I've mentioned in a few job search cover letters now that I've been working on Unity VR environments in my spare time, but this purported portfolio has nothing to say on the matter, so I thought I'd fire up a quick post to cover what that has entailed.
Over the Thanksgiving Break, I obtained a big package of assets from the Unity Asset store, since there was an extended Black Friday sale of sorts. The particular assets are available here.
I decided to use one of the big spaceship shells to create a massive interior space full of areas we could use for assorted internet shenanigans. To give an idea of the scope, here's a look at the vessel in editor with the interior overlaid on top of it:
Over the Thanksgiving Break, I obtained a big package of assets from the Unity Asset store, since there was an extended Black Friday sale of sorts. The particular assets are available here.
I decided to use one of the big spaceship shells to create a massive interior space full of areas we could use for assorted internet shenanigans. To give an idea of the scope, here's a look at the vessel in editor with the interior overlaid on top of it:
However, actually using something of this scope as a VR Chat world was kind of a performance nightmare. This sent me down a rabbit hole of learning about how Unity handles baked lighting and occlusion culling. Sadly, as I am not much of a 3D artist myself, I was ill-equipped to fix overlapping UVs when the baked lighting began to cover certain walls in bizarre artifacts, but I had a fair amount of luck with culling.
The bowels of the starship were filled with editor-only gray cubes that ensured that as few rooms as possible were visible from any given point on the vessel. As a result, the ship became playable enough for us to hang out within over the holidays.
However, the culling wasn't sufficient for taking trips outside of the ship. For that, I had to implement a more crude form of virtual airlock. While in the hangar, you can press a switch that disables all the local objects in the middle of the ship before opening the bay doors. It's not perfect, but it let me ride a little hoverbike around the body of the ship, so I'm counting that in the win column for now.
The bowels of the starship were filled with editor-only gray cubes that ensured that as few rooms as possible were visible from any given point on the vessel. As a result, the ship became playable enough for us to hang out within over the holidays.
However, the culling wasn't sufficient for taking trips outside of the ship. For that, I had to implement a more crude form of virtual airlock. While in the hangar, you can press a switch that disables all the local objects in the middle of the ship before opening the bay doors. It's not perfect, but it let me ride a little hoverbike around the body of the ship, so I'm counting that in the win column for now.
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