Projects & Blogs

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Project Lead : Nathan Barnett

Interactive Game / App to help Di-Gartref teach people about viewing potential houses.

Di-Gartref were looking for an innovative way to highlight to people the common potential issues they should be aware of when viewing a potential property.

Nathan was very keen to take on this project. He met with Katherine & Sinead from Di-Gartref to discuss their requirements and any ideas they had about the project.

After receiving the brief from Katherine, Nathan set about conceptualising the app using mind mapping and sketching of ideas and possible elements to include within the finished app.

Nathan decided to base the virtual house on his own accommodation due to his familiarity with it.

He used Affinity Design to draw up a basic floor plan and exported this to Cheetah 3D as a SVG Vector file. Once opened in Cheetah 3D, Nathan was able to use the Extrude tool to create a wall structure for the house which he exported to Unity3D.

The exported walls required a little manipulation in Unity3D to sort out scaling, rotation, positioning and texturing. When this was done, Nathan was able to add a floor layer and give it a carpet texture.

The next stages were building the various objects and items required to make the virtual house look lived in and relevant. These included:

• Bathroom furniture – Sink, Bath & Toilet
• Lounge Items – Sofa, Cabinets, TV
• Kitchen Items – Worktops, Boiler, Cooker
• Bedroom Items – Divan Bed with Pillow & Duvet

The majority of these items were modelled in Cheetah 3D using a variety of techniques including, Extrusion, Bevelling, Welding, Face / Edge / Vertex manipulation, Lathing and UV texturing.

Once completed in Cheetah3D the models were exported as FBX files, imported into Unity3D and positioned in the game.

Nathan then worked to arrange lighting, background imagery, texturing and interactivity to enable a user to navigate the house and find a selection of typical issues within the space such as damp patches, exposed wiring, condensation and cracks. On finding all the issues the user is presented with a congratulatory message.

Nathan learned numerous Javascript programming techniques during the development of the game including functions, logic statements, variables and user interface programming.

Skills Learned

• 2D Design
• 3D Modeling
• Texturing
• Manipulation of objects in a 3D virtual space
• Javascript programing
• Interface Design
• Image Editing
• Concept Development

Software Used

• Affinity Design
• Pixelmater
• Unity3D
• Cheetah3D
• Mono Develop
• Apple Safari

Hardware Used

• Wacom Tablet