The process side of this project has been difficult this week. One of the members of our team was not in class last week, and another member had a one unit course all weekend, and there were some barriers to getting in touch, and a group member going to the Standing Rock Sioux Protest Camp
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And of course the election.
The collaboration feature of Unity has been interesting and useful for sharing assets, but for us at least, has not been enough to overcome the barriers to being able to complete a group project with 3d capture and unity scene, within the scope of one week. Between the three group members we were able to capture some 3d assets, load them into a project with the demo build that was sent to the class, and go through this weeks tutorial, attempting to build our own scene along with the tutorial.
There were some parts of the tutorial about which I have remaining questions. One of these is the information provided on slide 7; particularly around the process of creating and editing prefabs, and what the ‘drag’ instruction looks like while working in unity.
The info about the character controller was very helpful. I am still trying to wrap my mind around what the basics of a Unity scene are. It seems like there is automatically a camera and a space and the user is to add everything else? And then a controller is needed for in game camera/player movement? And then within the scene you can have assets, which are placed on objects to exist within the scene? I have not been able to figure out how to map one of the 3d assets that we imported on to a Unity object while maintaining the shape or figure of our asset. So far I can only have the skin of an object project the asset across its own dimension ( a cube remains a cube with an image of a cat, instead of taking the shape of the cat).
I am interested in better understanding the tag system, as well as the hierarchy that it follows. I am a little confused about the ‘parent object’ vis-a-vi that controller, and what it means that the main camera object carries the collider and controller. And more definition about what the relationship between rigidbody (physics?), collider (physical collisions?) and controller are.
For example, I am struggling to understand how to imagine a collider as discussed in the slide below. Like, what ‘is’ a collider, that it can be both physics and trigger. And I was imagining that it belonged to the main camera object as discussed in the previous slides, and in this slide it appears the colliders belong to the mug (and which version of the mug is this? In what form?)
The ability to add code to the process is exciting, but still abstract for me. Based on the slides I am unclear about where (and how a little) the code is written and located in relationship to the scene itself. Is there a built in Unity editor? Or are these scripts written in an external editor and then added to the assets folder? And I could use some help orienting my programming knowledge to its application in the Unity world. I can’t quite bridge the two in my mind yet.
I am also confused about the scripts shown in slides 13-16. Are all of these targeting the colliders that belong to the mug? Or are we scripting something else now?
I am also having trouble with the mechanics of the scenes that were shared with the class, and for some reason keep getting stuck in a mug heaven and can’t interact within the original scene of just a mug in the room
–update: I unchecked the second scene in the build settings and am now able to interact with the mugs in the first scene (which is fun!)
I am getting this error as I try to create a 3d object of our capture asset.
I created a Quad, and then added each of the components that the demo mug has, and then copied the settings for each component on the mug, and pasted the values into the corresponding component.
I am also trying to move the model of our 3d capture itself into the same place in the Unity project folder structure (image below)
but am still unable to map it on to a Unity object.
Following the guidance of the slides on animations I have been able to create some animation/camera effects with the demo mugs, which I must admit is insignificant but satisfying. I am getting an error (below), but I believe it is because I accidentally added an unnecessary function at some point in the process of building the animation.
I can’t however figure out how to edit the animation once I have created it. (and I tried update mode animate physics which is really intense!).
And in the end (for now at least) have been unable to make it through the Unity crash cycle