Final Project – Prasannna Kulkarni

Completed the final project! This was some tough work and a lot of fun. The hardest part was not being able to do what you are visualizing. Things are not always easy. But in the end I was able to whatever I had envisioned.   This is story of Shiva, the space explorer taking place in 3333 AD. Recently there was a white hole (opposite to black hole, instead of pulling everything in;white hole throws stuff out) that appeared over skies of the planet PK300 in Andromeda Galaxy. This sparked...

Assignment 6 – Prasanna Kulkarni

Update: Finally I got the sound and Mecanim animations work!! Thanks to the Lynda tutorial. This assignment was very straightforward. Adding sounds to a scene and making it 3D is intuitive in Unity and very easy. During this assignment I started working on my final project. My idea for the final project is finalized and I thought it would be good idea to start adding interactivity sounds in the project using this assignment. I wanted to start triggering animations and sounds using the mecanim component and script. But boy, it...

Assignment 5 – Prasanna Kulkarni

I  enjoyed doing this 3D model assignment. Making a 3D model and putting it in the unity scene is so easy that it makes you wonder about the possibilities of the technology. As Prof. Pacheco mentioned in the class the future of the technology 'being able to scan a room and put it in VR environment to explore, making 3d models, photogrammetry, creating rigged 3D models from 3D scans', the assignment was a fitting introduction to the possibilities of scanning 3D models. I scanned myself for the assignment and put...

Assignment 4 – Prasanna Kulkarni

Assignment 4 was really the one where I have started working on my final project and the skeleton of the final project has started taking shape. I utilized the assignment to dig further in Mecanim Animator component in unity, scripting, effects, controllers as well as making models in Fuse. I created protagonist of my story using Fuse. He is a regular dude with a penchant for space exploration and goes by the name of 'Shiva' (at least thats what I am calling him for now). He lands on this planet called as...

Using C# in Unity: Tutorials I used

You can control the behavior of your characters in Unity using JavaScript(JS) or C#. Though JS is an easier language and a lot of people know it, from my initial research I concluded that C# trumps JS when it comes to scripting on Unity. I added a custom controller to control my character in Unity and added a C# script to define the behavior of the character when keys on keyboard are pressed. I achieved this by following two tutorials: https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204581427-Unity-Mecanim-Advanced-Animation I followed only half of this tutorial to learn...

An Interview with Dan Hurd – Design Lead ‘Lucky’s Tale’

A couple of days ago I interviewed Dan Hurd (@thekrakenisme) from Playful Corp over phone(Thanks Dan!). Dan is the Design Lead on the VR game 'Lucky's Tale' made especially for the consumer version of Oculus Rift. Dan was incredibly generous with his time and thoughts on VR storytelling and the process of making a game for Virtual Reality platform. We talked on a variety of topics such as developing for Oculus, prototyping ideas, best practices for developing a game for VR, tools, tricks, tips and the future of VR. The...

My thoughts on the book ‘Slay the Dragon’

I finished reading 'Slaying the Dragon' a couple of days ago, and I am glad I did.The book is not only about art of storytelling in games; but is a very good guide to the process of game design.It is an interesting/informative/fun read and although the book could be read in a weekend I would suggest to take your time to read it as it gives you time to think over the points that it makes. The principles in the book are directly applicable to any form of storytelling that one is...

Assignment 3 – Prasanna Kulkarni

The prospect of adding interactivity to a Unity scene immediately makes you wonder about the possibilities. And Playmaker makes it easy to do. After an initial look at Playmaker it feels like it would be a lot easy to add basic interactivity to the scene without coding at all. Getting familiar with all the options in Playmaker GUI is all you need. The tutorials by Irfaan Uraizee really helped me get started with Playmaker. I went through all 5 tutorials, and then I was able to add basic interactivity without any major hurdles. One of...

Assignment 2 – PK

Creating the first Unity Scene was so much fun! I feel like an artist. It was quite cool seeing my ideas take shape in a virtual world. This provided me an opportunity to explore my own thoughts in 3D as well as enable my friends to explore the world I created. To complete the project I used the skills learned in first Unity Class in IST 600, Lynda Unity Course Material, Unity Docs and other resources available online. The software looked daunting at first, with so many options and a tight user interface....

Assignment 1 – Prasanna Kulkarni

Today was the first time that I was able to experience Virtual Reality equipments' potential and the current state of development. I experienced a couple of different VR scenes and am fully convinced that the future has arrived. We still do not know all the use cases of this technology, as the technology is really in a infant stage. But as I experienced a couple of different scenes in Oculus VR Gear and Google cardboard (as well as saw my classmates experience it), I got to see first hand what works...