Olly Tyler - digital arts and visual effects: April 2022

29 Apr 2022

Unity Essentials Project - The Real-time Industry

This section of my course explains the interactive industry standards and conventions. Theres a typical series of production cycles similar to the film and TV linear content production business which I am already familiar with. I can therefore comparethem during this exercise.

Pre-Production

Storyline, planning, design , scheduling, deadlines, maps, UI, look and feel, testing, animatic, storyboard, budget planning, team building. To produce a design document. Pretty similar to film and TV pre-production which would plan out the scripts, shoots, design, post-production, budget and schedules. The film process would culminate in a script, storyboard and production budget and schedule.

Production

Team builds everything planned aiming to hit deadline and avoid 'feature creep' where more detail is added as it goes along. All assets have to be built and assembled - coded and set up so they work. A producer oversees deadlines and progress. 'Version control' is implemented so project can back track if necessary ( version control softwares include Github, Collaborate and PlasticsSCM ). Different from film and TV production which normally only involves the shooting and performance period.

Post-Production

Product is tested and amended until runs smoothly. Alpha Testing is done in house. Beta Testing is a limited release in order to smooth out bugs and receive feedback. This is different to traditional linear film post which normally involves editing, compositing, CGI, grading, exporting movies and alternate versions etc

Operations

Product is released and maintained, distributed, marketed, server support, bug fixes, website maintenance, promoteions etc.

Unity - Essentials of real time 2d - Working with Game Objects

Make and manipulate a Sprite:

2d objects include a library of Sprites. I made a circle shape and applied the 'knob' sprite to it. Then edited shape using the transform tool 'T' on keyboar same as Photoshop for free transform. Shift locks dimensions. Changing colour of the sprite is easy in the Inspector to the right.

Adding Components to 2d game objects:

In the Inspector the circle is given a rigidbody and a circle collider component - (added right at the bottom of the Inspector). A box is added below and also given similar components. Now the circle drops but stops when it hits the box or ground below.

Do NOT make changes whilst the game is running - changes will be lost.

Sprites and readymade 2d or 3d art can be found at the Unity Asset Store so I grabbed a few to make my next exercise. Sprites tend to be low rez png files with transparency. To load them you go to Window/ package managaer in Unity. if you download them from the asset store you can download into the Unity package manager and then from there import them into the project.

Publishing the game to WebGL so it runs on a browser requires the WebGL Publisher package to be loaded. Instructions are here

click pic to run my Egg Pachinko

28 Apr 2022

Unity Essentials Level 2 - Make a 3d scene and publish it to the web

I have worked through a few of the basic tutorials in Unity. I've learned to navigate the UI and build from primitives. I've learned to add components to 3d models and give them physics attributes. I've learned to make prefabs - these are the same as Maya Instances.

The navigation is almose the same as Maya. F is the focus hotkey just the same.

The Inspector is the same as Maya's Attributes and Nukes Properties - it even sits on the right in the same place that those two position it.

The Project panel at the bottom contains assets and materials etc - the same way as the Aftereffects Project panel.

Hierachy panel on the left is the same as Maya's Inspector.

I made a practice 'game' where coloured barrels fall onto slopes and I adjusted the elements until one finally went the whole course and landed in the target area at the end. I then set about making a 'build' of the game scene ( choices are MacOs, Windows or WebGL )

The WebGL build can be seen here - its not super exciting but I have now published my first Unity project.