Hello
After some time out of the loop I’ve been meaning to make something like this since Unity v1! I used the opportunity to test lightmapping and occlusion culling during the latest beta test. I’d love to know if it works OK for everyone:
http://www.boxy.co.uk/VirtualGallery/virtualgallery.html
Thanks for looking. 
Brilliantly executed idea!!
No problem with the framerate or anything else.The boxing rabbit was my favourite haha.
Thank you! Those furry fellows were fun to do. Glad to hear the frame rate is OK too.
Cheers for looking
boxy
Good stuff!
Fantastic - love it
I noticed that the speed can sometimes be a little too fast though.
Maybe you could slow down the walk speed when your are within a short distance of a picture?
Very nicely done!
Don’t know your target audience, but WASD + mouselook is a relatively advanced control scheme for those who don’t play shooters. Might be nice to have a simpler option as well, e.g. left click to move forward… or click on a piece to move in front of it… they could work together so neither audience feels alienated.
Then again, maybe it’s not a concern for your intended audience…
Very simple design, but nicely executed. Well done!
Thanks for the kinds comments everyone!
Tony that is a good point. Right now it was a major hurdle implementing the mouselook speed and I’m pretty confident I have done it the most inefficient way possible, but currently the important thing is that I figured it out for myself. Making better code will come in time - all of which means that I like the idea very much and am guessing it will involve tagging the images then somehow employing raycasting to alter the walk speed temporarily? …hmmm, back to the head scratching.
Interesting point Alex, I’d never considered that, I do like the idea of clicking an image to move to it. That ties in nicely with the concept that my gallery’s functionality will grow as I learn more - more animated characters, interaction and eventually I’m hoping to add the ability to order prints from within the gallery and even add an outdoor sculpture park! Thanks for the suggestions
BK thank you, I deliberately made it as simple as possible just to get a unity project up and running. Something I’ve not actually done yet since owning V1!
Cheers again
Boxy
I guess you could do a camera switch trick when you collide with an empty object that’s in front of the picture? And toggle it when you leave the picture?
Man you are skilled ugh :envy:
Please give a tutorial on your craft because this is Awesome!
Thank you.
OK that went over my head. Back to the headscratching! Thanks for the reply
Thanks megmaltese and shabazzster! There’s not much to teach it is so simple. I built the model in Cinema 4D as a single scene, opened it in Unity, added an FPS prefab, played with lightmapping but actually in the end I used Cinema4D for that, calculated occlusion culling and then realised because I have a magic mouse, the movement was erratic so I added some simple keyboard options to tweak view speed. Oh yes I also tried a very simple animation on one of the sculptures. I did want him to walk off the pedestal but haven’t figured that out yet!
Cheers for looking.
Boxy
Fantastic and so elegant… Great job.
Effectively you have two cameras, and use a camera trigger to swap camera’s when you collide with the pictures collider or something else infront of the picture
An example of using camera trigers:
http://www.unity3dstudent.com/2010/12/switching-cameras-at-runtime/
You could move the position of the 2nd camera (that looks at the picture) each time you collide and so you would only need two cameras in your scene. Although you could get away with one - its a bit messy.
Hope that helps,
Tony
Thanks Tony, yes that helps a lot! Great to know your website exists too, it looks really useful. I’ll try and play with that idea.
Cheers
Your welcome.
The unity3dstudent site is not mine, it’s will goldstone’s -but yes, it’s a very useful resource.
Tony
I had been considering making something like this for a while, but wanted to have some pretty fancy model import system so as people could submit work and if it was good enough it was automatically displayed over the oldest work somewhat like a virtual showcase forum but is far beyond my capability, well could make the museum but the scripting would be to much.
Your gallery is pretty epic, quality of the work is outstanding, but can’t be totally positive lolz because that makes for a useless post so here is what is missing… and its pretty obvious too. Each picture has its own light source but there is no defined physical light source, ie lamps man, each pic should have a picture lamp above them to give somewhere for the light to come from. other than that its a breath taking bit of work, great job mate.
Sorry, that man Will again. Enjoying his book at the mo.
Thanks! Yes I had all sorts of big plans but decided to keep version 1 as simple as can be just to get it up and running. I like your ideas too, I’m also hoping to make a gallery of other people’s work but that is at the beginning of negotiations as we speak. I hope we’ll see more and more of these. I want to add to it as I learn about Unity though. For example where there is a series of images, to allow the user to toggle through them in the same frame instead of taking up more wall space. I also want to add an outdoor sculpture park at some point so people can show off their ZBrush sculptures etc.
About the lights - that’s right I did intend to but in the end it was a conscious decision not to add physical light sources because I didn’t see the point in adding extra geometry at this stage. Obviously if you are in a virtual gallery you’re going to expect the paintings to be clearly visible, it doesn’t matter how because it aint reality. In fact you could say the paintings are ‘backlit’ because they all have a self illuminating material applied - otherwise the light on them would have been uneven and being able to set the base colour gave me better control on the overall luminance. You’re right though, I will probably add some simple square spots eventually. I’m also not making the most of Unity’s material system yet. eg I could perhaps try and make the floor slightly reflective but that didn’t seem as straight forward as it is in a regular 3D app. The paintings also had a canvas bump at one stage which I liked but ditched to keep version 1 simple while I learn more about optimising.
Cheers again, much appreciated.