Working Model and Animation Import
After we had the very long week of trying and failing to add the models with animation, earlier in the week we finally had some success after the animation students changed some elements of the rig and mesh while also learning new ways to export the model for Unity We eventually had the model mostly working in a unity scene as shown in the images below:
The only slight issue we still have seems to be with the wings but the rest of the body is working and looks great for now so if we have time we can try to resolve this but at the moment it will be fine for our short concept!
We then spent time trying to export test animations and luckily again after some trial and error we were able to get it all wokring and some images below show the animation files appearing in the scene and having an effect on the model as shown in the images below:
The image below shows one of the final models that is fully working and animated and the only issue that remains is the wings looking a bit jagged but in the grand scheme we can overlook this for now while we develop the rest of the project and try to add in the rest of the animations.
Finalising navigation and Teleportation
Initially last week I added in a full teleportation area that the player could move around but we wanted to have specific points that the player could navigate to around the beach so i started to add anchors around the different areas that the player could teleport to as shown in the image below:
However after some tests and moving around the anchor points I realised that this did not work overly well and felt very restricted for the player So we decided to go back to the full teleportation area. The player also has access to the continuous turn provider in the game as well to reposition themselves after they teleport.
However after further discussions and tests with the group, Yiran had the great idea that we could have continuous movement in the experience so that this is how the seagull walks and the teleportation is how the seagull flys which we felt was genius for this experience. So now the player has the option to teleport around the beach using the right trigger or using the left joystick to walk around the beach which after some tests worked extremely well for the experience. We just need to make sure to explain this in the tutorial instructions for the player/user.
In the story the player needs to transition from the beach to the pier so i decided that after including the idea of walking and flying, that the player should fly to the pier after being prompted to. So I have added a larger teleportation anchor on the pier where if the player points their teleportation point at it, they will appear on the pier fence.
This was then also replicated for the ice cream stand so if the player points their controller at the stand they will ‘fly’ over to it and then this is where they will start the mini game to eat ice cream and the child starts to cry. However some boundaries will need to be added to stop the player from falling off the pier or ice cream cart during the experience.
Creating the Credits
I also created the credits scene for the end of the experience which i created as a seperate scene and kept it fairly simple so tha the player would stand stationary on a small island where if they look around they will see both the seagulls sat behind them. The credits were created as simple PNGs from Illustrator that go through the full list of credits of us in VR, The 3D animation students and the BA sounds arts students and also my friend Alex who provided one of the voices for the game. The transition for the credits is a simple fade in and fade out animation for the different sprites in the scene.
Creating the Menu Scene
After creating the credits I then copied the same scene and I then plan to use this as a base for the menu. I still need to research into creating a VR menu that will have a button to start the experience but in this scene we wanted to have the ‘Water goes in water goes out’ dialogue and so ive placed the XR rig in a certain position with the seagull feet below the player so they can see that and think they are a seagull in this moment while also serving this point of the narrative.
Adding Eating Interactivity
One very simple interaction that the player can do in this game are areas where they can eat certain foods in the environment. So I found a ‘fries’ model on turbosquid and added this into the scene, ready for that particular animation and i seperated it so that one fry would be interactive and you could grab it out of the packet by pressing the inner grip button.
A collider was then added to the player camera so the player wil always have a collider on their head which can act as the players ‘mouth’ during the game. So that when they lift the fry towards their head it will dissapear and play an eating noise when they do so.
This was achieved simply by having an audio source attached to the head collider that had the eating sound effect and adding a tag to the ‘food’ assets so whenever they collide the food will be destroyed and the sound effect will play and this worked very well overall during the tests.
Adding Hitting Interactivity
One of the funny elements in our game was slapstick comedy and being able to hit the other seagulls with certain objects or even hitting them with the speech bubbles and so I added some code so that whenever the player grabbed certain objects and used those objects to hit the seagulls, a sound effect would play. This overall also works very well so whenever they collide you feel like your hitting them and this will hopefully be adapted further to trigger a hit animation whenever they collide as well to add to the comedy factor of this interaction.
Teleporation Sky Scene
After mostly finishing the teleportation for the beach and pier scene I wanted to then add this to the sky scene and this one does not have continous movement but three teleportaiton anchors that the player can move around if they choose to or they can simply choose to stay on the seagulls back during the short time they will spend in this environment.