Problems with FBX File Types
Unfortunately again after having a number of technical issues and needing to learn the different and new methods of exporting the FBX files with animations for Unity we came accross some further issues that we needed to find a way to resolve in the time that we had left. So due to some file names changes and some animations not linking to the original base models that we had in place I had to find a solution to have these working in the scene with the time we had left. So i layered the different changed versions of the models on top of one another so they could be set active and inactive at different times depending on which animation was ready to play.
Animation Importing and Sequencing
All of the models and animations were imported into the Unity project and placed into the appropriate areas of the scene.
The script to trigger the animations became very complex and I admit could have been done a lot better if i used scripted events properly but i chose to do it this way because i knew it would and could work in the time I had left to finish these scenes. In the images below I had to create a long list of public items in the script such as the different animations, animation triggers, the dialogue boxes and also the different versions of the seagull models.
After all of the public items were set up then it was simply a long and ordered list of which animations and objects would trigger and how long it would spend on those items inbetween. So the different versions of the seagull models were set active and inactive at certain points and the animations would play for so many seconds until the next animation was ready to start next.
Adding a Navigation Guide
Due to our lack of tutorial and general player guidance in this version of the project I wanted to add some form of guidance for the player in this prototype of the experience. So to do this i added a small faded orange marker which moves up and down kind of like a small icon that will hopefully give the player a sense of direction. There is one placed on the beach next to the seagulls and another that spawns after the first seagull dialogue on the pier to guide the player to that next section.
Creating the Pier Scene
The pier scene is created in a very similar way to the beach scene so that when the player enters next to the ice cream cart they will trigger a collider which will spawn the pier seagull models and the animation sequence and dialogue bubbles will appear working in the scene. This scene will also trigger 20 seconds after the ice cream eating mini game that was created by Yiran and Lin.
Adding the Crying Child
In the pier scene of the script it features a crying child after the player eats all of the ice cream and we had the sound arts student also create a sound file specifically for this. Due to time constraints the animation students couldnt model this character in time and so found and edited a model on the asset store which look and worked great with a simple crying animation that we could loop. However… we the materials and textures somehow went strange during exporting and so we accidentally made a small devil child as you can see from the images below which does work but also looks like a little sister from Bioshock… arguably terrifying but also we just had to keep it in for the moment because of how funny it was in the scene.
Adding the Speech Bubbles in Sequence
Now that all of the animations and triggers for the animations of the seagulls are in place I now needed to add in some synced speech bubbles that would also contain the dialogue to show and appear at certain points. The speech bubbles for each dialogue scene are set up using animators to trigger the bubbles at certain time stamps in the scenes that are mostly synced to the dialogue in the scene. These bubbles also appear on the pier scene as well. The only unfortunate thing is due to how these are set up I did not know the best way to add the interactivity because they despawn after each short dialogue scene so this is something i would need to rethink in the future for this version.
Updates to the credit scene
Yiran found a perfect new skybox for the credits scene which makes it looks so much nicer and also works out well because it kind of shows that its a sunset and an end of the day for the seagulls at the end of the experience which works very well overall. She sent my through this skybox and I then applied this to our final version of the experience.
Removing the City Scene
After we tried merging the scenes and the different assets/scripts that we had all worked on we found that the only problem was loading the city scene. We had some issues where others were using the OVR platform instead of the XR rig and when we tried to swap it out for the correct version as you can see in the image below it was just a grey screen and it just woulndt work in a VR headset. We were limited for time and couldnt resolve this issue and so unfotunately it ended up on the cutting room floor for the time being unless we revisit this project in the future as we hopefully plan to have a more completed version with more polish in the future.
Additions to the Environment
I thought that it would be nice to add a few more little elements around the environments and might as well utilise some of the test models that were given to us from the animation students and so I found it really funny to have a few of them sat in the Beach chairs around the area.
Creating the Final Build
After we had tried to achieve as much as we can before our final crit and deadline we were in a good place to try and achieve a fully playable build and while in the Unity file there is of course 5 scene that were created for this experience we knew that we would need to cut the city scene for now and so we sequenced it all so that after the sky scene the player would then go straight to the credits instead as you can see in the screenshot below. Overall the final build worked greay with minimal issues and we were extremely happy that it was fully playable and working from start to finish.