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