VR Workshop

A VR workshop organized for the Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong.

Abstract

In the begining, we will have a very brief introduction of virtual reality and what we did (slides).

Afterwards, you will have hands on experience in creating VR applications using different tools. You will create an interior enviroment (read: a small room) twice, first using Unity, and then using A-Frame.

Firstly, you will model the room and furnitures with Sweet Home 3D.

Secondly, you will turn the room model into a desktop application using Unity. The resulting application can be viewed on desktop. We will also demostrate what is needed to be done to make it runs in HTC Vive, though due to time and hardware limitation, you will only develop a non-VR version.

Finally, you will create a WebVR web page to display the room model using A-Frame. The resulting page can be visited on desktop browsers in 3D, and, on mobile browsers in VR with the help of Google Cardboard.

Preparation

Download and install the softwares as follows:

• Unity personal edition, version 5.5.x or up.

  • During installation, select 64-bit (32-bit is also fine), choose components including "Unity 5.5.x", "Documentation", "Standard Assets".

  • We don't plan to build native Android / iOS apps, so leave those components as unchecked.

• Sweet Home 3D free edition available at SourceForge.net, version 5.4 or up

Procedures

1. Interior 3D modeling

1.1 Open up

Open Sweet Home 3D and following the steps below:

1.2 Create a Room

From the toolbar on the top, click the “Create room” button to create the floor of the room you want to create. Then, click the “Create wall” button and build walls around the floor.

1.3 Set textures for the walls, floor, and ceilings

Double click on the floor -> check "Display Ceilings" -> choose "Texture" for the radio buttons of floor, ceilings, and walls. Click the square box for choosing the texture you want.

1.4 Design your room

Choose different furnitures, doors, and windows you want from the left menu and drag it to your room. Double click the items and choose the texture or color you want.

1.5 Extra sources

For searching texture online, you can use the ones suggested by Sweet Home 3D (http://www.sweethome3d.com/importTextures.jsp). Alternatively, you could search the type of texture on Google with the word “seamless”. For example, if you want to search for leather, you could input “leather seamless” in the search bar. Note that you should look for texture images in square (1:1 aspect ratio).

For extra furniture models, Sweet Home 3D also suggested some sources in http://www.sweethome3d.com/zh-tw/importModels.jsp. Besides, you could search free 3D interior models which is in the fomat of .OBJ/.KMZ/.3DS/.DAE. Download the models and import them to Sweet Home 3D by clicking Furnitures -> Choose Models.

1.6 Export models

"3D view" -> "Export to OBJ format", which will export everything to a folder.

2. Unity application development

2.1 Get a Unity account

Head to https://id.unity.com/en/conversations/25b5ab91-6398-4ddc-b405-d7147cde2783003f and create your unity account. Or you may click signup when open up Unity. Then Signin to Unity.

2.3 Open a Project

Open a new project, give it a name and click Create Projects.

Window -> layout -> 4 split (For comfort display only)

Drag all the files exported from Sweet Home 3D to the Hierarchy in Unity

2.4 Lighting

set lighting (Window -> lighting)

Drag Directional light to the source in lighting

Unchecked baked GI

Set Window Glass Materials -> Rendering mode to “Transparent” -> Metallic to 0.8 -> Smoothness to 1 -> Allbedo Alpha around 50%

Add area light for windows

2.5 Components/Effects/Camera Settings

Set collider -> right click in projects -> 3D objects -> Cube -> resizes the size of the cube to the same as the wall

Download “Cinematic effects” from Asset Store -> Click download -> Click import

Delete Main Camera in project

Assets -> import package -> Character

Drag FPSController to Hierarchy

Set character collider -> set Radius and Height to 10

Set walk speed to 300, Stick to ground force to 0, gravity multiplier to 0

Field of view -> ~43, Near -> 10

Check HDR under FPS Controller

Add component under the FPS Controller-> search tone mapping, set color, set exposure

Add component under the FPS Controller -> search anti-aliasing

Set materials (For fine tune)

2.6 Save Scene

Create a "Scene" folder under Hierarchy

File -> Save Scene -> save your scene to scene folder and name it.

