Adding breakout areas to your region
Breakroom's prefab breakout areas make event setup easy. Learn how to add extra breakout spaces to your region, enable and manage key conference features, and customize camera angles.
Two breakout spaces and a workshop added to a region.
Breakroom's prefab breakout, meeting, and workshop spaces (collectively referred to as the Breakroom Breakout Area objects, or breakout areas) come with voice zones and conference tools pre-installed. Each breakout area object you install in your region will automatically receive its own custom Zone ID, Zone Color, and a unique Zone Name that will be added to the Breakout Rooms bar. These options can be changed to suit the needs of your project.
After using the Region Editor to add or edit a breakout area, always remember to click the Save button to store your changes. You can then click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system. If this doesn't seem to push your changes forward, try leaving the region and entering it again.
A selection of prefab breakout rooms, booths, offices, and workshops can be found in your starter bundle. Detailed descriptions of each Breakroom Breakout Area object are also available.
You can add any of the Breakroom breakout areas to your region using the Region Editor. Detailed instructions for using the Region Editor are available here; the instructions below are provided for reference.
- 1.Log in to your Breakroom world and navigate your avatar to the region you would like to edit.
- 2.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 3.
- 4.Locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to use. Add it to your region using your preferred method.
- 1.The breakout area will automatically receive its own Zone ID, Zone Color, and a unique Zone Name. If you want to edit any of these properties, please refer to the section below.
- 6.When you are satisfied, click the Save button to store your changes.
- 7.Click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system.
The Objects and Inspector windows. Notice how the highlighted Breakroom Breakout Area A object is tagged with both its Zone ID and Zone Name.
If you add multiple copies of any object to your region, you will notice that every copy is automatically identified by the same name in the Objects window. The same is true of breakout area and voice zone objects. However, to facilitate region setup and management, these objects will acquire two additional information tags after installation.
You can also manually edit an object's Display Name to something unique. In the example image above, a breakout area has been set up and its Display Name changed to Blue Team Room. However, because its Zone ID and Zone Name still follow breakout area/voice zone conventions, the conferencing system knows to treat this area as a breakout room and to include it in the Breakout Rooms bar.
To change an object's Display Name, follow these steps.
- 1.Log in to your Breakroom world and navigate your avatar to the region you would like to edit.
- 2.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 3.
- 4.In the Objects window, locate the object you want to edit. (Tip: You can use the search field at the top of the window to search for a specific object.) Click on the object name to launch the Inspector window.
- 5.In the Inspector window, enter the desired display name into the Display Name field.
- 6.When you are satisfied, click the Save button to store your changes.
As noted in the introduction to this page, breakout areas are designed to set themselves up automatically. However, you may run into situations where you need to change some breakout area details. To do this, you will need to locate and edit the RoomFurniture component.
The RoomFurniture component, expanded to display all 15 fields.
The RoomFurniture component contains several properties that directly influence how a particular breakout area looks and behaves. To locate the RoomFurniture component, please follow the steps below.
- 1.Log in to your Breakroom world and navigate your avatar to the region you would like to edit.
- 2.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 3.
- 4.In the Objects window, locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to edit. (Tip: You can use the search field at the top of the window to search for a specific object.) Click on the object name to launch the Inspector window.
- 5.In the Inspector window, locate the RoomFurniture component. Expand this component by clicking the > arrow located to the left of its name.
The RoomFurniture component properties are covered in more detail in our RoomFurniture component documentation. There you can learn how to enable or disable chat in voice zones, adjust the screen aspect ratio and size, change a breakout space's zone type, and other advanced tricks.
For the purposes of quick region setup, this page will focus on the following properties:
- Zone ID: The ID number of the audio zone associated with the breakout area.
- Zone Name: The name/room number associated with the audio zone.
- Zone Color: The color of the breakout area and its corresponding teleport button.
There are certain situations where you may want to manually change the values in these property fields.
If two breakout areas or voice zones are assigned the same Zone ID, users in those areas will be considered to be within the same zone, even if they are separated by the entire length of a region. Such a setup may result in cross-talk and general confusion.
Alternatively, you may install several breakout areas using the Region Editor, each of which will automatically receive a Zone ID number. You may then find that you wish to re-order these—for example, to create consistent groupings for more efficient region management.
If you encounter a situation like this and want to resolve it, you can do so by following these steps.
- 1.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 2.
- 3.Locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to edit in the Objects window, and click on it. This will open the Inspector window for that object.
- 4.Expand the RoomFurniture component in the Inspector window by clicking the > icon located to the left.
- 5.Locate the Zone ID property. In the associated field, enter the ID number you wish to use for that breakout area.
