ARCHIMATIX PRO Node-based Parametric Modeling for Unity [Unity Awards Finalist]

I'd be very tempted to pick up a bundle of your current and future node packs. Jus' saying...

 

Hey @Akshara
Thanks, I really appreciate that and means a lot to me. I really enjoy Archimatix and everything it brings to the table, and helping open up its possabilities, glad you are enjoying everything i make so much.

Sounds like tomorrow I should put together a bundle package perhaps.


Thanks again everyone for the support, much appreciated, and hope you all are enjoying the nodes.

 

Got this working pretty well now I think. Archimatix does 3d planets!

 

This is quite teh awesomeness, yo.

I've always wanted to make a modeling program do this, but it's pretty awesome AX can do it inside Unity now.



...but can AX do parametric "FreeCurves" yet...? D:


<sarcasm>


#roryoGetToWork
^ if you don't tweet or repost this 72 times something will (might) happen to a (baby?) panda.


</sarcasm>

And yes, @RuinsOfFeyrin -- I think a bundle might be appropriate! Been wondering when you might get around to it! ^__^

 

Hey Fellow AX users,

I have another fun new node that is coming to the Mesh & Material Nodes package thanks to a suggestion by @brisingre

It is intended for users working on projects with a "low poly" feel to help them easily give their end models that Low Poly look without having to adjust settings on other nodes.

I present the AX_Low Poly Node.





Here we have Archimatix's "MeshingExamples" library item.

The group in the front is the standard library item, and the group in the back is the same set of library items after being feed in to a "low poly" node. As you can see by doing nothing more then feeding it in to the low poly node you now get that low poly look to the item.

Basically the node goes through and makes sure every triangle has a unique vertex's, and assigns the vertex normal to that of the face normal, which gives you the nice Low Poly look. Keep in mind this (like most low poly meshes) requires more vertex's then your standard welded mesh.

[EDIT]
On a side note, if there is anyone out there who is particularly good at making icons who is interested in any of my packs, but hasn't gotten them, please contact me and perhaps we can work out some sort of trade as I am awful at creating proper icons for the nodes and it they generally look like i let a three year old design them in ms paint.

 

Just to clarify: You can control the low-poly look to some degree in AX using the breakAngles on shape inputs for both geometry and normals. Geometry and normal breakAngles should be both set to zero for a faceted, low-poly look. You can have low geometry break angles with high normal breakAngles to break the UVs, but still have smoothing. Or you can have both high to weld the vertices together.


The break angles are can be controlled from the slider under and input shape foldout:


What @RuinsOfFeyrin new node will do that AX doesn't do at the moment is (in addition to making it simpler so you don't have to adjust these breakAngles) is break the triangle edge, the diagonal of the quads as well. This would will really shine with when the output of a Deformer node is fed into a low-poly node.

 

Hey Everyone,

Can anyone guess where this might be going?

And yes, the image in the texture Merger is a single image. Not multiple images overlapped on each other.

 

Wow, awesome! Is that primarily for decals (ie star added to the base material), or will it do overlays of materials with transparency/translucency and blends as well?

 

All that and then some hopefully.

In the end i dream of the collections of nodes allowing you to achieve something like a substance designer / surforge mashup that is parametric and designed specifically for AX, if not a bit watered down cause lets face it either one of those projects is impressive in size and a bit much for me to truly replicate on my own in AX, but it will be a step in the right direction.

And yes this does eventually include the ability to unwrap/map UV's in a more typical fashion then AX currently offers.

These first nodes are the first steps in that direction. Initially the capabilities will be more in line with adding decals and such, but as the node set grows i want to include the ability to take multiple materials (and thus there underlying textures) and be able to cut them up, mix them up, blend, and mask the hell out of them and produce a new set of textures/material that is parametric in nature and adjusts the the geometry of your mesh.

This should allow people to create new textures much quicker, as well as create texture mashups that can help reduce draw calls.

 

Just finishing a new node called ShapeCombinator.


Whereas ShapeMerger is a boolean node, operating on closed shapes, for the most part, ShapeCombinator daisy-chains open shapes, connecting the last point of each to the first point of the next.

This means that you can feed the source shapes into other nodes separately, while having a super shape to use as well.



If the last and first points of consecutive shapes are separated, ShapeCombinator adds a line connecting them. It the points are near each other, it welds them.

Here we have the tall walls extruded from two shapes that are themselves fed into a ShapeCombinator and then used as the plan for a PlanSweep at the base.



