Master's Thesis Blog

- Oscar Friberg -

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Bringing it all Together

The demo is finally basically done. Some small adjustments (such as ramping up the dirt/graffiti some more) are needed, but after that it should be ready to use for testing. Probably the trees shouldn't be placed in such a way that it hits you in your delicate virtual face - and virtual feelings - as well. The placement of the graffiti textures needs to be adjusted also, which is kind of a quick thing to fix by adjusting the UVs in Blender and re-importing the buildings. All in all, these adjustments probably won't take more than half an hour.

The player camera moves in a scripted way, and when the VR-camera is used instead of a regular camera, the player will be able to look around - but not control movements.



Scripted Walkthrough





Connecting the UI to the Other Scripts

With the (simple) UI done, the next step was to make it communicate with the other scripts. The scripts hade to be re-written and optimized somewhat, but now works as expected.

As this is a separate scene for testing, the next step is to bring this into the main scene.



UI

In a Simplified Test Scene




Creating a Navigation System

As the walkthrough in the test will only be about 10 seconds with each environment setting - and to decrease the chance that the user's perception will be changed due to movement - a navigation setting will be implemented. The user will still be able to look around using a VR headset, but the movement itself will be scripted.



Navigation System

First Draft




Creating a UI

As most of the pieces are coming together, it was time to start making a user interface. Using this, the values set in the parameters will be sent to the different scripts when pressing "Generate" and the changes will take effect in the Unity scene.



UI Interface

Not exactly pretty, but it works




Putting Stuff Together

With the modelling finally done, it was time to set up the scene in Unity. Everything in the project has been modelled in Blender, except for the trees and skybox which were downloaded from the Unity Asset Store.



Scene set up in Unity

View from the player camera




Adding "props" to the scene

To make the scene less bleak and make it what probably would be expected from a user, typical street stuff such as light-posts, trashcans and benches where added to the scene.



Wood and Rock

For Window Panels and Exterior Decor




The Joy of Editor Scripts

Having made an Editor script that communicates with the texturing scripts, it's possible to execute functions without actually having to press play and quit in order to see the differences made.



Public Variables in Script

Function Call Buttons at the Bottom




Adding Dirt Procedurally

After having wached a Blender-specific tutorial on adding dirt and grunge, where he used an occlusion map to specify where the dirt should be added, I tried to apply this to my project in Unity. Since the occlusion maps where pretty washed out, I made a script that could increase the contrast and make use of thresholding to mark where the dirt should be added.
With now having both the perlin noise script, and the occlusion script done, I combined them to make the adding of dirt more realistic than just adding the perlin noise by itself. The results can be seen below.



Wood and Rock

For Window Panels and Exterior Decor


Original occlusion map to the left and with contrast/threshold-script to the right (green used to make it easier for testing).



Original diffuse/color texture to the left, and with just the contrasted/thresholded image added to the right.



Perlin noise overlayed to the right, and with perlin noise/contrasted occlusion map to the right (rather small amounts of dirt applied in this picture, could be brought up more with changes to the perlin noise map).




Further Texturing

The concrete and orange stucco textures with including normal and specular maps.



Concrete and Orange Stucco Textures

For building exterior




Bump Mapping Textures

With textures done, they were brought into the software CrazyBump which automatically generate normal, specular and occlusion maps from the imported texture.



Wood and Rock

For Window Panels and Exterior Decor

  • Wood Texture with Normal Map
  • (Switching between with and without diffuse texture)
  • Rock Texture Cycling using:
  • Normal Map
  • Normal Map + Diffuse Texture
  • Normal Map + Diffuse Texture + Specular Map



    • Wall Texture

    Following a Youtube-tutorial on creating concrete, Photoshop was used to create a tileable wall texture , using noise, cloud and lighting effects.



    Creating Wall Texture

    Color Sampled from Google Earth Image



    The results are hardly perfect. But it's difficult to say how will look when applied to the Blender model in Unity. If it doesn't look realistic a photo from CGTextures.com will probably be used.






    Rock Texture

    Created in Photoshop...



    Rock Texture Creation

    Photoshop

  • Cloud Filter
  • Another Cloud in Alpha Channel
  • Layers Combined



  • Lighting Effects
  • Final Image
  • Higher Contrast for Testing





    • Procedural Dirt

    The textiest text bla bla...



    Perlin Noise

    Darkness Increased for Blacks




    Procedural Dirt

    Textier text bla bla...



    Perlin Noise

    White Parts Thresholded





    Procedural Dirt

    Text bla bla...



    Perlin Noise

    Alpha Channel Fading Along Y-axis




    Procedural Dirt

    Perlin noise text



    Perlin Noise

    Made in Unity


  • Perlin noise texture created through scripting in Unity
  • Function that's fading out the texture along the Y-axis



    • Texturing

    After having the Stockholm building modellig done in Blender (pre-texturing) with the right scaling, rotations, positions and origins properly set so that they can be scaled correctly in Unity depending on user input, the model was brought into Unity. The first test can be seen below.



    Texturing

    Testing with Dirt


  • Simple dirt texture made in Photoshop to the left (sponge brushes).
  • Dirt and brick texture brought into Unity.
  • Top left: simple brick texture
  • Top right: dirt texture from Photoshop
  • Bottom left: dirt added as a texture in front of the brick texture
  • Bottom right: dirt and brick texture blended, including normal map for the bricks



    • Building Assembly - Unity

    After having the Stockholm building modellig done in Blender (pre-texturing) with the right scaling, rotations, positions and origins properly set so that they can be scaled correctly in Unity depending on user input, the model was brought into Unity. The first test can be seen below.

    Stockholm Building

    Blender Modelled

    After having made the GIF I realized that the origins for the top part was calculated taking the roof panels into account which is why the right most part is incorrectly scaled. This almost looks like shadows, but is actually a hole in the geometry. This is due to the roof panels are "hanging out" a bit from the building facade. The roof panels are now separated and parented - just like windows, chimneys, doors and pillars - and scales correctly now.



    Creating Geometry











    Importing a Google Earth/3D Warehouse Block







    Bringing Model into Unity



    Generic Building

    Asset Store


    .asdf...





    Breaking Down an Asset Store Building Model







    Scripting in Unity





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