TTA330 Portfolio
Welcome to my TTA330 Portfolio. This is the professional practice project, the last module I will be taking at Falmouth University.
For the entirety of this module, have been working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has definitely been challenging. This module has two projects, the professional practice portfolio and the Industry research essay, which I won't be showing here. For this professional practice portfolio, I had a few different tasks to complete. An artefact/project, a blog, and the portfolio you are reading. Throughout the module, I have also been learning new things and engaging in research to prepare myself for a role in this industry.
To me, my specialist pathway would default lighting, as you can see throughout this website. However, for this project, I wanted to learn something completely new and challenge myself. So I took on the not so little task of creating a lockdown inspired virtual reality event/experiences. I say it is lockdown inspired as it now gives the opportunity to go to festivals and interact with friends without actually having to be near them. Saying this, there are many other uses for this project. It could be used for real events where access is limited, therefore people who find it hard to access venues or can't get close to stages due to medical reasons would then be able to. A simple live video could be streamed to the headset or interaction could be built in too. I feel this project could be developed to work in many different ways.
The product I will showcase here isn't a finished event, it is far from it. To create these kinds of events it takes an immense amount of time, especially for a solo developer, however, I have learnt so much throughout this process and have implemented many different game mechanics which I would then like to implement later on to develop this project and scale it up into a fully-fledged VR experience and publish it. As this module is designed to prepare us for a role in the industry I have also been brushing up my skills in lighting which I will also detail. If I were to scale this project up ready for publishing I would be adding a lot more attractions and functionality for the user. I would have to create more documents including disclaimers and advice for users. I would also have to look into areas like licensing so that this product could be monetised and used publicly.
I have included another page under the TTA330 Portfolio page with code and technical comments. It shows an understanding of the code that I have written and shows most of the different functions from C# that I have learnt. This code is not to be copied. If you would like to see more or wish to collaborate on this project email me at bwsoundandlighting@gmail.com
Showcase Video
Below are a series of images showing the VR Event
I started off with following a YouTube tutorial series by Valem so I could learn the basic skills to make a VR game. By following this tutorial I created a bowling alley. I started off by learning how to use the Oculus Quest with Unity and getting the tracking working so that the character in-game mimicked closely what I was doing in real life. I then went on to create different objects and make them interactable and add physics properties to them. Once I had completed this tutorial series I had a good amount of knowledge to go on and build the VR Experience.
The quickstart room is a place where the player can get used to the controls and feeling in VR. It displays detailed instructions on how to interact with objects and how to move around in-game. It gives the user a chance to play with all the game mechanics I have incorporated into the experience. They can pick up and throw objects, they can shoot objects, wear a hat, open drawers and doors, climb and even teleport. All of these mechanics also have working physics so they should feel similar to real life. This room is where I completed most of my learning. Even though it doesn't look as pleasing to the eye than the other room, it is where I learnt to code all of my game mechanics in C# and where I learnt the foundations of Unity and VR development. I have also animated the character to make sure they replicate what the player is doing as accurately as possible, this took a long time to get looking good but i think it was worth it!
The images on the right show the main Unity Scene which is where the player will be spending most of their time. At the moment it only has one tent but as I mentioned before. I would like to expand on this in the future with different designs and interactions that the player could have. This is a multiplayer experience, so when multiple people join they would all be able to see each other on the island and interact. There is also an option to add in voice and text chat if that feature was wanted.
I had a few issues when developing with multiplayer as Unity has stopped support for their previous multiplayer solution and are working on a new one meaning developers are left to use third party solutions at the moment. I ended up using Photon Pun 2, and after a few tutorials and lots of trial and error, I had it working.
The island you see was created from scratch with the Unity terrain editor. I also created the ocean shaders from scratch with the help of a tutorial, it features waves, depth, seafoam and many adjustments to change it to your preference. There are a few issues with my shader though. If you look in the video you will see that the seafoam is bright white. I think this has something to do with the global depth parameters in Unity itself. I have encountered a lot of issues like this as Unity is upgrading from its old render pipeline to a scriptable render pipeline, it is not finished yet so there are many bugs which I have had to fix along the way, some successful and some not. This is the reason you don't see any trees in the scene. I don't have enough experience to work with trees in the new render pipeline. For some reason, they all show pink!
When creating a game many developers and designers use publicly available assets and models in the game, these assets can then be modified to work and look exactly how you'd like. This is what I did for the tent and contents. I have arranged all the items how I would like and customised colours etc. to my liking. I ran into the same issues here with the render pipelines making everything pink, so I had to create my own materials and apply them to the meshes of the objects. The dance floor was also supposed to be animated, changing colour when walked on and many other effects but I also had an issue with this as the scripting was old and didn't work for the newer versions of Unity.