Create Object Multiples With a Script in Unity

It's not very hard to make a lot of some object in Unity, much easier than copying it many times. I used these instructions, Instantiating Prefabs at Runtime, to learn this, but I'm adding the twist that the item I'm multiplying is an imported Beetle Blocks 3D model.
Import Your Model. I'm importing this cool L-System tree by Eric Rosenbaum. See this post for more about importing 3D models from Beetle Blocks to Unity.

Build VR Worlds From Tinkercad and BeetleBlocks Models

To get yourself and your students set up for building VR apps for iOS with Unity, see this post for Unity 5.6+, and this post for Unity pre-5.6. The latter post also demos several possibilities for importing 3D content into a VR world that will work in all versions of Unity. Here I want to write about an option I skipped over in that post but has really interesting possibilties, creating 3D models in Tinkercad or Beetleblocks, and importing them. This process allows students to experience on a life-size scale something they are probably 3D printing as a small object, which can be mind blowing.

You and Your Students Can Build Cardboard VR Apps With Unity

I wrote about making your own Google Cardboard apps for iOS with Unity before, but the examples I provided have since become obsolete after the Unity update 5.6.0, which integrated support for VR into its own build tools, and, separately, the Google Cardboard SDK starting with v1.50 was drastically changed, replacing GvrViewerMain with GvrEditorEmulator. The example I had for moving around while pressing the Cardboard button still moved, but the image was flipped over. Talk about a nauseating experience.

Workflows for Virtual Worlds/Virtual Reality

These are some notes I'm taking to remember how I got some things to work for student projects.

Scenario 1: Importing 3D Models Into Opensim

Correcting Collada Model Errors

First time I spent money ($15!) on a 3D model to use there was an issue. The snow leopard was inside-out; the texture was on the inside and the outside was transparent. I learned after much searching that the "normals" had to be recalculated, which can only be done in a 3D program. The download included an FXB file so I used Blender, imported the FXB file, went to Edit Mode > Mesh > Normals > re-calculate outside normals which flipped the orientation of the faces to outside. Then I exported that as an OBJ file. Then I could import into Opensim with Singularity viewer. I chose File > Upload Mesh > High detail. It comes in gray so change the color to

More VR Explorations, Now in HTML

I just learned about Mozilla's A-Frame framework for VR development. Wired touts it as an easier solution to the heavy lifting required by the Unity environment. The main thing this get rid of are the iOS or Android platform requirements of setting up a Unity environment.

Make Your Own Virtual Reality App for Google Cardboard on iOS

(These notes are relevant for Unity version 5.5 and under. Here is a new post that covers Unity 5.6, when the Google Cardboard SDK was integrated into Unity build settings, making some of this obsolete.) I thought Google Cardboard was neat when I first saw it but a couple days ago I started playing around with creating 3D content for it and I'm blown away with the possibilities. I want to give a survey of some ways 3D content can be experienced in a Cardboard VR app but I'm not going to go super in-depth with any of them because each one is its own endless rabbit hole. The biggest hurdle, especially for making an app for iOS (as opposed to Android) is getting your Unity and XCode environment set up. Once that's working the rest is pure fun and amazement.