VR/AR Summit Hackathon Guidelines
Last updated
Last updated
Welcome to the VR/AR Summit Hackathon Guidelines! Virbe's team will be more than happy If you incorporate virtual beings into your excellent idea. This guide will provide you with basic information on how to create and set up virtual being for your project.
During the Hackathon, all of the participants will get access to the Virbe platform. Go to the login page and create your account.
After you log in, you'll be presented with the dashboard where you can create and customise your first Virtual Being. The creation process consists of three steps: appearance selection, skillset selection (conversational engine), summary.
Currently, Virbe platform supports three types of Avatars. Custom Virbe characters, Ready Player Me characters - Cross-game avatars from Wolf 3D - and Unreal Meta Human characters. For the purpose of this Hackathon we have limited selection of 3D avatars to Ready Player Me characters to provide as much customisation as possible while limiting unnecessary trouble shooting.
In the first step of Being Creation, pick Ready Player Me import option. This is where you're going to import your Ready Player Me Creation.
Head out to https://virbe.readyplayer.me/avatar to create your custom avatar. When you're happy with your creation click Next and generate link to your characters model. Account creation is optional in this step.
Inside Virbe Panel, paste the link of your generated 3D model, pick a name for your character and chose a voice. When you're done click Next and proceed to the next step.
In the next step, you can pick the conversational engine that will be used to support knowledge of your virtual being. During this Hackathon we suggest to use Google Dialogflow conversation engine. This will provide you the greatest flexibility and reduce unnecessary [Steps ?]. If you have access to your own custom chatbot already feel free to use it instead.
After selecting Google Dialogflow head out to [Link] and setup your first Dialogflow project.
After creating your first project paste Project ID and project API Key into the Virbe Platform.
On the summary screen, you will see a quick overview of your Virtual Being and available subscription plans. During the Hackathon feel free to use the Trial plan, which is completely free for 14 days. You don't need to provide any payment information. When you're ready click Next to save this Virtual Being.
Important: due to our policy we have restricted the number of generated trial virtual beings to one per user. You won't be able to create multiple virtual beings for free. However, you'll be able to modify your already created trial being.
After completing the creation process click on the card of your newly generated Virtual Being. In the top left part of the overview screen, you'll see the Conversation Status component. Click "Start" to launch your virtual being. This process may take up to several minutes. You'll get notified via e-mail after the process is complete.
Now it's time to preview interactions with Virtual Being. Before any deployment, you can use the Virbe platform's built-in preview features. You can choose either full-screen preview or widget preview. This will open up a new page with Virbe widget opened in the proper mode. After the plugin loads in you should be able to talk with your Virtual Being. If you've followed this tutorial from the beginning your Virtual Being should be connected with your Google Dialogflow project.
If you provide the wrong chatbot endpoint URL or you've skipped any of the steps above your Virtual Being will respond "I couldn't use the defined endpoint, check if it is properly configured or contact the support".
If you would like to use your Virtual Being in a Unity project head out to Unity Integration page in Virbe documentation.
Now you can focus on your Hackathon project! As long as your Virtual Being is up and running you can test all of your project progress by talking to the Virtual Being. If you would like to learn more about how to embed your character on a website head out to the Deploy Being section. Good luck!
Web Integration
