Sid Diaz

  This will be the last blog about the making of Pandora’s Forest, where I will show some comments from the pre-testing I did on my own and with my wife, before testing the prototype to other users. I will also mention my plan for the project after this prototype. In the next blog, I will dive into the user testing and what I gathered based on their reactions and testimonials. Figure 1 Source Unity, Inventory UI bottom right in VR Scene, Screen Shot from my PC 2023 In the previous blog I mentioned grabbing and holding the mushroom but not what the user will do after grabbing the mushroom. So, I added the functionality of having an inventory system where the participant can collect the mushrooms and see how many mushrooms they have collected. I learned this technique from the game development tutorials with Ketra Games. (Video) 1 I placed the user interface on the bottom right corner, so it doesn’t distract the participants when they are walking, and this user interface disappea...

  In the previous blogs I mentioned all the assets I created in Blender and the free assets I used to create this Sci-fi world Pandora’s Forest. In this blog I will talk about the updates of this project. One thing I realised while testing was that the Ovoshroom texture was having an issue. (Figure 1) It has some lines that are visible in Unity scene view. I checked a video tutorial that helped me understand blender texturing and why it is happening inside the game engine. (Video) 1 Apparently when you are at a distance from the model the texture line becomes more visible but when you’re near it disappears. By adding bleed, it fixed the issue of the lines. Figure 1 Source Blender, Ovoshroom Screen Shot from my PC 2023 Figure 2 Source Unity, Glowing Plants, Screen Shot from my PC 2023 Then I added some colliders to test an interaction with the plants I learned from the tutorial. (Video) 2 It is supposed to make the plant sway as I pass near it, but it is not working in the way I...

  After creating the night forest scene, the next step was to add the elements that will create the effect of an enchanted forest. I started by adding moving elements like fog (Figure 1) and fireflies (Figure 2) . Adding fog to the scene was relatively easy. In Adobe Photoshop, I created the image of a fog by using a free fog brush that I downloaded at Brusheezy (Source 1) , then changed the color of the fog to light blue to add the effect of alien world and saved it as png file. To create the fog effects in Unity, I needed to use the Unity Particle System. (Video)1 In the Particle System, I added the fog png image which created a smoke effect which is moving around the scene. Figure 1 Source Unity, Fog, Screen Shot from my PC 2023 Making fireflies in Unity is done by using the same Particle System. I followed a tutorial to create this firefly’s effect in the scene. (Video)2 It was easy to create, as all was done within Unity.  Figure 2 Source Unity, Fireflies, Screen Shot f...