I referred heavily to Youtuber: Justin P Barnett
His entire channel is dedicated to teaching VR game design, this taught me core integrations and code which significantly sped up my learning process. He also hosts an active Discord group with lots of discussion on VR game development.
Here I begun to understand how to implement Maximo animations into unity. Just being able to walk around an animated object solidified my decision to use this software. At this point I was largely using 3d models from my last project, since the focus was on understanding the code needed to develop an interactive animated experience.
At this point I was not focussing on the look of the scenes, but simply gaining an understanding of interactions and physics which could be applied to my project.
Here I begun to implement climbing mechanisms as well as grabbable objects and physics. Interacting with objects gave a strong sense of presence within the scenes.
I couldn't find a good tutorial anywhere for how to successfully integrate Quill animations into a Unity project. This was essential in achieving my goal of a stylised interactive animated experience, so I decided to reach out to him personally and request he covers this subject:
I also spoke to Nick (from Studio Syro) about this integration and potential approaches to it, he said it would be covered in the future but not for a few months. This left me very lost, since I had learn the basics of each software, but without the ability to merge them my entire project lost direction.
Luckily, after a lot of hard work, I was able to figure it out. Finally implementing a Quill animated FBX file into Unity
I then discovered how to add collision and physics to my animated objects, which was a breakthrough moment because it meant they these animated objects could realistically interact with the surrounding scene.
[Particle systems and low gravity]
Here I was experimenting with particle effects, gravity manipulation and physics interactions
I then discovered how to use manoeuvrable terrain built in quill
Here I begun to learn Flock mechanisms, which would be very useful for adding 'life' to my scenes later on.