Tag: vr

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Zotbox – Block Textures

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So finally I am working on my own set of block textures and like programmer art there is also such a thing as programmer art style! Yes I am attempting to develop my own art style or aesthetic. Here is an example of the side of the grass block.

This approach looks really nice in VR. The sweet spot for textures to have a nice retro pixel art look is about 32 pixels per meter. Then it varies up and down. For larger objects the pixels become larger so it doesn’t start looking high resolution and smaller objects the pixels are smaller to allow for some detail. For example the palm trunks and rocks have a smaller texture while the butterflies have a larger texture.

For the blocks I try to maintain the 16 pixel texture (32 pixel per meter) look while taking advantage of twice the resolution. In Blockbench I block out the color using a 16×16 texture then scale it up and add additional detail while keeping some of the 16×16 structure. Here are a couple of screenshots showing them.

The dirt, grass, stone, and sand blocks are the new ones. I am still following a color palette similar to vanilla Minecraft though because that is classic!

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Zotbox – Sunset Walk

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Here is a nice sunset walk with some test plants using the alpha clipping option in the detail models! I had to reduce the trees some so Quest 2 can handle it better. I will eventually have more lush areas vs dry areas with different grass blocks and plants. The palm trees will be clustered in these lush areas so there won’t be as many but it will look more natural.

I am quickly realizing the SRP batching even when it is working well isn’t going to cut it for lots of smaller terrain details. In these scenes it is usually dropping draw calls from many hundreds to under fifty. But it has overhead and I am running into performance walls here with Quest 2 which is my baseline.

It is definitely time to work on block models which could handle things like smaller grass and flower details better. These would be meshed into the chunks directly and the only overhead is additional vertices/triangles to render. I also need to start making my own block textures and building an atlas based on what is defined for the regions.

I feel the lighting can work the same way with the block models by introducing some amount of occlusion in the blocks they occupy. You will notice that here when I throw down the torch at the end. The plants block the light some just like the rocks.

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Zotbox – Lighting

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It’s been a while since I’ve made a longer post, so I wanted to share all the progress I’ve made on the lighting system in Zotbox and explain some of the technical details behind it. While I’ve shared bits and pieces before, I didn’t go into much depth about how it all works. This is just the first iteration of my work in this area, and I have plenty of additional features and improvements planned… Continue reading

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Zotbox – Day/Night

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Here are some images showing the first pass on the day/night cycle. I have been using a mobile friendly sky dome system which has worked well. I had to build my own gradient generation tool and update the texture to have the horizon color higher and get the fog color matching as time progresses.

With the sky and fog color in sync for the horizon the chunks and detail models fade in/out with movement. The horizon color then transitions in a gradient to the sky color at the top. This is simple and works well for the art style.

I spent some time experimenting with procedural sky box shaders but they are just too expensive. Even the simplest design is like a full screen effect – expensive shader times lots of pixels.

Next I am going to work on the sunset being a different color – more orange. I also want to get the cloud system working which will be tinted with the horizon color.

And for the tech artists out there here is the custom sky dome gradient texture!

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Zotbox – Underwater

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A few images of the underwater lighting as I work on the day/night cycle for Zotbox. These are during the day at three depth levels. The first is the shallow areas with a clearer more turquois color.

The second is the deeper areas with a bluer darker color. The ocean test biome I have going makes large seagrass at these lower areas which are about as tall as a person. There is also a shot showing the headlamp light at this depth.

The last is from the deepest areas where the color is a dark blue and the light level keeps going down until it is black. These areas have little or no seagrass and require a headlamp to see.

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Zotbox – Water

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I now have the basic terrain system with water working for Zotbox. This all runs very smoothly on the Quest 2 with a lot of headroom for future CPU/GPU needs. I use the Quest 2 for testing since this is the baseline. The terrain is scalable so on Quest 3 there will be a larger view distance for example. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy and I am very excited for where this is… Continue reading

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Wayfair Patio Playground

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This is my first officially published VR project for the Rift. It is a cool patio furniture simulator we did at Wayfair. This is through the Wayfair Next R&D team. This project was a lot of fun and has some hilarious elements like futuristic drone delivery and a bean bag toss game that is beamed down at night from a UFO. It is really just a branded showcase of VR technology. Folks at Wayfair show… Continue reading

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Unite 2015 + Oculus Connect 2

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I was very fortunate to be able to attend both Unite 15 and Oculus Connect 2.  Unite was is Boston, and since I live there, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a part of that.  Unfortunately the two conferences were one after the other and even overlapped for a day.  This made for a fun but exhausting week of Unity and VR.        There were many exciting moments throughout both events, and way… Continue reading

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VR Just Got Real

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This pretty much sums up how everyone in the VR community felt on Wednesday.  Seeing an Oculus Kickstarter email arrive always makes my day.  This time I knew it was going to be something special.  I was thinking input, but better than that, an actual release date!  Yes, finally a date – Q1 2016!      Ever since Oculus Connect last fall I have always been thinking of the amazing demos with Crescent Bay and how… Continue reading

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LOST LOOT Pre-Alpha Update #2 Released!

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The next update to Lost Loot is now available.  This new version has taken the game in a completely different direction with a miniature world third person design that is extremely immersive and very comfortable.     A preview video…   Some screenshots… Check out the this new version and let me know how you like it.  There are many aspects that improve the overall experience that I covered in my blog post called The… Continue reading