Project Graveyard – Devlog 010

Now featuring Moths, with new light color option, and improvements to rain.

I’m working the next update for Project Graveyard. Before adding new features I wanted to spend some time knocking out some items on my change list.

Lighting Options

I revised the settings for lighting options. The mode option is now a navigation picker with details about each mode. We always use environment lighting, with options to add extra light using a Directional Light.

I added a new Light Color menu as well. The color selected here will be applied to any Lamp Posts in the graveyard, as well as to the directional light.

I played with the idea of separate light settings per lamp, but it just looked bad. I may add more light colors before launching this, but I think the ones I selected work well with the existing assets.

Particles

I replaced the old raindrops with a new particle system. I used the rain template from Reality Composer Pro and adjusted it to work in local scale with my volume content.

I also added some moths to fly around the Lamp Posts. The image I used is not open so I can’t share it here. But I can walk through the process. I started with this amazing image in Adobe Express. Adding this as single image looked pretty good, but I wanted some movement on the moths.

Particles can animate if we provide an image with multiple frames. I created a 2 x 6 grid with slight changes for each frame. I just scaled and rotated the image a bit.

In Reality Composer Pro, when we turn on the Is Animated option we get some new settings. I entered the rows and columns, changed the mode to Auto Reverse, and set the frame rate low.

The result is a fluttering effect that I think works well. There is always room to improve, but this will work for now.

It took some trial and error, but I set up the particle system so the moths fly around without clipping through the lamp. They all spawn on the surface of a sphere away from the lamp. A vortex makes them fly around, and attraction value draws them in. At the same time, some drag pulls them up. They fade our before they can get close enough to bump into the lamp.

Other changes

• Closed the bottom of the obelisk model.
• Closed the bottom of the Lamp Post
• Split the glass into a second entity. In DEVLOG 006 I documented how I used two materials on the same mesh in Blender. Unfortunately, this resulted in an asset that was difficult to (or impossible) to select via code.
• When using direct manipulation, we skip the billboard component that we add when using indirect mode.

I uploaded version 3.2 build 1 to TestFlight. It should be available soon.

Demo Video