Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

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.

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

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

How virtual reality works

Technical skills that are important to VR

What this book covers

Free Chapter

Understanding Unity, Content, and Scale

Understanding Unity, Content, and Scale

Technical requirements

Installing Unity

Getting started with Unity

Creating a simple diorama

Importing content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Canvasing the World Space UI

In the previous chapter, we discovered how to interact with game objects in the world space scene. Not only can these objects be balls and toys or tools and weapons, but they can also be buttons you interact with and other graphical user interface (GUI)—or just UI—widgets. Furthermore, Unity includes UI canvas components and an event system for building menus and other UIs.

UI usually refers to onscreen, two-dimensional graphics, which overlay the main gameplay and present information to the user with status messages, gauges, and input controls, such as menus, buttons, sliders, and so on. In Unity, UI elements always reside on a canvas. The Unity manual describes the Canvas component as follows:

The Canvas component represents the abstract space in which the UI is laid out and rendered. All UI elements must be children of a GameObject that has a Canvas component attached...