2.7 Project setting and build setting

Edit-> project setting-> player ->Rendering Path chooses “Deferred” -> color space choose “Linear”

File-> Build setting -> Architecture ->x86_64-> Build

2.8 For HTC vive VR Version

Download “SteamVR” from Asset Store->Click download-> Click import

From CameraRig under prefab folder drag to the scene and replace the FPS Controller.

Edit-> project setting->player ->Rendering Path chooses “Forward”

3. WebVR application development

3.1 Get a Github account

Head to https://github.com/, sign up for a free account. It is for hosting the web page we're going to create, such we will have a link for viewing that page and sharing it to friends.

3.2 Create a Github repository

Click the + button at the top-right corner to create a new repository. Give it a name (e.g. vr-room), check the box labeled "Initialize this repository with a README", click "Create repository".

In the repository page, select the "settings" tab. Scroll down and find the "GitHub Pages" section. In the "Source" dropdown menu, select "master branch" and click "Save". The "GitHub Pages" section should now display something like Your site is ready to be published at https://andyli.github.io/vr-room/..

3.3 Get a Cloud9 account

Create a Cloud9 account. It is an online development platform that includes an editor as well as other development tools (e.g. git).

Note that creating a normal account requires a credit card (no charge, just for varification). We have paid for an education plan, such that via our invitation, you can create an account without providing credit card detail. To get an invitation, send a message to our workshop chatroom providing your email address.

3.4 Create a Cloud9 workspace

Create a new workspace. Make sure:

• In the "Team" dropdown menu, select "Don't set a team for this workspace". It is because if you choose our "VR Workshop" team, the workspace could be automatically removed when we terminate our education plan. You should keep your work :)

• In "Clone from Git or Mercurial URL", enter the GitHub repository url you've just created (e.g. https://github.com/andyli/vr-room).

• Choose the HTML5 template.

3.5 Create a WebVR web page

Open the workspace you have just created. In the top menu, select "File" -> "New From Template" -> "HTML file". Save it as "index.html" by selecting "File" -> "Save".

Within <head>...</head>, add <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/0.5.0/aframe.min.js"></script>.

Within <body>...</body>, add the code as follows:

<a-scene>
    <a-sphere position="0 1.25 -5" radius="1.25" color="#EF2D5E"></a-sphere>
    <a-box position="-1 0.5 -3" rotation="0 45 0" width="1" height="1" depth="1" color="#4CC3D9"></a-box>
    <a-cylinder position="1 0.75 -3" radius="0.5" height="1.5" color="#FFC65D"></a-cylinder>
    <a-plane position="0 0 -4" rotation="-90 0 0" width="4" height="4" color="#7BC8A4"></a-plane>
    <a-sky color="#ECECEC"></a-sky>
</a-scene>

You can now preview the web page by selecting "Preview" -> "Live Preview File (index.html)". You may use the A-Frame Inspector (Ctrl+Alt+i) to navigate and play with different settings.

3.6 Import the interior model

First of all, convert the .obj file exported from Sweet Home 3D to another format (.dae), because A-Frame does not fully support the .obj file exported by Sweet Home 3D. To do so, use a command line program, assimp.

Windows users:

Download our precompiled .exe file at assimp_3.3.1+d402825_win32.zip, extract it next to the .obj file. Open a command prompt window by entering cmd in the file explorer location bar. Input the command as follows:

"assimp_3.3.1+d402825_win32\assimp.exe" export interior.obj interior.dae --config=full

Remember to replace interior.obj with the file name of your model.

Mac users:

Open "Terminal" (in "Applications" -> "Utilities"). Install homebrew, then brew install assimp --HEAD (assimp 3.3.1 is buggy, so we need --HEAD). Drag the folder containing your files to the Terminal Dock icon at the bottom. Input the command as follows:

assimp export interior.obj interior.dae --config=full

Remember to replace interior.obj with the file name of your model.

Then, upload the .dae file and the texture images (*.jpeg) by "File" -> "Upload Local Files...", or simply drag-and-drop the files from file explorer to the Cloud9 workspace file panel.

Finally, replace the primitive shapes to our room model by using the <a-collada-model> entity. You probably want to set scale="0.01 0.01 0.01".

3.7 Publish the web page

In the bottom "bash" termainal panel, input the commands as follows:

git add --all
git commit -m "update web site"
git push

The files in the Cloud9 workspace will be synchronized to your GitHub repository. You can now use the GitHub Pages link created in the earlier step to view the web page.