Another nifty trick ShapeCombinator allows is the cross-bracing on this truss. A LinearRepeater2D of vertical lines is clipped by the BridgeShape and then fed into a ShapeCombinator. The shape Combinator then connects ends to beginnings of the row of lines and serves as a plan for a PlanSweep.



Half the truss shape is made and then fed into a PairRepeater2D with Symmetry turned on.

And this time, I added a feature and a (basic) manual page at the same time!

This node has been planned for a while now, but many thanks to @awesomedata for getting this on the front burner!

 

here is a suggestion (if it's not implemented already):

I think there is a very basic UX thing missing on Archimatix, I cannot find any button or way to enter Add Point mode in the free curve node, the only way is right after you create a new free curve node, so many times I create the node and don't go directly to add points, and then I realize I have to delete the node and add a new one to be able to add points.

two main things unfold from this:

1) FreeCurve node should have an "Add New Point" option somewhere (or at least with a combination of keys like shift+control+LMB)

2) the Add New Point should be present both when there is no points in the curve and also when there is points, although you can create new points grabing the middle point as the docs says, it would be still really useful to be able to just add new points by clicking somewhere, and this new points could be connected to the ending point or last point added to the freecurve

 

How timely. Myself and a couple other AX users have been talking about this tool's UX over the last few days.

The free curve tool has been broken for as long as I've been using AX. On the bright side, I think your problem might be related to the same one I've been having, which has to do with the vert count being off by one on shapes with two verts. In your case, I bet it doesn't let you add a point because it thinks there are 0 verts in your shape. Might want to confirm this, but I'm almost certain this is the case.

To see the problem I've had since the start of AX, create a new free curve and immediately add 2 points to create a line. Look at the vert count on the node after you switch to another note. On mine, it reads as 1 vert. You can't click in the middle to add a new point there to subdivide the line because AX thinks there's only a single vert, so it tries to draw a new line from the last point it created instead of breaking the shape up into a more defined section by adding a vert in the middle like it's supposed to. The tool works fine for 3 or more points usually, but anything less than 3, it gets wonky.

So yeah, I'm sure your issue is just this long standing bug that I'm currently having issues with.

Hopefully @roryo will take a look and fix it soon. The free curve tool needs some love, considering it's the backbone of AX for many users. After all, not everyone bought AX solely for the 'magic' of moving existing shapes around. This is where I would remind roryo that parameterization on the free curve tool's verts would be helpful to people like us, who love the parametric concept of AX, but prefer to use it a little differently than was intended.

 

Hi @Cleverlie - I just added an "Add Point" button to the scene view that is visible whenever the FreeCurve is selected. Hope this helps.



@awesomedata - the inaccurate vert count that was off by one was not just FreeCurve but on all shapes. This was preventing a shape with two verts from being drawn. The count has been fixed and, as you can see in the gif above, when the FreeCurve has only two verts, it is now displayed in the thumbnail.

Will post an update to the slack in a couple hours. @Cleverlie - if you would like to join the slack.com site for AX to get access to these intermediate build, please PM me your AssetStore invoice ID and an email address to send the slack invite to.

Evaluating making FreeCurve points parametric now...

 

Woohoo!

WOOHOO!!!

 

Getting there....

 

Are there any plans to bring the node editor into runtime? How soon can we expect this feature?

 

YES!. How soon though I am not sure. I have a working runtime editor. The problem is it is not feature complete.
For instance the use of animation curves on the nodes that use them is not supported since there is no animation curve runtime UI currently (i need to make one).

The biggest issue with releasing it is "time". There is a significant investment to keep it "up to date" with the most current version of AX, not to mention the other packages i have released, and projects i am working on.

Originally it is supposed to be part of a whole AX runtime package i have been working on, but the project has been delayed due to animation curves, and interest in other tools for AX.

I'm also torn (input from anyone would be great), as to what a price for such a thing should be. Realistically there is a LOT of work that went in to it, and more to maintain it, so the price in my head is kinda high compared to my other packages but reasonable from my standpoint, however I always feel a bit bad anytime a high price tag comes to mind cause i know everyhow has already dropped a decent amount of money on AX in the first place.

 

maybe you should unite forces with AX developer/developers and unify everything in a single tool, AX with everything included, increase the price tag of AX a bit and both benefit from the hardwork, because is as you said, you cannot keep tracking all small changes and details in someone else's asset to keep yours up to date, and pretend to charge too much because of it, people as customers will not understand to pay 100+ usd for an asset and then again 100+ for the neat additions, just because the original asset doesn't have them right out of the box. is like the work you did with all the archimatix addons assets feels like it should be out of the box ready in the main asset, why would not unite forces with roryo in that sense?

