VR Dev – Part 5: Blender Adventures

Hey VR Heads!

So most of this week was spent learning how to make static meshes in Blender. Blender is complex – definitely not the “jump in and push buttons” type of program. After poking around a bit, I found a great tutorial that was highly recommended:

Blender 3D: From Noob to Pro (wikibook)

I am in the beginning of Unit 2, and I was able to put together the stuff you see in the video above. Not bad. 😀

The UDK tutorials from The New Boston are also fantastic:

The New Boston’s UDK Tutorial playlist

A lot of great knowledge and step-by-step walkthrough for the UDK Editor, Kismet, and Matinee.

Finally, I was able to get some buttons on the Hydra linked to in game actions! If you are using Craig’s source that I posted in part 3.5, you simply need to add Pawn instance functions (or whatever else you want) within the PlayerController class. A list of Pawn instance fuctions is here:

UDK List of Pawn Instance Functions

Here are some examples I was able to get working:

function RightTriggerPress()
{
Pawn.StartFire(1);
}

function RightTriggerRelease()
{
Pawn.StopFire(1);
}

function RightBumperPress()
{
Pawn.StartFire(0);
}

function RightBumperRelease()
{
Pawn.StopFire(0);
}

function RightB1Press()
{
Pawn.DoJump(true);
}

StartFire and StopFire need a byte argument (number between 0-255). What firing type each number value corresponds to is up to the weapon. By default, 0 = primary fire and 1 = alternate fire.

Other than that, I changed the AimMode variable within PlayerInput to 2, which allows the movement of the right Hydra wand to control looking around. It feels pretty nice so far. I also slapped together a Pawn file that would silence the footsteps in game. Those footsteps are loud, and ruin my videos! XD

That about wraps it up. Look forward to the hallway getting fancier and fancier!

Excelsior,

–Bruce

VR Dev – Part 4: Basic Hydra Controlled Mockup in UDK

Hey VR Heads!

Here is a quick video featuring the ugliest Star Trek hallway ever. XD The Rift dev kit is coming soon, so I wanted to make sure I had a Holodeck to walk into when it arrives. I used the UDK editor to build everything, but I think I will try using Blender to create some better art.

Excelsior,

Bruce

VR Dev – Part 3.5: GitHub and UnrealScript

Hello fellow VR heads!

Not a big update this week, still tooling around with some code but haven’t made progress worth posting. However, I found a good resource if you are a newcomer to UnrealScript:

Archived World of Design UnrealScript Tutorial

Also, in order to get around the issue of WordPress screwing up quotation marks in code, I took the time to set up and figure out GitHub. You can now download the source from previous blog entries here:

CymaticSoft GitHub VRDevTutorial_2

CymaticSoft GitHub CraigDeLancyHydraSource

From now on, complete source will be posted on GitHub. Simply click on the “ZIP” button to download it for yourself!

Frustratingly, I seem to be the only GitHub user working on the Hydra in UDK. On the up side, there are a few folks working on Hydra stuff in blender, OpenGL, and other environments. Search GitHub for “Razer Hydra” and you will see.

Okay! I am going to get back to tooling around with Craig’s code, see if I can get the Hydra fully functional in the default Unreal game and begin linking the Hydra to the skeletal movement of the pawn. Oh yeah, I pledged for an Oculus Rift on the first day of the Kickstarter, so I hope to receive my dev kit soon. I will be posting unboxing and first impression vids when I do!

Excelsior,

–Bruce

VR Dev – Part 3: More Hydra Integration

Okay, more progress has been made, thanks to a couple of things:

• Post on the EpicGames forums by skwisdemon666: Full source of PlayerInput.uc, PlayerController.uc, and GameType.uc! I am going to work with this for a while and put up my modifications in a future post.
  
• The UnrealScript Cheat Sheet: A go-to reference for UnrealScript syntax. 
• 4r7w4re’s UnrealScript tutorial: A little hard to follow sometimes, but certainly helpful.
• BeyondUnreal Wiki programming tutorials: Digging my way through these right now as well.

So at this point, I am able to move my pawn around with the Hydra joysticks, tweak that movement, and verify that I am reading button presses through the console. Its going slower than I would like, but its going. More soon!