Personal Observations/Progress
- I'm Finished!!!!! Well, for the most part. I'm finally done with the content of my demo and I feel very good about it. However, I still have some minor SDK integrations to do and next week, I'll work on my promotional graphics and logos.
- With the big change to Mixamo over this past week, I was really concerned about having access to basic animations and characters, however all was seemingly smooth with the overhaul. I animated and downloaded three new characters this week from the new Mixamo and all went well! There was still a lot of time spent on getting the materials to display properly in Unity (not sure why they didn't fix that) but overall, the workflow was the same. You just can house any models on the site anymore.
Production Progress
Task: Create Start Scene
After playing though a few different Rift experiences, one thing I realized was that my project didn't have a "start" screen. Initially, the titles just started to scroll when the experience began. So, I added a separate start scene that now allows the viewer to initiate the experience with the 'A' button.
Task: Add a Few Background Extras
After I got much of my content and scenes done, one of the things that bothered me was the empty feeling one of my main scenes had. I caught this early on, but I was concerned that adding too many characters in a scene my cause significant performance issues. This was before I created my trigger scripts, which turn characters on/off based on when the camera passes through a trigger zone or not. Once, I had this trigger script in place, I now had the ability to have character appear when they were in the camera view zone and turn off when they aren't. Now, the time consuming work of exporting, modifying and implementing mixamo characters was left. (See note above)
Task: Check and Implement Basic Controls
As mentioned above, I added a Start screen, which meant I needed to implement a control to start the experience. I was initially a little worried about this because I wasn't sure if I needed to import and configure the Oculus SDK into my project. However, the Unity integration is actually SEAMLESS! I just used the basic GetInput (fire1) command and to my surprise, this worked just fine for the Rift Remote, Gamepad Button A and Touch Controller Button A. Given this is a linear experience, this is all the interaction that was needed, so I was done sooner than I thought!
Over the weekend, I will likely add some finishing touches to my end screen and implement a quit to home function. I looked over the Rift Submission Guidelines again (https://developer.oculus.com/distribute/latest/concepts/publish-rift-app-submission/) and will tick off any boxes I may have forgotten.