Immersive VR Theatre Workshop

Workshop - Getting Started

Support Materials

What we need: Tools and Software

Illustration of a cluttered office desk with a computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, stack of books, plant, smartphone, calculator, notebooks, papers with charts, a coffee cup, glasses, a digital clock, and coins.

In order to produce our Immersive VR experience we are going to need some appropriate kit. We have chosen to use Unity and Spatial.io due to their free nature and agnostic infrastructure working on both Mac and Windows.

Optional Software:

Blender logo with an orange and blue design.
Adobe Photoshop application icon with dark blue background and light blue letters 'Ps' in the center.
Logo of Substance Painter with a red hexagon background, white emblem in the center, and the words 'Substance Painter' beneath it.
Unity logo with a 3D cube icon and the word 'Unity' in gray text

Unity version 2021.3.8f1 will be used for this workshop this can be installed via Unity Hub. WebGL Build Support Module will also be required on install

Logo with a black geometric icon resembling a cube or maze, followed by the word 'Spatial' in black text.

Spatial.io Account (Free) will be needed alongside downloading the Unity SDK package

Illustration of a beige file folder with a yellow tab at the top, viewed from the front.

A starter pack of assets from textures, meshes and a starter template

Any 3D modelling tool that would allow for objects / models to be exported as .obj or .fbx format will work within unity however we are striving to keep models to a low poly count and reduce complexity in order for space to be rendered online

Using Unity- Setting up Unity Project

Step Two:

Download Unity Spatial.io Starter Package and unzip the file. Using the Unity Hub launcher under the Projects tab select Open > Add Project from Disk and select the spatial io Template folder and click load.

Screenshot of a webpage menu showing 'Test Active Scene', 'Publishing', and a gear icon for settings.

Step One:

We will be using Unity version 2021.3.8f1 available via Unity Hub launcher, this is available for free and will require internet access and enough storage capacity. During the installation process, we need to add the WebGL Build support Module and then wait for the installation to complete. If an account is required we will be using a Unity Free user account as none of the features of the pro version will be used for this workshop activity.

Screenshot of Unity Hub version 3.4.1 with the Projects section open, showing options to add a project from disk or open a remote project.
Screenshot of a computer file explorer window showing the folder path 'Documents > spatial-unity-starter-template-main' with one folder named 'spatial-unity-starter-template-main' inside it.

Step Three:

Once the Starter package has been opened navigate to:

Assets > Examples > SpatialIsland > Scenes and double click on Environment.Unity

Step Four:

Configure Spatial SDK within Unity via

Window > Account, Login to Spatial io Account

Click Get Login Token, copy from the webpage and then click paste login token. If all is correct it should go green.

Step Five:

To preview your scene on the Spatial website you can click on the Test Active Scene button, publishing a scene MAY take anything from a few minutes to a few hours to appear under your spaces.

Unity Interface Overview

A 3D computer modeling scene showing a black sphere with an origin marker and a circular orbital path, set against a gradient background with a purple surface.
A 3D digital model of a black sphere with an arrow pointing upward, connected to three smaller colored spheres by lines, set against a gradient background. The scene is viewed in a computer-aided design environment.

Spatial Asset Prefabs

These are inbuilt prefab components to allow Spatial io specific triggers and events to be used.

Entrance Point

This is where the user will spawn in the space, multiple entrances can be set and will be randomly assigned to each joining user on load.

Avatar Teleporter

Adding an Avatar teleported adds to assets to the asset property window one will be the entrance/collision point and the other will be where the avatar is teleported to. This is active upon colliding/walking into the teleport point.

A 3D modeling interface showing a black circle, with a white square outline centered inside it. The scene includes 3D axis arrows in red, green, and blue, indicating the x, y, and z directions.
3D digital model of a white sofa with green, red, and blue axis guides, viewed inside a black sphere against a gradient background.
Black circle with a white lightning bolt symbol inside it on a beige background.

Empty Frame

The empty frame asset allows users to add their own pictures onto a designated surface using this asset template.

Seat Hotspot

Upon interacting with this trigger point users’ avatars will enter a sitting position, this does require some form of asset to make it clear to the end user that there is a seating position.

Interactable

Interactable actors allow avatars to trigger set events using scripted events. This is driven largely by C#

There are additional prefabs available however the ones featured above serve as a great foundation to getting started with Unity and Spatial io development.