Avattire (Unity 3D Professional Project)

My first foray into the world of mobile non-game apps !

Avattire is the second and last released mobile project I worked on in 2014 . I worked on it as a junior programmer with the Avattire team . My roles were primarily plugin integration , optimizing ap performance , making use of the many awesome features unity offers such as real-time shadows, and creating the Decal system in terms of grabbing new and pre-existing user photos and applying their images to character clothing .

While the world of creating apps is very different from making games , we built this project using the Unity 3D engine so I was able to get comfortable with my role very quickly . When I started on the project much of core dressing functionality existed and I was hired to incorporate plugins , possibly contribute ot some of the UI programming , and to further flesh out and build on what was already there in the project. Avattire is actually currently available on the iOS and Android app stores !

At its core the aim of Avattire is to give the user a chance to create a character and wardrobe that they can personalize and customize to their hearts content . with numerous tops , bottoms , and shoes to choose from and the chance to as well as the ability to modify your avatars height , weight, and ethnic characteristics you could recreate a virtual you if you wanted to !

One of the neat non-programming tasks I had was playing with the render settings of Unity to achieve Real-time shadows. I heard that the feature could really drag down performance of a game but in the case of Avattire their isn''t nearly as much going on in the background as there would be in a game . So as you can see on the back wall we have a real-time shadow that's cast on the wall making use of a very specifically placed light source .

Avattire has both male and female characters available to customize , though the female has more customization options available to her you can still come out with great looking male avatars too!

If I had to point to one feature in Avattire I really enjoyed implementing and became the apps " Hook " of sorts it has to be the ability to apply custom Decal images to the clothing of the characters . Using a combination of the prime 31 plugins , a very specific workflow for creating the characters outfits and the shaders they utilize , and figuring out a way to apply the users images to the given outfits texture we were able to give the user a chnce to not only use the pre-set clothers that come in the app but a chance to recreate their very own wardrobe !

In This case I plastered my face on this female avattires shirt !

The last time I worked on the project I believe avattire had nearly 50 different decalable outfit pieces from shirts and bags to pants and sneakers . here we have our avatar in an Avattire Dress!

This avatars Shirt has the main menu of one of the other titles I worked on on his chest , As you can see on the wall in the background we have the actual Photo of the current Decal texture just so the user can make sure the correct photo came through when they selected their picture .

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR THE GROTESQUE MONSTROSITY THAT FOLLOWS , DO NOT CONTINUE UNLESS YOU HAVE A STRONG STOMACH ! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I told you .....

Part of the fun of the decal system is that you can put whatever picture you want just about anywhere you want , here I am using the Decalable face feature on this poor female avaatar . If nothing else this will make for a nice ice breaker in future interviews haha !

Of the many plugin creators out there few are more beloved in the Unity community more than prime31 and over the duration of this project I probably used almost all of their major plugins for everything from recording user audio to sharing screenshots of our game through all sorts of social networks.

Here is my implementation of the Social Sharing plugin which made it really easy to give the user the opportunity to share their avatar with friends in a number of ways be it saving a new picture to send out later , posting it on facebook , e-mailing it or on android even using SMS to text the photo to their friends . One of the core desires for the avattire team was to promote sharing amongst the apps users and these plugins helped a ton .