Canvatorium Recap Four

Covering Labs 017-020 and a new Lab Menu feature.

A lot of the work in the early labs has been about making features for the Canvatorium project and this week continued that trend.

New Lab Menu

Expanding on some ideas from Lab 007 and 009, I started work on a new Lab Menu feature. This is imported into every lap via the LabPlayer feature described in Recap Two. I have a lot of plans for this feature in the future, but for now it only does a handful of things.

• Toggle the menu on/off with the Y button on a VR controller. This will position the menu near the left controller.
• Tab 1: Lab Info contains the Lab Number, Title, and Lab Notes. I use the notes to describe the purpose of the lap to visitors.
• Tab 2: Console Log is adapted directly from the example in Lab 007.

Working on a new menu system for Canvatorium.

✅ Lab Info tab with lab number, title, and notes
✅ Console log
✅ Toggle the menu with the Y button
❌ Only added to Lab 011 for now
❌ Not available on the server yet pic.twitter.com/s5BoaAF6ur

— Joseph Simpson (@vrhermit) February 15, 2022

Lab 017 – Surface Magnetism

Continuing my exploration of Babylon JS Behaviors, this lab has a simple box that can snap to the surface a card mesh. The box will follow the pointer if the pointer is on the card mesh. This follow behavior can be toggled on and off with the X button.

Canvatorium Lab 017 – Surface Magnetism

✅ Subject can snap the surface of the card
✅ Subject will follow the pointer while the pointer is on the card
✅ Toggle the following behavior
✅ Pickup the subject in either mode#BabylonJS #WebXR

🔗 https://t.co/AhjPNK1jxc pic.twitter.com/3au7ITzXNV

— Joseph Simpson (@vrhermit) February 17, 2022

Labs 018 and 019 – Babylon JS Actions

Babylon JS has an Actions feature that can be used to add interactivity to objects in a scene. These labs explore some of those actions and the triggers that execute them. Lab 019 was mostly used to test which triggers work in WebXR VR Mode. I have a full list here.

Canvatorium Lab 018 – Intro to Actions

✅ Subject 1 can run arbitrary code on pick trigger.
✅ Subject 2 will interpolate between two colors.
✅ Subject 3 will interpolate values on multiple nodes. Scene light/dark mode toggle.#BabylonjS #WebXR pic.twitter.com/TnyZrGuWby

— Joseph Simpson (@vrhermit) February 17, 2022

Lab 020 – Working with Assets

This is another utility lab with some examples of loading assets. I’ll use this lab in the future to try out various methods for loading models, textures, etc.

• Example 1 – load an image from the public folder
• Example 2 – load an image from the source/assets folder.

What is next?

Ove the last few weeks I’ve shaped the Canvatorium project into a usable workspace. Now that the basic structure is setup and working, it’s time to turn my attention to working on some of the UI/UX demos that I want to build. That is the purpose of the project after all… I haven’t decided on what I’m going to work on next, but I’ve narrowed it down to two ideas.

1. Extended Collection Labs – a VR client interface for the Extended Collection, based on the prototype that I build during A Vue into 3D.
2. ToDoist Client Interface – ToDoist is at the center of how I work. It is a vital tool that I use to organize my projects, tasks, and life in general. I have a ton of ideas for how to build a spatial UI using ToDoist data.

Both ideas would be developed as separate projects in another repo, but I plan on using Canvatorium Labs to develop features and controls for them.