Optimization
Many virtual platforms have known limitations for smooth or optimal performance on consumer devices. Below are resources frequently used by OnBoardXR team members to create the most efficient 3D assets for Scenes and Avatars
Previewing 3D Assets
It can be difficult to quickly preview or open a 3D file on your computer. These two websites allow you to drag and drop a 3D model for previewing:
Always export from a Blender Project
Importing an existing .GLB back into Blender frequently generates a known bug of duplicating polygons/triangles and disrupting the rigging of avatars. This unintentionally increases file sizes and some users experience hand blinking where the 3D Mesh of the avatar’s hands becomes invisible intermitently.
By making all changes from your original Blender project and exporting a new .GLB files, you can avoid some of these errors. We recommend completing every build session by choosing Save A Copy from Blender and including the date (i.e. projectName_assetName_00_00_0000.blend in the filename of your project to stay organized.
Reduce & Bake Materials
We never want to limit creativity, however detailed multi-layered and high-resolution materials quickly increase file size. If you’re using several shader nodes and materials, once you are ready to export, Add a new Image Texture and highlight it before clicking on the Render Properties (camera icon). Change your Render Engine to Cycles and a Bake drop down will appear (usually below Performance). Set to Combined and click Bake to generate a single image of your shader nodes. Now you can use this image as the sole Material for the avatar. We also recommend you Save a Copy of this Baked Image.
Community Member Anais Ron guided a workshop on optimizing materials here.
Mixing 2D and 3D Elements
One of our most popular early prototypes was Singing Inside a Painting where a performer individually cut out all the items in a 2D painting and stacked them in 3D space. This use of perspective and low-cost images is also used in photospheres appearing on the horizon of a scene.
By breaking down your Scene into areas the audience will or will not interact / travel, 2D elements can work like “Paper Cut Lightbox techniques to make the surrounding area feel more immersive.
An example by Clément Fromentin here.
UV Scrolling Animation & Sprites
Environment Settings
Mozilla continues to update their Blender Addon for advanced features to optimize lighting, emissives, and environment settings Scenes.
Substance Painting
Community Member Carla Knopp guided a workshop on Vertex and Substance Painting here.
Origins
Be careful of the origin of objects and scenes as this can cause known issues. A Scene floorplan should ideally never go below Y = 0 in Spoke. For example, if you would like users to descend down a staircase, we recommend placing the lowest area at the origin (Y=0) and spawning users above as the perceived “ground” level.
Any Object should set the origin point at the very center of the geometry or it will be lopsided when picked up or tossed in VR. This can be done in Blender by cliking on the object mesh and selecting Object > Set Origin > Origin To Geometry.