I teach art history at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Since much of what I teach is 3D (buildings, mural paintings), it helps to have web-accessible 3D models that my students can explore in or out of class. I started making these years ago with Adobe Atmosphere. When that died I moved on to Blink 3D. Now that Blink 3D has also failed to thrive, I have turned to Unity 3D. What I’m showing you below are 3D environments (mostly single rooms or buildngs – not large “worlds”) that I made for Blink, and have now converted to Unity. It all seems to be working well so far. As I learn Unity better, the results should improve.
The link below will take you to a “portal plaza” which contains links that will take you to the other environments. These are all still works in progress. I am aware of various problems, and will fix them when I can, but if you have suggestions about ways they could be improved in Unity, please let me know.
Excellent stuff Glenn! We are quite keen on promoting non-game usage of Unity more and more in the coming months/year and I’m glad to read about your efforts. Atmosphere to Blink to Unity, like most folks you’ve tried a few things before getting here. Settle in and keep at it, then look for more noise from us about efforts like yours as the year rolls on.
Very interesting idea you have there. About some ways to improve. It would be cool if there was a way back to original world after i enter one of those portals.
Also at first i thought they were just pictures on the wall. Reading the description i realized that you can walk into them. I suggest you to add some kind of particle system or other effect that gives a viewer an idea that he can walk into it. You can try to simulate and effect like in game Portal where you can see the other side. A user called Nathan has done similar thing in unity before http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=35552&highlight=portal
When building a web you could make it streamed version. So when the main level loads other portal worlds will load in background. So when user goes another world he does not have to wait for another level to load.
I agree. The problem is that people could be coming to those various environments from places other than the Portal Plaza. I suppose I could put a link in them so that no matter where they come from, they could jump to the Portal Plaza. I’m not sure my scripting abilities are good enough to allow me to create a portal that would send visitors back to site from which they came, wherever that might have been.
Yes. I think I should do that. I have tried a few things, but haven’t found a method that I like yet. I’ll keep working on it. I think I should probably also put a panel of instructions inside the 3D world, instead of expecting people to read instructions on the web page.
I will have to learn how to do that in Unity. I was able to do it in Blink, and created a couple of extensive worlds (a monastery, a Roman city) in which various parts loaded in the background and only appeared when the user approached close enough to see them. In the case of this Portal Plaza, though, the parts do not belong to a single, unified world. They are all individual web sites (some not even mine). They exist independently, and there are links from various other web sites direct to them. There are a number of sites that link directly to the Virtual Roman House, for example. I wouldn’t want people having to go through the Plaza Portal to get to it. The Portal Plaza is just the equivalent of a list of hyperlinks, with the difference being that the links are arranged within a 3D environment instead of on a 2D page.
I will. This is just the start of what I hope to acccomplish with Unity. It’s a great program, and it opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for me and my students. All the “Space available” signs will eventually be filled with something. (In fact, if anyone reading this has a web-3D virtual-heritage project that they’d like me to link to from the Portal Plaza, just let me know and I will consider adding it).
I don’t know what the problem might be. The only images you should be able to walk through without jumping anywhere are the ones that say “Space available” (since they are not active links). In all other cases, A new page should open as soon as you cross the threshold into one of the alcoves at the edge of the plaza. I’ve tried this on various machines and with various operating systems and browsers, and it has always worked as I’ve described. Perhaps if you tell us what you are using to view the Portal Plaza, someone might be able to figure out what the problem is and I might be able to do something about it. I don’t know enough yet about how Unity works to be able to figure out what’s going on myself.
Ah yes, Atmosphere, I remember well (or really forgotten now). It was my first real introduction into a game creation work flow that actually gave me promise and was my self-therapy after the 911 incident. I was well on my way with a (what I thought) very cool game world, but once they released the actual program (after the long public beta) my scripts no longer worked and they were hard won from very helpful people. They also changed the interface in ways I found untenable.
I actually got an official Atmosphere t-shirt (should have never worn it, but alas, it is pretty much a rag now).
I wandered for quite a while trying a few programs, then settling on Quest 3D, hoping it would help me build my game with no scripting ability (or little) but really made little progress. Once Unity came out for windows I was ready to go.
I am very stubborn in my ignorance about scripting but have hired that out and am very excited about what I am doing with Unity now and have hope.
One thing that Atmosphere had that I wish Unity had was built in Global Illumination; build world and render, it was really very nice.
