ASSIGNMENT: Create a simple experimental scene in Augmented Reality that brings an animation into the real world using Unity.
PARTNER: When we were given this assignment our teacher strongly encouraged us to work with a partner because it would be easier to distribute the workload. It seemed like it would be wise to follow that advice so I picked Jake Sherwood as my partner because I didn't have him in any other class and thought it would be great to work together. We were both new to Unity so we were going to learn together.
RESTRICTIONS: As with every project there were some obstacles and limitations that slowed our progress, time being the most notable one. Between all our finals, family and work obligations, and a missed class on my part it seemed that we were working against the current on this project.
IDEA: Jake had a very cute idea of animating a character from his son's favorite book. The name of the character is Goldbug, and he is this yellow bug that hides in every image of the book so kids can find him. I thought the idea was very nice and it would be something that he could use during story time with his son.
PROCESS: Jake and I started working separately on the project because we had a tough time figuring out when to meet between our other obligations. We talked about the idea and Jake downloaded and animated our goldbug as well as created a plane-finder version of the character. My job was to have it appear and disappear with different images while animated.
The first thing I did to start this project was watch and follow ALL the tutorials that were available in the syllabus including the roll-a-ball one. This helped a lot to catch up with the missed class and the information I needed to continue the project.
After that Jake transferred his file to me so I could use as a starting point for my half of the project. However, when I opened the file on my finder I couldn't make heads or tails of the large quantity of folders and subfolders in it. I decided to go ahead and open the main file in Unity and work with that. The first thing I noticed was that Goldbug was missing an arm and a leg and all its color. Also, the animation didn't work even after I followed all the steps in the recorded tutorial our teacher made for us.
I decided to work with the static Goldbug in the meantime and add the image targets first. This only worked partially because even though I got Goldbug to appear with the images I couldn't make him go away once created. I tried different ways to troubleshoot this like starting a new scene from scratch and even a new project. In the end it was no use.
Eventually I decided to follow each tutorial again with my new assets (not using anything from Jake's files except the 3D character) I took a static Goldbug and animated it on Mixamo and re-downloaded it. I had a little obstacle when Vuforia gave me this error:
It wouldn't download any database because it said it was taking too long. But I eventually restarted my computer and it allowed me.
Followed each step for the Image Target. Eventually I got a Goldbug that worked with my first target and also moved. It also went away when the image was no longer being tracked.
Having gotten that I tried adding a second image target. I also tried adding a different character that came up with a different image like our teacher suggested. but for some reason this new character wouldn't move.
I had learned enough of the process by repeating the tutorials several times that I managed to troubleshoot this:
I eventually ended up with three animations (two with one character in different directions and one with a different character) they all work with their respective images and disappear when the image is no longer being tracked.
I'm not sure that I enjoyed the process of making this project. I felt I was rushing myself learning the new program and the new concepts. If it were up to me this would be a class on its own and not part of the animation one. I found it frustrating that the software is a little strange and makes it hard for people to share files and work remotely with each other. But hey, its free software right? Having learned that I'm not sure that working with a partner in the end was the best idea. We both ended up doing the same things on our own to make the project work. However, it might have been for the best because I ended up knowing every aspect of the process well as opposed to just part of it.
I think this time I enjoyed the reading and its presented concept of Mirrorworld much more than the project. In my opinion Mirrorworld has many good applications that can create wonderful products but, like many things that are unexplored, its potential to do wrong or evil is very great as well. This makes it all the more urgent to have lawmakers in the tech industry in order to regulate the applications of such a wealth of data that such a thing could produce.
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