Nagivation in 3D Space

Even though we are not sure we are able to implement the Unity 3D navigation audio tour interface working as an integrated part of the final app, we are still aiming to have it as a functional app in itself for this project.

Once the 3D model of the space was build from the floor plan we were provided of the gallery in Maya, this was imported into Unity 3D and then artworks added onto the walls as game objects ( the scale and positioning of these artworks is not precise ) .

Game objects in Unity can then have scripts and behaviors added to them. Trixi made an initial version to give an idea of what we want to achieve in our plan to visually connect the ideas, audio content and artworks within the 3D space. The video below shows this: when an artwork is clicked, a bubble pops up. When this bubble is clicked, related bubbles appear with related ideas to link to other works within the space. A 'play' bubble also appears which, when clicked, triggers the audio content to start and changes to a 'stop' bubble.

As I haven't don't Javascript before, my initial experimentation was the movement you see when the bubble starts 'bouncing' while the audio was playing.

From here, I created the below flowchart to try plan out exactly how these bubbles should behave in reaction to each other and to the user's interactions. From here it is a matter of figuring out how to code it.

(click to view larger)

We probably will also face a few difficulties when it comes time to convert it over to an Xcode file. We have been working on the standard trial version of Unity so we will have to adapt it over to the iPhone version which will involve changing 'clicked' actions over to iPhone based gestures.

What I've had more trouble with is getting my head around yet another new language. I briefly learnt and last used Java a year ago and with this and general programming understanding, I can look at scripts and documentation for Unity and get an idea of what is going on. I am having trouble writing it myself and figuring out how to make it do what I want to so am getting stuck with this. Especially as I've spent the last two or so months learning and focusing on Objective-C.

Though it isn't overly complex in itself, setting up the relationships will be more fiddly than anything else. Hopefully once I've discussed with the tutor, it should become more clear and ready to deploy onto the iPhone next week.