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Unity Virtual Reality Projects
Unity Virtual Reality Projects

Unity Virtual Reality Projects: Explore the world of virtual reality by building immersive and fun VR projects using Unity 3D

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Unity Virtual Reality Projects

Chapter 2. Objects and Scale

Objects and Scale

You may remember building a diorama project for school from a shoebox as a child. We're going to make one today using Unity. Let's assemble our first scene, which is composed of simple geometric objects. Along the way, we'll talk a lot about world scale. In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

  • A short introduction to the Unity 5 3D game engine
  • Creating a simple diorama in Unity
  • Making some measuring tools, including a unit cube and a Grid Projector
  • Using Blender to create a cube with texture maps and import it into Unity

Getting started with Unity

If you don't have the Unity 3D game engine application installed on your PC yet, do that now! The fully-featured Personal Edition is free and runs on both Windows and Mac. To get Unity, go to https://unity3d.com/get-unity/, select the version that you want, click on Download Installer, and continue following the instructions. This book assumes version 5.1 of Unity.

For you beginners out there, we're going to take this first section nice and slow, with more hand-holding than what you'll get later on in the book. Furthermore, even if you already know Unity and have developed your own games, it may be worthwhile revisiting the fundamental concepts, since the rules sometimes are different when designing for virtual reality.

Starting a new Unity project

Create a new Unity project named VR_is_Awesome, or whatever you'd like.

To create a new Unity project, launch Unity from your operating system, and the Open dialog box will appear. From this dialog...

Creating a simple diorama

Now, we will add a few objects to the scene to set up the environment, including a unit cube, a flat plane, a red ball, and a photographic backdrop.

Adding a cube

Let's add the first object to the scene—a unit-sized cube.

Within the Hierarchy panel, use the Create menu and choose 3D Object | Cube. The same selection can also be found in the main menu bar's GameObject dropdown.

A default white cube is added to the scene, centered on the ground plane at the (0, 0, 0) position with no rotation and a scale of one, as you can see in the Inspector panel. This is the Reset setting, which can be found in the object's Transform component of the Inspector panel

Tip

The Reset values of the Transform component are Position (0, 0, 0), Rotation (0, 0, 0), and Scale (1, 1, 1).

If for some reason, your cube has other Transform values, set these in the Inspector panel or locate the small gear icon on the upper right-hand side of the Inspector panel's Transform...

Measurement tools

We've created a Unity scene, added a few primitive 3D objects and created a couple of basic textures, including a photograph. Along the way, we learned about positioning and transforming objects in Unity's 3D world space. The problem is that the actual size of stuff in your scene is not always obvious. You could be zoomed up or you may be using either a Perspective versus Orthographic view, or other features that affect the apparent size. Let's look at ways to deal with the scale.

Keeping a unit cube handy

I suggest keeping a unit cube handy in your Hierarchy panel. When it's not needed, just disable it (uncheck the checkbox in the top left-hand side of the Inspector panel). It can be used like a measuring stick or rather a measuring block, when needed. I use one to estimate actual world sizes of objects, distances between objects, heights and elevations, and so forth. Let's do it now.

Create a unit cube, name it Unit Cube, place it somewhere out...

Importing from the Blender experiment

Unity offers some basic geometric shapes but when it comes to more complex models, you'll need to go beyond Unity. The Unity Asset Store has tons of amazing models (plus many other kinds of assets), and there are lots of other websites with large communities that share 3D models for fun and profit. Where do these models come from? Will you run into problems while importing them into Unity?

I know that this book is about Unity, but we're going on a short side adventure right now. We're going to use Blender (version 2.7x), a free and open source 3D animation suite (http://www.blender.org/), to make a model and then import it into Unity. Grab a coffee and strap yourself in!

The plan is not to build anything very fancy right now. We'll just build a cube and a simple texture map. The purpose of this exercise is to find out how well a one-unit cube in Blender imports with the same scale and orientation into Unity.

Feel free to skip this section...

An introduction to Blender

Open the Blender application. Dismiss the opening splash screen. You will be in the Blender editor, which is similar to what's shown in the following screenshot:

An introduction to Blender

Like Unity, Blender consists of a number of non-overlapping windows, and their layout can be customized to suit your needs. However, the Blender interface can be more daunting, in part because it integrates a number of different editors that can be opened at the same time, in their own panels.

It's helpful to realize that the default view, as shown in the preceding screenshot, contains five different editors!

The most obvious editor is the large 3D View, which I highlighted with a (red) rectangle. This is where you can view, move, and organize the objects in your Blender scene.

The following are the other editors that are opened:

  • The Info editor, which can be seen along the top edge of the app, has global menus and information about the application
  • The Timeline editor, which is present along the bottom...

Getting started with Unity


If you don't have the Unity 3D game engine application installed on your PC yet, do that now! The fully-featured Personal Edition is free and runs on both Windows and Mac. To get Unity, go to https://unity3d.com/get-unity/, select the version that you want, click on Download Installer, and continue following the instructions. This book assumes version 5.1 of Unity.

For you beginners out there, we're going to take this first section nice and slow, with more hand-holding than what you'll get later on in the book. Furthermore, even if you already know Unity and have developed your own games, it may be worthwhile revisiting the fundamental concepts, since the rules sometimes are different when designing for virtual reality.

Starting a new Unity project

Create a new Unity project named VR_is_Awesome, or whatever you'd like.

To create a new Unity project, launch Unity from your operating system, and the Open dialog box will appear. From this dialog box, select New Project...

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Key benefits

  • Learn the basic principles of virtual reality applications and get to know how they differ from games and desktop apps
  • Build various types of VR experiences, including diorama, first-person characters, riding on rails, 360 degree projections, and social VR
  • A project-based guide that teaches you to use Unity to develop VR applications, which can be experienced with devices such as the Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard

Description

What is consumer “virtual reality�? Wearing a head-mounted display you view stereoscopic 3D scenes. You can look around by moving your head, and walk around using hand controls or motion sensors. You are engaged in a fully immersive experience. On the other hand, Unity is a powerful game development engine that provides a rich set of features such as visual lighting, materials, physics, audio, special effects, and animation for creating 2D and 3D games. Unity 5 has become the leading platform for building virtual reality games, applications and experiences for this new generation of consumer VR devices. Using a practical and project-based approach, this book will educate you about the specifics of virtual reality development in Unity. You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications which can be experienced with devices such as the Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard. We will then learn how to engage with virtual worlds from a third person and first person character point of view. Furthermore, you will explore the technical considerations especially important and possibly unique to VR. The projects in the book will demonstrate how to build a variety of VR experiences. You will be diving into the Unity 3D game engine via the interactive Unity Editor as well as C-Sharp programming. By the end of the book, you will be equipped to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences using Unity. So, let's get to it!

Who is this book for?

If you're a non-programmer unfamiliar with 3D computer graphics, or experienced in both but new to virtual reality, and are interested in building your own VR games or applications then this book is for you. Any experience in Unity is an advantage.

What you will learn

  • Create 3D scenes with Unity and Blender while learning about world space and scale
  • Build and run VR applications for consumer headsets including Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard
  • Build interactive environments with physics, gravity, animations, and lighting using the Unity engine
  • Experiment with various user interface (UI) techniques that you can use in your VR applications
  • Implement the first-person and third-person experiences that use only head motion gestures for input
  • Create animated walkthroughs, use 360-degree media, and build multi-user social VR experiences
  • Learn about the technology and psychology of VR including rendering, performance and VR motion sickness
  • Gain introductory and advanced experience in Unity programming with the C# language
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Virtually Everything for Everyone Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Objects and Scale Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. VR Build and Run Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Gaze-based Control Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. World Space UI Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. First-person Character Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Physics and the Environment Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Walk-throughs and Rendering Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Using All 360 Degrees Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Social VR Metaverse Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. What's Next? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

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1 star 10%
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Charles Bodnar-Horvath Jun 20, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This book was fantastic. I bought 'Learning Virtual Reality' by Tony Parisi and was extremely disappointed at how brief/unhelpful it was. It made me unsure about whether I should buy this book but I'm really glad I did. This book is helpful to beginners whilst still providing enough interesting content for more experienced developers. The only downside is that the author focuses only on the Oculus Rift/Cardboard but its easy to work around if you know what you're doing. Highly recommend.
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Matt C Dec 03, 2015
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Jon has done an amazing job of creating a single source textbook for VR development in Unity. This book covers all of the key ingredients you'll need to create your amazing new VR worlds and explore them as the player inside the game.This is a must have for anyone looking to get on the wave of Virtual Reality technology and build amazing things!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
MasterMantik Jan 04, 2016
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This book is exactly what you need to get up to speed with Unity and Virtual Reality. Clear concise explanations and examples. I already knew a bit about VR but this book has taken me to the next level....
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Rob Apr 05, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was far more informative than I thought it would be. I have both the Oculus Rift DK2 and the Google Cardboard device, and I could follow the examples pretty closely. I have a bit more experience with Unity than this book requires. So I was able to modify some of his logic and do more interesting things. I created a demo application that has a trampoline, an elevator, an infographic of the history of the world, a 360 degree panorama and a photo-sphere. He does a good job explaining the basics of HUD design, multiplayer networking considerations, and social networking. And he provides several resources where one can go to obtain more information.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Harold Baize Feb 07, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Excellent book. Provides clear step by step instructions for creating virtual reality environments and games using Unity. I also appreciate that the author includes an introduction to Blender and uses it for UV texture editing. In just a few hours I had a working game that I could experience in my Oculus Rift DK2.One word of caution: VR is changing rapidly and the exact method for using the Oculus Rift SDK with Unity will probably change. Not a problem for this book, but you may need to go on line to find the latest SDK and Oculus Rift/Unity integration. I needed to update my Oculus run time and Unity utilities.
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