Environment Building
Conceptually, I am trying to build a meditative space for self reflection and healing. In my prototype, I’d like to build these visuals within the space:
A sound-reactive gradient field created by growing point lights
A full moon in the night sky - a large sphere primitive + skybox night sky.
A plane of water using Water.js, that could respond to objects that are being spontaneously spawned from the sky
Volumetric fire in which you can throw objects into
I am definitely jumping ahead of myself, wanting the immediate satisfaction of incorporating the listed examples, while I only have the basic understanding of how to load textures onto geometric shapes. I did manage to successfully load .obj files along with their materials - my 3D scan of myself appears underneath the camera feed plane. I wonder how to properly load an .obj as part of the player.group with the class syntax in the scene.js file. I also tried loading .fbx animated models, but came across an issue with the fflate library.
I was able to get ngrok working correctly to host my WIP environment: https://3d634128a89d.ngrok.io
After trying a bunch of things and not getting much to work, I stripped most of the environment in hopes of learning how to properly add the examples I’m envisioning.
I did use the updated three.js controls example that uses the MapControls. As of right now, I imagined this environment to be a solo experience which defeats the purpose of a “Real Time Social Space” … I do wonder if it’s possible to create a group meditation environment when navigating through the space feels very novel, fun, and exploratory within the technical aspects of it being contained in a browser, but I want to be intentional with how people interact with each other and encourage reflection for themselves.
WebRTC / Simple Peer
For what it’s worth, I tried following the tutorial and got hung up when trying to use the Live Server, which for whatever reason doesn’t show up as an extension for me. I tried manually searching the marketplace within VSCode, and tried clicking on this link, but I was unsuccessful. A bit disheartened, I tried to spend more time on building out my environment.
Topia
This week I tried Topia - the first world that I explored was called Sock Drawer: https://topia.io/sockdrawer
I don’t know if this platform is for me, at least with my first impression of it. There is no world map, so I had no idea how large this space was and who was occupying this space. In one sense, this might be nice if I were in the mood for endless discovery and meeting new strangers, but I felt bombarded by these three folks who were trying to be nice, but demanded that I turn on my camera, said I should go to the keg and get a pint to loosen up, and they’d check back on me once I got a drink, or something. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone… I just wanted to explore what the different functionalities of the space were.
When I tried building my own space, I added an image which then took over the entire space and masked everything else - there was no easy way to resize the image. Your visual assets have to be a very specific size before importing them. You can also walk through everything, there’s no object collision options to make the assets act as if they really are forming the limits of an environment. I also tried adding links, and there’s no real signifier that shows that an asset links to anything.
For what it’s worth, I do like the drawing style of the included assets.
DialUp
Still didn’t receive a call for the two topics I signed up for, so I added a few more. Will update soon once I have a call!