Project 1A: Barrel Bouncer (Setup)
Part 1: Imagining Your World
Before you begin actually developing your project, you will want to brainstorm and visualize what kind of environment you would like to build out. It is important to really spend a lot of time on designing your world now, since you will be using this same setup for the next month and a half.
Perhaps you want to make bustling city? Or maybe a scenic campsite? Or possibly inside a sci-fi spaceship or on an extraterrestiral planet with aliens? In all cases, the key is in the details. In a forest, will there be birds in the sky and squirrels on the trees? On a beach, will there be ships in the distance, boats docked at the pier, and crabs and shells along the sand? Will it be daytime, sunset, or night, since those will affect the color of the sky? In fact, the sky (and your imagination) is the limit; our only requirement is that you make sure there is enough land/walking for a user to move around, particularly if you incorporate water into your scene.
Another thing to keep in mind is designing your environment for performance, particularly for mobile VR systems which may not be as powerful as a desktop. Low-poly and cartoonish art styles tend to work well; try to stay away from creating something that’s super high definition or too realistic (though some degree of realism is fine, just think of whether something would run fine on your phone as a reference point).
Below are some ideas for inspiration:
