Book Image

Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

By : Jonathan Linowes
Book Image

Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

By: Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

This third edition of the Unity Virtual Reality (VR) development guide is updated to cover the latest features of Unity 2019.4 or later versions - the leading platform for building VR games, applications, and immersive experiences for contemporary VR devices. Enhanced with more focus on growing components, such as Universal Render Pipeline (URP), extended reality (XR) plugins, the XR Interaction Toolkit package, and the latest VR devices, this edition will help you to get up to date with the current state of VR. With its practical and project-based approach, this book covers the specifics of virtual reality development in Unity. You'll learn how to build VR apps that can be experienced with modern devices from Oculus, VIVE, and others. This virtual reality book presents lighting and rendering strategies to help you build cutting-edge graphics, and explains URP and rendering concepts that will enable you to achieve realism for your apps. You'll build real-world VR experiences using world space user interface canvases, locomotion and teleportation, 360-degree media, and timeline animation, as well as learn about important VR development concepts, best practices, and performance optimization and user experience strategies. By the end of this Unity book, you'll be fully equipped to use Unity to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences.

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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
1
Virtually Everything for Everyone
Virtually Everything for Everyone
What is virtual reality?
Differences between virtual reality and augmented reality
Applications versus games
Types of VR experience
Types of HMD
How virtual reality works
Technical skills that are important to VR
What this book covers
Summary
Free Chapter
2
Understanding Unity, Content, and Scale
Understanding Unity, Content, and Scale
Technical requirements
Installing Unity
Getting started with Unity
Creating a simple diorama
Using prefabs
Importing content
Summary
3
Setting Up Your Project for VR
Setting Up Your Project for VR
Technical requirements
Introducing the Unity XR platform
Choosing your target VR platforms and toolkits
Enabling virtual reality for your platform
Building and running your project
Building for SteamVR
Building for Oculus Rift
Building for Immersive Windows MR
Building for Oculus Quest
Building for Google Cardboard
Summary
4
Using Gaze-Based Control
Using Gaze-Based Control
Technical requirements
Adding Ethan, the walker
Scripting a random walk target
"Zombie-izing" Ethan!
Going where I'm looking
Making a look-to-kill system
Introducing Unity C# programming
Summary
5
Interacting with Your Hands
Interacting with Your Hands
Technical requirements
Setting up the scene
Using an Input Manager button
Controlling balloons with the input trigger
Using Unity events for input
Tracking your hands
Interacting with a balloon gun
Popping balloons
Summary
6
Canvasing the World Space UI
Canvasing the World Space UI
Technical requirements
Studying VR design principles
Making a reusable default canvas
Implementing a HUD
The in-game world space UI
The reticle cursor
Building an interactive dashboard
Direct interaction with UI elements
Building a wrist-based menu palette
Summary
7
Teleporting, Locomotion, and Comfort
Teleporting, Locomotion, and Comfort
Technical requirements
Implementing basic glide locomotion
Climbing a wall
Using the XRI Locomotion System
Teleporting between locations
Locomotion and comfort in VR
Summary
8
Lighting, Rendering, Realism
Lighting, Rendering, Realism
Technical requirements
Lighting and rendering strategies
Setting up our demo scene
Using environment lighting
Using PBR materials and URP Shaders
Using Light objects and Emission surfaces
Using Light Probes and Reflection Probes
Enhancing your scenes with post-processing effects
Summary
9
Playing with Physics and Fire
Playing with Physics and Fire
Technical requirements
Understanding Unity physics
Creating bouncy balls
Managing the GameObject life cycle
Building a headshot game
Building a Paddleball game
Building a shooter ball game
Juicing the scene
Summary
10
Exploring Interactive Spaces
Exploring Interactive Spaces
Technical requirements
Using ProBuilder and ProGrids
Constructing the art gallery building
Assembling the scene
Creating the artwork rig
Adding pictures to the gallery
Managing art info data
Displaying the art info
Adjusting for image aspect ratio
Teleporting around the gallery
Summary
11
Using All 360 Degrees
Using All 360 Degrees
Technical requirements
Exploring 360-degree media
Having fun with photo globes
Viewing 360-degree photos
Playing 360-degree videos
Using Unity skyboxes
Capturing 360-degrees in Unity
Summary
12
Animation and VR Storytelling
Animation and VR Storytelling
Technical requirements
Composing our story
Timelines and Audio tracks
Using a Timeline to activate objects
Recording an Animation Track
Using the Animation editor
Animating other properties
Using Animation clips
Using Animator Controllers
Making the story interactive
Summary
13
Optimizing for Performance and Comfort
Optimizing for Performance and Comfort
Technical requirements
Using the Unity Profiler and Stats windows
Optimizing your art
Optimizing your scene with static objects
Optimizing the rendering pipeline
Optimizing your code
Runtime performance and debugging
Summary
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
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Constructing the art gallery building

For this project, we are first going to construct an art gallery building to display artwork and provide a space for the user to interact. If you'd like to skip this topic, you can use the prebuilt GalleryBuilding.obj file included with the downloadable files for this project. If you'd like to make the building from scratch using ProBuilder, continue with this section.

In previous editions of this book, we used the free and open source Blender software (https://www.blender.org/) to construct the art gallery building. Since then, Unity acquired ProBuilder, and these tools are now directly integrated with the Unity Editor. While not as robust as Blender, ProBuilder provides the tools we need for this project.

To begin, I've drawn a simple floor plan on an 11" x 8.5" piece of graph paper and scanned with a desktop scanner (gallery-floorplan.png). Each square of the graph paper is a one-foot scale. It...

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