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Secrets of the WorldWhale

Teager

July 25, 2017 00:19

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I want to share with you all the experience I've been working on: Secrets of the WorldWhale!

WorldWhale is an exploratory adventure through an ancient flying whale as it soars through the clouds. Begin by colliding with the wizened old rat at the landing zone to "talk" to him. Each consecutive rat also speaks to you via collision. The wizened old rat will guide you through the scene, leading you over floating islands, through an overgrown old garden of ruins, into the whale's mouth, and finally to a hidden treasure deep in the stomach of the whale.

WorldWhale features custom media arranged and recorded in Unity to create moving water, waterfalls, and 4 colored portals. The multiple sections of video were divided up using UV unwrapping to create multiple animated elements in the scene. Unfortunately, they don't look as nice as I'd envisioned inside Sansar due to the low video resolution settings, but hey, I tried!

There are sounds integrated all over the scene to sell the feeling of standing in old, abandoned ruins on the back of a flying whale: crickets, cicadas, the occasional bird, perhaps a fish or two hidden away in the small pond... but you won't find any other animals up here in the sky. You will find a lot of wind, a very drippy, reverberant cavern, and some very BIG whale sounds! If I could shake your screen every time the whale calls out, I would. ;)

The scene also features custom background music written by my husband, who also voiced the wizened old rat! 

I had planned to create more interesting puzzles to be solved before enabling you to move from one point to the next, but with my very limited scripting abilities and the tight time limit of this contest, those are beyond me for the time being. Maybe one day I'll find a way to work them in.

 

I've really enjoyed putting this together, and have learned a lot in the process: not only about Sansar, but about Zbrush, Unity, and Blender nodes as well! It's been a very rewarding experience. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have. :)

 

https://atlas.sansar.com/experiences/teager/secrets-of-the-worldwhale

14 comments

• 1
  
  Gindipple July 25, 2017 04:41

  This took a few tries to get into, I suspect collisions on dynamic objects before full load in, but once inside wow, very nicely done.

  Some minor overlapping audio issues if more than one person in at a time, but it's fixable with code

  Very cool what you did for the motion on the portals and the waterfall

   

• 1
  
  LGG July 25, 2017 16:11

  This is the most amazing place I have been so far!

  It is awesome when we get to see a place that really shows off the shaders available in sansar. 

  Walking over the whale's tail, with the lighting and the glow was amazing, and inside looked so good and believable! When I saw the different texture animations I was blown away, very clever use of the tools you had!

  Overall, honestly, everything fit together and really shows the quality of work and time you spent to complete it all.

  Your (both of you!) work really impressed me and opened my eyes to the potential Sansar has, thank you for sharing!

• 0
  
  Teager July 25, 2017 18:21

  Thank you both!

   

  Yes, I've had some issues loading it too, from time to time. I figure it's a matter of collisions as well. I originally had some physical coins in the treasure room that you could play with, but they were removed to reduce the number of collisions in the scene.

  If someone could work up a script that writes a chat message and/or plays a sound based on avatar proximity to an object without requiring a collision, similar to what the LOOT teleporter does, that would greatly improve the loading issue I imagine. I tried, but it's too early scripting wise for me to get a handle on it. I just don't know enough about C#, and there are not enough examples of finished, working code for me to borrow from yet. I'm actually currently using the free sliding door script for the rat, which is far more coding than is actually required, but it gets the job done for the time being. It just moves the door up by 0.0001 meters and plays a sound when "opening". :P

  I also yesterday landed inside the collision prim for the first rat, when there was already someone at the landing point, but I can't fix that now... that's what I get for waiting until it was "finished" to publish it, I suppose. Whoops! Same deal with the overlapping audio - I didn't realize the script I used played it so loudly (apparently not based on location?) until I published the scene, which was about 20 minutes before the contest deadline, so I'll have to wait a while to find an alternative.

   

  I'm so glad you guys enjoyed it, though! I had a lot of fun working with the different materials available! Emission is probably the most fun to work with, I think. I enjoyed the blend mapping as well, but with a new terrain feature coming out soon that will allow us to paint terrain inside sansar, I imagine it will be a bit less important going forward. But not irrelevant! I definitely wished I could have blend mapped the materials on the whale body itself, to get a nice repeating, normal mapped skin texture, blended seamlessly with the grass and rock elements above and the belly and glow below, but at present it couldn't be done due to the number of materials involved and the differing UV scales.

