity would only accept .obj or .fbx files, and absolutely nothing else would work. This incompatibility immediately eliminated more than half of the assets I wanted to use - most notably the entire locker room and the championship trophies.

To say the least I was very upset. I decided to go ahead with the gym and make it as cool as I possibly could. I added different textures and found Laker logos and different images that I added to plane objects and hung them on the walls like art. The first time I tried to play my scene, however I discovered a problem with the purple mats that hung on the walls. They were in fact a separate object and were not totally in front of the walls behind them, therefore when I entered the scene, parts of the mats would blend or become see through. I adjusted the scale and position of each object until the problem more or less stopped - of course until I did final exports then the problems came back with a vengeance.

I decided that since I couldn't create the locker room, I should add more action to the gym. I downloaded Fuse and went ahead creating some fake basketball players and a coach. I have to say using Fuse was incredibly fun. I was able to make 5 different basketball players (I used each twice) and a coach. I found it awesome that I could adjust their heights, looks and bodies then dress them in clothing I created - the whole process took me less than an hour. The only drawback I found in the demo program was the lack of selection for hairstyles. I took my six creations and exported them to Mixamo where I then went in search of animations. I was seriously disappointed to see that there weren't any basketball animations! I went ahead and downloaded some running ones, idles, turning, and other miscellaneous actions in the hope of making it look like a practice.

I imported everything into Unity and went ahead with trying to make action sequences. Ok, action sequences are hands down the hardest thing I attempted to do in Unity. I tried everything - using Playmaker and Animator - to create the sequences, but everything and every tutorial I found led me down a rabbit hole of needing to code. Side note - this class should come with a sister class in how to code for it. After hours and hours of tutorial watching and failed attempts, I gave up on my action sequences to my severe disappointment, and went ahead creating a huddle and bench of the 11 characters doing different idle actions on loop.

My next trial was trying to add video into my scene. VIDEO IS HARD. When I finally found the video I wanted to add, I downloaded it and tried to drop it into my Unity project - crashed it. Ok so that wasn't going to work, I read up on some forums and found out that if you want to enter video into Unity, no matter what Unity claims the file needs to be a .mov not a .mp4! I converted my video and dropped the new file into my project - crashed it. I opened my project again - crashed again. I tried a fourth time and this time I got a pinwheel that lasted for a couple minutes, and when I checked my programs menu in finder it told me it wasn't responding. Long story short - I imported that video at least 20 times each time Unity stopped responding. The final time I attempted, I left my computer right after I hit import and ran to get coffee. Much to my amazement, when I came back 15 minutes later the video had imported successfully and Unity didn't crash!!

Video in Unity I learned can be used just like a texture - but it won't work on planes. I added the video to a cube and propped it against one of the walls in my gym to make it look like a giant television. I then entered my scene and was confused that I couldn't hear the video at all. I went back to my trusty google, typed in my problem and found a forum where (duh) they told me I needed to create and audio source like I had done for Assignment 6. I went back to my project and added the video sound, as well as some gym ambient noise I found and was loving it.

Ultimately, I learned to expect everything to go wrong in Unity and to always have a back up plan. This project was amazing and really tested my patience and creative problem solving abilities. Though the final product I ended up with was not what I had set out to create, I really think what I ended up producing was pretty awesome. I think if I were to compare using Unity to create and experience versus using 360 video I would conclude that I like both equally. Unity I find more intriguing in the ways it allows you to tell a story - a big drawback of 360 video. 360 video, on the other hand, I find more interesting when inside the headset, especially when it allows you to experience something in the real world that you previously had no access to, i.e. animal experiences, other countries, etc.

In the end, I really loved this class. Yes, it may have been a lot of work at times, but I can honestly say I loved every minute of it - even when Unity made me want to throw my computer out the window.