- 6.Click the Save button to store your changes.
- 7.Click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system.
Each breakout area has a Zone Name in the format of "Breakout N," where N is a unique numeral. This name relays several important pieces of information to the Breakroom conferencing system. Most importantly, it indicates:
- 1.
- 2.How many breakout areas there are, and which number identifies this particular breakout area.
An example Breakout Rooms bar.
There may be times when you want to manually edit the teleport button lineup—for instance, if the first breakout area you set down (which automatically became "Breakout 1" and was assigned to the "1" button) has been moved to a far-off area, and you'd rather make it "Breakout 5." Alternatively, you may wish to create a custom voice zone and add it to the Breakout Rooms bar.
You can edit the Zone Name by following the steps below.
- 1.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 2.
- 3.Locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to edit in the Objects window, and click on it. This will open the Inspector window for that object.
- 4.Expand the RoomFurniture component in the Inspector window by clicking the > icon located to the left.
- 5.Locate the Zone Name property. In the associated field, enter a new name for the breakout area. This name must be input as "Breakout N," where N is the new number.
- 6.Click the Save button to store your changes.
- 7.Click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system.
If you set down a new prefab breakout area, it will automatically assign itself a unique Zone Color. This color will be applied to the actual breakout space, and will also be used as the teleport button background color in the Breakout Rooms bar.
If you want to change a breakout area's color, you can do so by following these steps.
- 1.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 2.
- 3.Locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to edit in the Objects window, and click on it. This will open the Inspector window for that object.
- 4.Expand the RoomFurniture component in the Inspector window by clicking the > icon located to the left.
- 5.Locate the Zone Color property. In the associated field, enter any of the following colors:
- 1.Blue
- 2.Orange
- 3.White
- 4.Grey
- 5.Magenta
- 6.Teal
- 7.Black
- 8.Cyan
- 9.Red
- 10.Purple
- 11.Pink
- 12.Green
- 13.Yellow
- 6.Click the Save button to store your changes.
- 7.Click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system.
If you want to change the hexadecimal code associated with any of these color keywords, you can find instructions by visiting our RoomFurniture component documentation.
Duplicate zone errors can occur while editing breakout areas and custom voice zones. Please see this page for detailed troubleshooting information.
All of Breakroom's voice zones, including the starter bundle of breakout areas and booths, come equipped with cameras. These cameras integrate seamlessly with our gesture and camera controls, allowing users to switch between a variety of camera angles while seated.
An example of the gesture and camera system UI.
In the image above, the user has clicked the Audience Camera button (highlighted in red). The camera has therefore snapped to an elevated third person position in order to show the whole of the audience space.
The Behind Camera and Forward Camera are fixed relative to the user. However, the angle and location of the Speaker Camera, Screen Camera, and Audience Camera can be customized to support your individual needs.
The same Workshop area, viewed in Region Editor.
In the image above, we can see the location of these cameras in the Region Editor. There are three cameras, each represented by a 3D camera icon bounded by a translucent box. The box color corresponds to the camera type, and these colors are consistent between all voice zones and breakout areas.
Box Color | Camera Name | Camera Focus |
|---|---|---|
Orange | Audience | The audience as a whole. |
Blue | Screen | The presentation screen. |
Green | Speaker | The presenting speaker's avatar. |
The static audience camera selected in Region Editor. Notice how the movement gizmo is centered on it.
If you want to change the angle of any of these cameras, you can do so by following the instructions below.
Note: In this section, we will refer to the built-in camera that you want to move as the static camera, and your own user camera as the working camera.
- 1.Open the Region Editor by clicking the Edit Region button at the bottom of your screen.
- 2.
- 3.Locate the Breakroom Breakout Area object you want to edit in the Objects window. Click the V icon to the left of the object name to expand it.
- 4.Locate the Breakroom Voice Zone object, and click the V icon to the left of the object name to expand it.
- 5.Locate the Cameras object, and click the V icon to the left of the object name to expand it.
- 6.Click on the static camera you want to move (either the Screen Camera, Audience Camera, or Speaker Camera). This static camera will be highlighted on your screen, and the movement gizmo will center on it.
The working camera in fly cam mode, focusing on the Workshop from a different angle.
7. Leaving the static camera object selected, move your working camera into position. This angle and position will replace the current angle of the selected static camera.
8. Click the "Move Object to Camera" button located in the bottom toolbar. The static camera will snap into its new position.
The audience camera now focuses on the front of the audience.
9. Click the Save button to store your changes.
10. Click the Reset Zones button to reset the conferencing system. To make sure your UI is refreshed, exit the breakout area or voice zone. When you return to that zone, your new camera angle will now be accessible.