Feb 18, 2018 - Substance Painter, VR Lightsaber, Sprint Vector

Substance Painter and VR Lightsaber Visuals

It's been a long couple weeks for me getting over a sinus infection and learning Substance Painter. I took an introductory tutorial and here are the final results. I'm not in love with the results but I basically understand how to use the tools so I'm excited to start building assets and painting textures. The hard part is uv mapping. I think I'll look into wings3d (free!) and 3dcoat ($$).

Substance Painter tutorial results:

VR Lightsaber

After finishing up with the Painter tutorial I quickly updated the lightsaber hilt in my vr lightsaber game. It's nothing fancy, just enough to test the shaders in Unity.

I also slapped some basic tileable metal materials on the ground plane and some of the "cuttable" objects. This is the video I posted yesterday for "Screenshot Saturaday":

So, that covers the basic visuals but under the hood I most definitely experimented a lot to make the saber more satisfying to slash around. Here are a few things I tweaked off the top of my head:

1- When the blade passes through an object but doesn't cut it, the object still reacts as if it were pushed. Also, after a successful cut there's also more movement so it feels less like cutting through butter. I still think things feel too light. I think it's because I'm adding velocity instead of applying force. I'll look into that...

2- The hot glowy metal shader received some major improvements starting with the variation across the surface which is a basic sine wave diagonally across the uv coordinate space. I also tweaked the timing of the hue shift and dimming. I think it's in a really good place right now. I'd still like more of a texture across the cut surface and something around the edges of each cut.

3- Reflections: I'm playing around with reflection probes. I still need to add some more or move some around but I'm pretty satisfied with the current setup.  The most important thing that I figured out was parenting a reflection probe to the saber hilt so that it always picks up an accurate reflection.

4- Sparks flash - I've added a point light with a lens flare to the spark object so it flashes. I think this adds a lot to the effect.

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What I'm Playing

Sprint Vector

I've been playing Sprint Vector which is the closest thing to a real cardio workout that I've experienced in VR, so if you don't like sweating you probably shouldn't get it ;)

Masterpiece VR

I'm also looking into masterpieceVR. My first impression is that it is similar to Oculus Medium without cool sound effects. But what I'm really interested in is testing the multiplayer capabilities. Also, the trailer seems to demonstrate a way to animate your creations so I'll need to test that ASAP.

I'm also currently trying to figure out a materials/texture workflow.  I had good luck with materials that don't have much detail and therefore don't require seamless uv mapping, but I think I need to find a good tool for uvs which I mentioned briefly above. I already know 3dcoat would work for me, but I'm not thrilled about the price tag so I'm looking at other options. Wings3d seems to be a popular choice.

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What I'm Watching

Goro Fujita

Speaking of animating in VR... I've been enjoying Goro Fujita's daily posts on instagram. Lately he's showing off the animation capabilities of Oculus Quill. Really amazing stuff!

Altered Carbon:

I watched this new-ish sci-fi show, Altered Carbon, on Netflix.  It has a really interesting high concept of people never dying because they have their "self" digitized so they can be transferred from body to body. They also have an interesting take on Virtual Reality. But it does have quite a few flaws that took me out of the story several times per episode ;) You really have to just go along for the ride and it's a lot of fun.  It's very violent and bloody and there's a ton of nudity.