2021 | Dencho

XR Player Controller [05]

Sat, 15 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Refining one of the first Prototypes to exist (in 2020) to contain a full body avatar and finger tracking.

Devices tested:

Oculus Quest 1/2
Pico 2/3

Technologies used:

VRoid SDK (Avatars)
ReadyPlayerMe SDK (Avatars)
OculusVR SDK
UnityXR SDK
PicoVR SDK

First thing I did this round, was fail hard at using Mechanim Animator to handle my Hand Posing. Turns out its just easier and more performant to man handle hand posing with pure C#.

Semi working legs. Check.

You know I had to make sure everything worked with physics. Just incase.

Skeletal Mesh Orientation Mismatch (S.M.O.M.)

S.M.O.M. happens when one mesh skeletal bone structure has incompatible orientations with another set of bones, leading to misalignment when trying to animate or manipulate them consistently.

You can expect to run into SMOM when using ReadyPlayerMe avatars for a full body rig.

However, SMOM is easily defeated with the use of my custom Hand Mapper.

The results, a full body XR controller that dynamically switches between hand and controller tracking. Not something you see often in 2021.

And a simple voice plugin test to move the avatars facial blendshapes.

During development, this gave me nightmares.

AI Mob Controller [05]

Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This experiments goal was to iterate on my previous AI Controllers and refine the locomotion and procedural animations.

I spent a good amount of focus on the making sure procedural animations work with physics.

The result allowed me to play an animation, and have physics forces affect it in a nice good lerpy way.

Next I applied the same system to another nonstandard skeleton.

Dynamic Collider System

Wed, 05 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Colliders that transform with Physics.

The goal of this system was to make hit events more generous relative to the movement of the rigidbody attached to the HurtBox.

To start I made some gizmos that show the thresholds of the dynamic settings you set in the component.

This basically works as a Melee auto aim for a XR perspective. If the player thrusts a knife forward sometime VR depth can take getting used to, this makes it easier for players to hit something that might be a few inches father then perceived.

It actually works out pretty well, and I wrote it to be well performant. Just attach to a meshs child collider (box type) that has a rigidbody.

XR Bridge System

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of this experiment was to create a procedural dynamic map out of bridges and hub nodes of my own design.

One problem I encountered was during the Spawning/Despawning of the bridges, framerate would drop on the Quest1 due to performance issues with colliders moving over time. This meant I could only make bridges so long before frames would skip.

It worked well in theory but, in practice it's not that feasible on a low powered device like the Quest1.

XR Magic System

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted a modular magic system that works with physics based grabbables.

So I made one, it has public methods that allow the user (mob or player) to charge mana into the magic spell that is being cast at the time of input.

Once I got spawning pretty good, I added Telekinesis control, after a grabbable is spawned it will track the users appendage until mana is no longer being channeled into the spell.

I have no idea why I started making this, it just seemed fun. I hope to iterate upon it in the future.

AI Mob Controller [04]

Sat, 10 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This experiments goal was to iterate on my previous AI Controllers and refine the combat system.

I worked more on the combat skill pathing. It is now more dynamic while still using a physics PID controller to move the rigidbody via forces in additive manner.

Both of these mobs use the same combat system, but one is tweaked to have a shorter travel path, with drag/angulardrag over time (set by a curve and multiplier) which allows me to create something like a bulletTime attack but in realtime.

This kind of system allows other physics objects to alter the pathing trajectory of the mob even while the skill is running.

Even works with drone like locomotion.

Discord RPC

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Custom Discord Plugin for Unity.

A client requested integration with the Discord API, at the time there was no official Discord SDK in C#, I endedup using a Discord API C# wrapper I found on GitHub.

Its just a simple plugin you can import, that hooks into a running discord client and shows a custom activity based on a scriptableObject config you can setup. It works in the Editor and during runtime and can be extended on to use analytical funnels.

Fun With Gizmos And Math

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I create alot of small gizmos extensions, some of which for no reason and for fun.

This was for debugging AI and Player Input Intent direction and overlaying angle thresholds to visualize the logic state during runtime.

Look familiar?

VFX Practice [06]

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

More VFX practice so that I might one day be able to make a decent looking kamehameha.

I made a custom Particle Effector that works with VFXGraph to control where the particles go in realtime.

And a laser, cause why not?

AI Mob Controller [03]

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This experiments goal was to iterate on my previous AI Controllers and refine the spawning and path finding algorithms.

The models were provided by free assets on the Unity Asset Store.

Created a Waypoint system that only allows one mob at a time to navigate to the point, the mobs automatically seek out point in a waypoint path that doesn't have its source/target points queued by another mob.

Testing out Ragdolling system for a nonstandart mesh rig.

A Combat system that animated the Rigidbody with a Physics PID Controller to traverse a dynamic generated path, with adjustable curves/properties to change up how it ride the attack path.

A* Map System

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Contracted to make a Custom A* Map System.

The client requested a Custom Hex Tile Map System that had Methods to calculate the best path to take. It needed to be modular and flexible with any map size, and calculate pathing using an asynchronous pattern.

The A* Algorithm

The A* (pronounced “A-star”) algorithm is a powerful pathfinding technique used in various fields of computer science. It offers completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency.

A* is a graph traversal and pathfinding algorithm.
Given a weighted graph, a source node, and a goal node, A* finds the shortest path (with respect to the given weights) from the source to the goal.
It evaluates points using a heuristic value (also known as the H score), which estimates the distance from a node to the goal.
A* combines both the movement cost (from the current point to its neighbors) and the heuristic value to guide its search.

It even came with a Custom Editor Tool I made to help simulate the pathing in and outside of PlayMode.

AI Mob Controller [02]

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This experiment is mainly focused on ground based AI designed to work with a XR Player Controller.

First I wrote my own PID controller to control a Rigidbody via physics to match a point in world space with gravity accounted for.

Combat Testing. Just going to throw a rock at it.

Stress-testing spawn mechanics.

Inverse Kinematic Vending Machine

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Contracted to make a "Smart" Vending Machine feature designed to work with VR Players.

NDA Prevents me from showing the UI or final outcome of the feature.

The goal was to create a Vending Machine that had a would automatically adjust to the VR Players Height via a Robot Arm controlled by Inverse Kinematics.

The teams technical artist provided the Vending Machine mesh with armature for the screens housing. The first step was connect the bones to a simple Inverse Kinematic script.

Next I see how it targets the Players Head transform.

With a bit of some C# magic, the Arm for the screen will extend out to any nearby Players Head transform. When the target is out of range for x+ seconds, the screen will retract back into the machine.