I ran into a mole impersonator who also dropped Metal and Korn in 2013. How much text and punctuation does this sentence need to be filled in to be readable at the most basic level? Year of the Rooster go go go!
Some people like Hot Nigga, not Eminem. I don’t — I like Eminem, Because “I can relate to what you’re saying in your songs.So when I have a shitty day,I drift away and put’em on.”
The official account here has the wonderful music to play. Smile.
Then, a good reference article, suggested collection.
It is a little longer and is planned to be divided into three phases, the first part is engine, the second part is 3D modeling, the third part is 2D, sound and motion effects, etc.
Let’s enter the translation. The first one, engines.
A few years ago, I was addicted to world of Warcraft. It was such a good time. I got so much fun out of it.
Whether it’s “World of Warcraft” or any other MMORPG of its kind, they all have one thing in common: big, very big.
You can even be in awe as you explore them. You wonder how you can make such a big world. The answer is this:
A large development team plus years of careful building.
Today, as a developer starting out in VR, “World of Warcraft” may seem unrealistic; We need more realistic short-term goals, more focus, execution, motivation, step by step.
Of course, the importance of long-term goals is also self-evident. Reasonable goals can drive you to overcome challenges and keep you moving forward.
We all need the right tools to move forward.
What are the true tools? How to make a reasonable choice in different learning stages? This article will focus on the two problems to introduce you to a series of mainstream design development tools, including engine, 3 d modeling, 2 d drawing from multiple aspects, such as, sound effects and dynamic effect and in accordance with the “start”, “advanced” and “advanced” the order of arrangement, hope I can help you on the way of VR learning more focused and less confusion.
It should be noted that this list is based on my personal learning and practice, and some of the “advanced” tools have not been used in my actual combat.
About Learning Objectives
First question: What is your goal?
Want to go indie and do all the work yourself, work with friends, or go freelance?
Or do you want to find a job in VR that suits you in the future, such as joining an AAA game brand as your ultimate goal?
In any case, I recommend you start with the basics, such as Unity and Blender, focusing on the simplest of small, phased goals and exploring design and development skills from the beginning to the end.
If you want to get a formal VR development job, you’ll need to learn more and more specialized tools as you move up the ladder.
First, make long-term goals that are in line with your ideal and actual conditions. Then, consider short-term phased goals one by one, plan your self-study schedule according to your own time allocation principle, keep a practical learning mode, and improve your ability to use various VR development tools step by step.
With that goal in mind, let’s actually look at what tools you need to focus on and learn at different stages.
The game engine
Even if you’re building a VR app from scratch, you don’t have to write all the interactive mechanics that need to be driven.
Ever wonder how head and position tracking is implemented in VR? Have you ever been struck by the real and engaging interaction in VR games?
Don’t be alarmed, most of what you touch is actually driven by the standardization provided by the game engine, which means you don’t have to write tracking and control mechanics by hand, just tweak the underlying functional blocks that you already have and apply them to your app.
This obviously makes life easier for us designers who are trying to make it on our own. In fact, even if you’re a total beginner, with the right tools, you can quickly build a basic interactive VR world.
Now you may be wondering: Our goal is to design and develop VR apps. What does that have to do with “games”? The answer is simple: game engines give us all the tools we need to create 3D worlds and write interactive scripts.
The VR SDK (Software Development Kit) is available by default on all major game engines, so as mentioned earlier, we don’t have to worry too much about complicated technical issues like head tracking when building our own apps.
A little excited? Let’s find out.
start
Unity
For starters, Unity is your best bet. It does take a while to learn, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll soon be able to create a basic 3D world and interact with it through scripting.
All major VR devices have an SDK for Unity, so you can easily deploy your app on the hardware.
Unity also supports industry standard formats, so you can import 3D models or animations from Blender, Maya, or 3DS Max into Unity.
Unity supports three programming languages, and you’ll usually use C# for scripting.
Best of all, you can choose a free personal version to learn how to make your own projects.
There are plenty of teaching resources available online for you to choose from, as well as tutorials and development documentation on Unity’s website. There are also good paid course resources on Treehouse, Coursera, Udemy and other platforms.
The advanced
Unreal Engine
Unreal is also great to start with. There are also free versions available for personal use, as well as more advanced features, including visual scripting tools for Blueprints. Compared to Unity, Unreal is slightly more difficult to get started.
So my personal advice is to try moving to Unreal once you’re comfortable with Unity; Of course, it is better to master both and choose to use them according to different project requirements.
You will need.fbx format to import 3D models made in other tools. The script side is C++.
Currently, all major VR devices have SDKS for Unity.
Also, you can find a large number of free and paid teaching resources online, including articles and videos. The Unreal website also provides a lot of reference documentation.
senior
I haven’t personally tried the following two engines in a real project, but I recommend you consider them once you’re familiar with Unity and Unreal Engine.
CRYENGINE
CRYENGINE is the engine used by Crytek to create the “Far Cry” series (” Far Cry “series,” Crysis “series), which is definitely worth studying after you have developed enough. However, remember that the more high-end the engine used by VR app, the more wonderful and realistic the picture, the higher the requirements on hardware, especially PC graphics card, the fewer the number of users.
In terms of price, Crytek uses a pay-as-you-go model. This means you can use the base version for free and buy additional features as you like; 70% of the fee will go to the fund to support indie developers (you can choose your own funding ratio).
CRYENGINE V supports platforms such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR and OSVR.
Source Engine
Valve’s engine for classic hits like Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Counter-Strike. You can use it for free, but anything you produce must be released on Steam.
Valve has also released a free Destinations Workshop Tools toolset for VR. Given Valve’s relationship with HTC Vive, the Source engine is definitely on your mind when building a product for Vive.
To be continued: Part 2, 3D Modeling Tools.