Setting up a VR pipeline for Oculus Development

Now it’s time for me to start getting my pipeline together. Here are the tools I plan to use (In this post I’ll go over the ones in bold):

• SourceTree App & BitBucket Server - (Version Control)

• Oculus

• Unity

• Playmaker Unity plugin (possibly, will try to do it without first)

• Atom (free alternative to Visual Studio)

• Gimp/Photoshop (Storyboarding, VizDev)

• Maya (Model, Rig, UV Map/UDim)

• Substance Painter (not sure if also need Substance Designer yet)

• Amplify Shader Editor (recommended as better than Unity’s Shader Graph)

• SyncSketch (if I work with others remotely)

There is a bit of a process to getting your computer set-up to do Oculus development in Unity. You’ll need to install Unity, the Oculus App, the Oculus SDK, and Oculus Integration from the Asset Store from within Unity. I’ve also outlined the steps I took to set up an initial Unity project to work with Oculus Rift. You can find the steps and useful links at the bottom of this post.

I also know I want to be able to work on my project both on my desktop as well as my laptop, so I need to set up Version Control. For this I chose SourceTree and BitBucket (they’re free!). This also allows me to upload my saved Unity project into the cloud so I can download it to my other computer and continue where I left off. You of course need to install these programs on all computers you plan to use, so it may take a bit of time.

If you’re interested in the details of getting a Windows PC set up for Oculus/Unity development in this way, read on.

PC Prep for Oculus/Unity

• Before starting Oculus development with Unity, you will need to install the Oculus App (PC Application normally installed during Rift Setup) and Oculus SDK. (Likewise, if you want to do OpenVR development, Steam and Steam VR have to be installed first) https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/latest/concepts/unity-pcprep/ https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/pcsdk/latest/

• Oculus App: https://www.oculus.com/setup/

• Oculus SDK: (not 100% sure need this, but installing anyway) https://developer.oculus.com/downloads/native-windows/

• In Unity, go to the Asset Store, download and import: Oculus Integration - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/integration/oculus-integration-82022

• Worth a read: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VROverview.html

Unity Project Setup for Oculus

<taken from: https://circuitstream.com/oculus-unity-setup/>

1. Open Oculus App to activate HMD (otherwise in Unity HMD may stay black)

2. THEN Open Unity Project/Editor, 3D project

3. Edit->Project Settings->Player->XR Settings, check Virtual Reality Supported (make sure Oculus listed)

4. Make sure you have downloaded/Imported Oculus Integration pack from Asset Store

5. In Assets Tab, Oculus->VR->Prefabs, drag OVRCameraRig into scene

6. Delete Main Camera

7. Select OVRCameraRig, Tracking Origin Type, select Floor Level

8. In Assets Tab, Oculus->Avatar->Content->Prefabs, drag Local Avatar into scene

9. Parent LocalAvatar under OVRCameraRig, zero out transforms

10. Select Local Avatar, check Start With Controllers, save Project

Unity Project Setup for SourceTree/Bitbucket

1. Download SourceTree here: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

2. Go through the install process, go with the defaults until the SourceTree GUI comes up

3. If you haven’t set up a BitBucket account, do so

4. If you already have a project in BitBucket that you’d like to work on locally, under the “Remote” tab, right click on the project in BitBucket, and “clone”

In my next post I'll talk a bit about beginning Visual Development by finding reference before starting to design.