 

Hi @roryo

Does archimatix support Boolean operations. Can I make two archimatix objects and do a boolean operation between them?

 

Hi @shikhrr - Ax currently has only 2D booleans (called ShapeMerging) and would stray from Ax's focus on realtime/runtime editing. 3D booleans are an order of magnitude more computationally intensive, but it would be great to have that at some point.

2D booleans are in some ways more powerful that 3D in terms of generative geometry, whereas 3D booleans (CSG) are more powerful in brush-based applications for polygonal editing.

Here are some examples of what you can do in Ax with 2D booleans to generate 3D meshes:











Keep in mind that the above examples do not use 3D booleans/CSG

 

Hey @Cleverlie,

100% true statement sir and i couldn't agree more. This is the source of much anxiety on my end when it comes to pricing my assets. Trying to balance a reasonable payout for my time investment, while accounting for unity's cut, and still trying to be as fair as possible given everyone has already paid a hefty price for the original assets.

Thank you, that is quite a compliment to me as giving all my nodes and tools that feel has been what i strive for with each and everyone of them.

My main goal is to make AX as awesome as possible by creating quality nodes, tools, and improvements for it and am totally open to collaborating in any way roryo sees fit.

Thanks for the feedback, its always appreciated.

 

This might seem like an off request but is there any chance you can move your code under a Plugins folder (I think you just need to move Archimatix/Scripts -> Archimatix/Plugins/Scripts )? For those us who have a lot of active development having most 3rd party projects work out of the plugins space greatly increases compile time in unity. I don't think there is a really big downside for you, but its a huge upside for those of us doing lots of script development outside of plugins.

 

I may as well mention that there will be a new solution to this sort of thing in 2017.3.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/example-project-assembly-definition-files.482313/

 

Check out the new manual page for PrefabInstancer

 

Made a little progress on the node graph editor optimizations and improvements today. Here is an experiment of reducing the node plates to mini nodes when zooming out.

Alternatively, it could be that when you click on a node, you expand it and otherwise it is a mini node.

 

Hey Everyone,

So I've been working on something for the past few days that is apparently very similar to what rory posted Just hadnt gotten around to posting any screenshots yet, So ill start with a screenshot.



As you can see, Nodes are collapsed to simply their name, their thumbnail, some details across the bottom, and their ACTIVE connections only.


Nodes have the ability to toggle back and forth between this view, and the standard AX view on an individual basis.

You are able to edit the node while it is in this state by using the new "Node Control" editor window.
The new node control window allows you to view and edit the parameters, sub parameters, add parameters, and edit turtle script code of a node just like you would normally on the node, but allows you to do so from a separate editor window you can move around and resize and position as you see fit. Editing TurtleScript in the new Node Control window is exceptionally nice since you have plenty of room without making your node super huge!

So keep an eye out for this as its getting uploaded in one of my node packages tonight


Shape Logic Nodes is also getting an update tonight, and another updated for mesh and material nodes is hopefully due out this week as well!

 

@RuinsOfFeyrin

Heya just wondering if you were still considering creating an all-in-one package for your nodes... Thx!

 

Yes, this package is being uploaded this week as well. I needed to make sure all the packages could have their directory structures moved around in the project without causing issues since unity requires things to be packaged a certain way. I just need to finish up making sure all the stuff in the Pro Tools & Nodes package is working 100% and then its all good to go.

 

Hey @roryo, apologies in advance if this has already been asked and answered, but will AX support the creation of meshes with more than 65K vertices, once 2017.3 is out of beta? I was thinking of doing something like making really high poly meshes for baking maps (e.g., normal, AO) outside of Unity for use on lower poly LOD versions. Totally conceptual at this point (I'm still such a 3D newbie), but thought I'd toss it out there as an idea.

 

Hi @chiapet1021 - AX doesn't limit the vertices, and since it makes standard Unity Meshes, then we should benefit automatically from the raised limit in 2017.3

 

Are they getting rid of the 65K limit in 2017.3?

 

Yep, according to their roadmap, they have 32-bit mesh index buffers for 2017.3. It's like an insanely huge number of vertices with 32 bits, I believe (assuming your machine can render it all lol).

 

Sick! That'll make a big difference for me. I'm up against that 65K limit all the time, something to do with having a whole planet as one mesh...

