Author: Ling Mei

Overview: 

A Unity tutorial that I have decided to pick up upon is 2D animation. Out of all the tutorials I looked into, this stands out to me because I have done animation before but they were all really based on manually editing. So when I found this Unity tutorial, I wanted to see if this was another convenient way of animating. Other reasons will be because I want to improve on my drawing skills and wanting to grasp a little bit more understanding of animation. 

Context:

Throughout the process of this tutorial, I first had to draw a few characters with separate body parts, different layers, and try my best to make it look normal and good. I’m not the best artist but so my aim was towards it looking decent. After I made my first character, I hopped on Unity and started learning how to 2D animate.

I was stumped in the beginning as I have no boundaries, I was just putting my character in a blank space/skybox. So I decided to have a little bit more fun in making a little stage with some 3D assets being imported in. After making the room, it felt more like it. I had a space to work on and boundaries for me to know what my character is there for. 

Then I finally started putting my character in the scene and I learnt a few tricks like using the sprite editor for 2D animations, how to change the pivot points of each part of the body, and keyframing my character. 

After successfully animating my first character, I continued on to adding my second character with a little bit more body parts and I may have started to mess up some coloring & lining on the way so it may be pretty noticeable in some areas in the Unity recording video.

Goal: 

In conclusion, is animating in unity vs animating in editing software like Photoshop, krita, etc much easier? My answer would be yes for me, since I have limited experience in only animating in Krita & photoshop. I say that it was definitely more enjoyable being able to make a 3D room & animating 2D in the same space. It was much quicker and fun. When I first started animating in Krita I didn’t follow a tutorial or anything so that may be one reason why I find this much convenient. 

Timeline: 

April 26 – April 28th: Project given & Found the tutorial 

May 3rd – May 6th: Completed the tutorial & documentation.

May 10th – May 12th: Presentation days

Resources: The 2D Unity Animation tutorial I followed.

Unity recording video: Click here

Week 11 we worked on a new Unity project with Agora.

Link to Agora SDK tutorial: Click here

First we created an account so we can obtain the App ID.

Next we went into the Unity project and we imported Agora video SDK from the package manager. We experimented around with the size and the scripts so it would work.

Advice for me: Remember to not just copy and paste the code, make sure to leave the mono-behavior public class in. Also, the Agora tutorial doesn’t mention this, but we have to add (using UnityEngine.UI;
using agora_gaming_rtc;) these 2 classes in the scripts. Add in the public class for the Join & Leave button so I can access them in the inspector.

Here is the end result of the Agora tutorial:

During Week 10, we learn how to correspond audio with particle systems. We use Audio Injector w/ scripts (remember to unmute), Audio source(loop), Audio Reaktor w/ script, and of course particle system w/ Particle system gear script.

Here’s a short 20-30 second video of the Reaktion Demo: Click here to watch the video

During week 7, we have been given the museum assignment to chose a room and try to replicated it on Unity. We were working in a team of 2 and my partner is Justin. We chose the room of The halls of Reptiles and Amphibians to replicate on Unity.

Here’s the link to the room: The halls of Reptiles and Amphibians

We split up the work after we came back from spring break and my role is to make the level – the building design/outline.

Here’s the link to the rough sketch of the room before I started making it on Unity: Rough sketch

Here’s a video of the end of the week level product: Unity video

Things I could improve is that I could’ve added post-processing and adding floor texture material in the room. I will definitely add onto this project more in the future even after presentation day. If I do continue on this project, I will update it on Open lab to see future adjustment.

Week 6 we talked about AR & VR foundation. I’ve decided to experiment around with AR foundation in Unity. Here’s the mini tutorial for my future self.

AR foundation tutorial:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aLICi_elSM6PuVAUrx_e592rw0ZURzKv/view?usp=sharing

Things to mention (forgot to mention in the video)

• Within the AR session origin, I added the component of AR image tracking before adding the library & 3D object.

Read & Respond:

Today’s reading is A Manifesto for cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s by Donna Haraway. This reading was about a cyborg that is a hybrid of a machine and a sociable creature. It could be a animal/human. The cyborg is classify as a fiction that represents struggle over life & death. The reason why it struggle so much is because it’s being rejected by many that can’t accept something different than what they usually see. There is a category for everything and the cyborg a hybrid does not belong in any category. This story, the cyborg is to persuade feminist to move on and that categories are not needed to separate things.

In my 2120 project, today in Unity I added a few scripts that assigned a different material to my rocks.

Here is my flowchart:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/lingwu-eportfolio/files/2021/03/unityFlowChart.jpg

Here is a unity recording of the scripting changes:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t2k_7L-EPgtcF1B7bUrwE89bGdXg7tWL/view?usp=sharing

In today’s class, the exercise was to map out what I do daily. Though I don’t water my plant daily, it’s mostly a weekly/bi-weekly activity I do. This is a rough sketch & I had a many more ideas.

Before I started working on my flowchart, this is what I’ve typed out.

Watering my plant (How I water plant)

• Prepare the mixture
  • Depending on what type of mixture I use I will either use my kelp supplement or the acid-feeding water sollution for my plant
  • Both have the same steps, 2 teaspoons and 1 bottle of water.
• Bring the pot to the bathroom
• Slowly pour the water mixture into the pot
  • I prefer to start from the outside towards the inside
• Do not overflow the water and wait until most of the water seeps into the soil
• I have a tray for the pot so when the water comes out through the drainage the tray will catch the water.
• Dump out the water and water the pot again until the bottle is empty
• Once all water has been flush out, bring it back into the original spot near the window.

Extras step if I feel like it would be to wipe the leaves

• After watering the plant, I would get a microfabric cloth and wet it with warm water.
• Then I will carefully wipe the leaves down from the stem towards the leaves.
• Does the same process to the rest of the leaves top & bottom.

Another step I would do:

• Bring it back to the original window spot
• Spray around the plant with my water spray to increase the humidity

If I had more time, I may have map out most of the ideas I first typed out but a simple flowchart will be fine for now.

Week 3 worked on a terrain where I added rocks, grass, post process, player controls, and unity recording.

The idea was to have a rock and a single tree from a friend of mine as a joke. I was like sure, I will implement that idea in and play around with it.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with the scenes & adding layers of things. It took me a good 8 hours or more making this project. I was watching Professor’s Alecz video and following it step by step. Most of the time I had to pause & make sure I did it correctly or he went just a little bit too fast. I probably could have spent lesser time to do this project because I had distractions at home. Thought those distractions where the motivations I needed to start the project & continue on. It’s easy to get lost in the moment when working on projects but it’s also the start we have to take that takes a while.

The problem I had with unity was my terrain kept clipping whenever I zoomed into the terrain but that was fixed by changing my layout to 2 by 3. Another problem was I couldn’t install the unity recorder but that was because I didn’t update my unity to the latest version. Lastly, I couldn’t figure out how to make the tree leaves flow with the wind unlike the grass on the ground.

In the end, I made a terrain I’m pretty happy with and I’m looking forward to scripting next week.

Video of my terrain(video was too big to import as media here): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BhgjdQRTIWm585FpcpysB2GDl_9kImoV/view?usp=sharing

Here’s a link to a screenshot to the unity layout 2 by 3 in unity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZHZd-kh_4nyfA8ML0Dk0SLsVUMtQXDH1/view?usp=sharing