Improve your Space

The following section will go into the various ways you can take your space to the next level.

Most of these additions are optional, but will certainly improve your space in quality and performance. So once you are comfortable with all the basics of a Mona space, have a look at the options here and see how far you can take it.

Of the topics covered, Lightmapping, Reflection Probes, and Light Probes would be the ones that significantly improve the visual quality of a space.

Lightmapping

Lightmapping works by 'baking' high quality lighting into the scene while actually reducing the load on the computer. It will make the file size a little bigger, so there is (as always) a fair amount of balance to look at. But the space can look much better.

Reflection Probes

Reflection probes allow assets that use metallic and smoothness to reflect baked information in the environment. This is because WebGL does not allow realtime reflections as they are so expensive.

Light Probes

Light probes take the lighting information that is lightmapped, and allow that to affect dynamic objects in the space, such as the Avatars or animated assets. The lighting information is 'simpler', but it does allow dynamic objects to feel more a part of the environment, rather than the equivalent of someone in front of a blue screen in the 90's.

Prefabs

Prefabs are a technique that allows you to make one asset, and then use that as a template for copies of that around your space. By modifying the Prefab, it will update all of the assets in the space that use the same asset. This can save a lot of time. Prefabs are also easier to help performance of your space when used correctly.

Adding Audio

Unity allows you to add audio either as ambient noise, or events in the space. This tutorial covers how to add audio into your space.

Player Property Volumes (PPV's)

Player property Volumes is a tool that Mona uses that allow a builder to have some control over the Player (such as walk/run speed, jump height etc.) or Camera effects such as Bloom, Motion blur or Chromatic Aberration.

Warp Volumes

Warp Volumes are a tool that allow a builder to basically teleport a user anywhere in the space.

Reactor

Reactor is a tool that allows you to create interactivity in a Space as scripts are not allowed in Mona due to security concerns. Reactor basically tells an Animator on an object what to do, so assets in your space can trigger certain animations that you create.