In this Quick Start Guide, we will be talking through how to set up an edify lesson, ready to be broadcasted to your students. If you have not yet imported your lesson content, like 3D models and videos, you can refer to our Quick Start: Preparing Your Lesson guide.
When you first enter you lesson, you will be presented bythe default environment, Lecture Theatre 1. For information on how to move around the lesson for both desktop and VR mode, please refer to our controls help page. For this guide, we will be creating in VR, but everything can also be achieved in desktop mode.
The first thing you will see when entering your lesson is the Lectern. The lectern contains all the basic functionality of your lesson, including adding objects into your lesson and starting your broadcast. You can always summon the lectern if you need it by pressing Summon lectern in desktop mode or pressing the correct button on your VR controller.
edify lessons are split into different scenes. Each of these scenes can use a different environment or the same environment several times. Each new scene will also not contain the same objects, meaning that you should duplicate your scene if you would like to keep your objects.
For our example lesson, we are going to use three scenes. The first scene will be in a Lecture Theatre, followed by a scene in the same lecture theatre but with the models we imported earlier. The final scene will take place in the holodeck environment, showing our video file.
Based on our lesson plan, the first step is to create three separate scenes. You do this by clicking on the Scenes tab of the lectern and then clicking on Add new scene to add each new scene. To move between scenes one at a time, you can click on Next scene and Previous scene. To skip around scenes, you can also click on Go To Scene.
Now that we have added our scenes, we can choose an environment for each. You can use as many environments as you have scenes or use the same environment multiple times. As environments can vary in size and shape, any content you have added to a scene will be removed if you change its environment. For this reason, it is important to carefully consider your environment before adding objects.
To change your environment, click on the Environment tab. Your panel should show you all the environments that you have access to, including edify’s downloadable library and any custom environments you have imported. For our current lesson, we will be using the default lecture theatre environment for the first two scenes and selecting the holodeck environment for the third scene.
Our next step is to begin populating the scene with the content that we imported earlier. You can do this by clicking on the Objects tab on the lectern or banner. Choose which object you would like to add from the options on the panel and click on Place. This will bring the object into the scene.
When you add a 2D object, they are placed onto an edify Board. These boards have default positions within each environment and may not appear in your eye-line. Once they have spawned, however, you can move them wherever you like. For information on how to use boards and 2D content, please go to our edify Boards support article.
When you add a 3D object, it will be spawned in front of you, ready to be placed. Like the edify Boards, you have the option to move, rotate, and change the size of the model. Depending on the file type of the object, you may also be presented with additional menus to interact with the object. For a full guide on the types of 3D objects and how they can be used in the Lesson Creator, you can go to our 3D model support article.
In this guide we have covered creating our lesson, setting up our scenes and environments, and adding our content. Feel free to spend some time at this step, perfecting your lesson. It can be hard to adjust from teaching lessons in real life. Once you are ready to start presenting to your students, move onto our Quick Start: Broadcasting Your Lesson guide.