   

  I also hope that one day emission will work more seamlessly with video elements, and that the videos will load in at a higher resolution! My water and waterfall looked a bit bleak at the low resolution, and with their emissive elements updating so infrequently. The actual media video is here, if you'd like to compare:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxrFDY1Y4rE

  I'll have to play around with media elements more in the future. It's possible that it may work better with no emission, or with a shorter video. (Mine here is 30 minutes long, in an effort to prevent it from visually skipping and/or going briefly black when the video loops.)

   

  I'll pass along your compliments to my husband! I'm sure he'll be pleased that his work is appreciated :P

  Edited by Teager July 25, 2017 18:25
• 2
  
  LGG July 25, 2017 20:07

  I just wrote up a proximity detection script for you.

  https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115009670906-Free-Proximity-Detection-Script 

  Experiences are buggy today, so I havn't been able to do too much testing, but I hope it helps.

   

  Please let me know if it would help to have a customised version that plays a sound, i left the event function empty in the example.

  Edited by LGG July 25, 2017 20:21
• 0
  
  Teager July 25, 2017 20:40

  Thank you so much for writing this up and sharing it! I think you've given enough here that I and others should be able to build upon it without too much trouble.

   

  I'm not able to try it either since the servers appear to be down, but just from looking at it, I'd suggest that (if it doesn't already) you default the center location to the center of the object, then add in a chat to user variable, a play sound variable, perhaps even a local teleport location variable. That would make this a very powerful, versatile script to be used for greeting visitors and guiding through an interactive experience. I'm sure plenty of folks would gladly give you their pennies for it :)

• 2
  
  Torley - Sansar July 26, 2017 16:02

  BRAVO this is such a beautiful experience, and I especially enjoyed your music and sound design here — like when the wizened rats speak when you walk up to them, and the portal teleport sounds. I definitely felt the deep whale rumblings. Lovely collab with your husband.

  Really clever and thoughtful techniques, and it's great to see the collaborative discussion towards making this even better!

  Edited by Torley - Sansar July 26, 2017 16:14
• 0
  
  Teager July 26, 2017 18:24

  Thank you so much, Torley!

• 0
  
  Galen July 26, 2017 22:10

  Looks like it'll be awesome, but moments after I arrive, my client crashes. Without fail. Even after a reboot. Sorry.

• 1
  
  Teager July 26, 2017 23:13

  That's a shame, Galen. Maybe once the contest is over I can update it with LGG's proximity script and it might be a bit more friendly about loading

• 1
  
  Patti Peregrine July 29, 2017 18:02

  Awesome experience!  I really enjoy what you have done here, but my client also crashed as I tried to make my way to the whale.  I know I could stand to upgrade my video card so it is possibly my machine.  I look forward to getting back and exploring further.  Well done Teager!

• 1
  
  Galen July 29, 2017 22:44

  It finally worked for me this morning. Beautifully crafted.

  Edited by Galen July 29, 2017 22:44
• 0
  
  Teager July 31, 2017 23:38

  WordWhale has been updated today to better accommodate multiple users at the same time, and also to better accommodate newer users!

  • Rats now trigger speech based on avatar proximity instead of collision event. Stand within 5m of a rat to trigger his speech.
  • Rats now speak based on location (previously, each rat could be heard at equal volume no matter where you were in the scene)
  • There is now a teleport "safety net" beneath the floating islands to catch you faster when you fall, so you don't have to wait so long for the auto teleport back to start to kick in
  • A hint message now plays in chat and via voiceover when you fall off the starting island, explaining how to teleport to continue forward. This message plays directly to the avatar, not to the whole scene
  • Additional collision ramps have been added to get to the purple portal, to make it easier to reach
  • Multiple landing points to prevent avatar stacking

  Thanks to LGG for the proximity detection script! It's great!

   

   

  Updates I'd like to make in the future include:

  • Update the whale body texture: find a way to give him a nice, repeating skin texture that can still blend well with the belly and the glow elements on the fins and tail. (Currently UV repeats are a problem)
  • Update the terrain texture: find a way to blend it more naturally into the whale body
  • Update plants to double sided shader. This will nearly cut poly count in the scene by half, but requires repositioning all plant elements in the scene individually. Also waiting on respective plant creators to update their plant assets
  • Add moving particles for visual effect
  • Long term: add more complicated puzzles to be solved before advancing forward
  • Long term: update water elements with true animated textures and particles

  Edited by Teager July 31, 2017 23:46
• 1
  
  JCat July 31, 2017 23:43

  This is spectacular Teager! I finally had a chance to explore it. Talk about inspirational!

• 0
  
  Teager July 31, 2017 23:43

  Thank you JCat! Much appreciated!