 

I'm having trouble with baked lighting on models made with Archimatix. After getting a model to the point of being happy with the results, I'm checking the box for creating a secondary UV maps for GI...


After a few seconds of being ticked, it becomes unticked (but as per the info on the web site, this is normal and happens once everything has been set up?). Whether I click the stamp or the prefab button to export a version of the model, that stamp or prefab a) does not have lightmap static ticked, and b) has a problem with baked lighting.

Specifically, I'm running into black splotchy bits that get baked into the model if lights in the scene are set to either baked or mixed.



From what I've been able to gather through web searches, this is happening because the lightmap UV's are overlapping? How can I fix this, as well as avoid it in the future?

 

Let me check to see if the stamp is generating secondary uv’s before making its copy. It might not be at the moment.

 

As it turns out, the stamp does create maintain the secondary UVs, however, if the check box switches to off, then that means that the model has rebuilt for some reason and then does not have the secondary UVs. The model build event may fire for various reasons, so it may be best to check the generate UVs and then immediately click stamp. Let me know if this works.



I wish UV2s could be added on every build, but the process adds a second or two of lag each time it is done (and on larger models can be 5-10 seconds).

I could also make a checkbox "Stamps and Prefabs always has UV2s" that ensures that, when you click the stamp button, it adds the secondary UVs overtime.

 

A really good idea imo. You should make it visible/prominent though.

 

Awesomeness! Congrats on the awards. Subscribed.

 

roryo, did you say that you were working with some other CSG asset author to make it compatible with Archimatix? I seem to remember this being mentioned but I can't find it.

 

Hi @logixworx - it seems that all the msg solutions that are realtime have a constraint of working only with convex forms. I have also tried an open source msg library that does not have this constraint, but it crashed Unity. Still on the look out for a solution. I am hoping that Unity might provide some basic, low-level mesh operators at some point, which would be great to have it native.

 

Hi roryo , do you have any plans to consider below two features :

1. Animating Node Object, i mention it in previous Post #2167 , you said "coming very soon is the ability to add any behavior you have scripted to any node" , so does upcoming version will support it ? if so,will node's animation can have relation with other node's ? the case is just want one node animate limited by other node's parameter/handler's position.
2. How about the feature to place some prefabs on Node Object ? such as Books as in attachment . don't got a idea how to do this (seems 'PlanRepeater' can't handle this situation), because we can procedural generate row/column of the shelves , the worse case for this is the books is embedded in the row/column object.

Looking forward for your answer , thanks.

 

Hi @xj1982xj -

1. Yes, v 1.0.11 due out this coming week supports adding custom behaviors to node. Each node has a section to add prototype GameObjects or Prefabs. When the node generates a GameObject, it will comply any components found on a prototype to the new GO. To have attached components have references to other GameObjects, you can stamp your model out and then connect various GameObjects (whether generated by AX or not) to the components on your generated GameObjects.

2. To use Prefabs in the node graph, you can use the PrefabInstancer, which is included in the current version of AX on the asset store.

 

I have a question does it work in runtime. For example I define some rules with nodes and provide shapes at runtime? Or is it possible to build node graph from script?

 

Yes, it works at runtime and you can create procedural models, and even animate the changes.

This was my first experiment animating runtime Archimatix controlled by Playmaker:

Procedural models can be very complex, and you can expose just about any parameter and assign it to a variable controlled by whatever external system. You can also link up internal parameters relations to control other model parameters (math formulas, for instance). However, at the moment they are not quite generated from "scratch" as there has to be some internal node structure (to my knowledge, you cannot add "new" nodes from external code but you can manipulate what is there including turning it on/off).

This is an example of a more complex procedural model that evolved from the animated model in the video. In addition to the external shape, it adds interior walls and randomized room lights:

 

Love these - thanks for reposting them, @wetcircuit!

 

Hit a perplexing but somewhat photogenic bug while optimizing the TerrainStamper!

 

Ok - the bug with TerrainStamper is fixed and it is lightening fast now for any size terrain!

 

I make a simple custom node for the vertex color, here is the screenshot:

And here is the code, in case anybody needs it.

 

Right now Archimatix is 50% off in the Asset Store Mega Sale!

 

Thanks for posting this, @dearamy! I tried it out only to realize that AX parameters didn't have a colorVal yet. I just added one, along with the GUI support and serialization support for library items. The color option for parameters will be in v 1.0.11 to be released in the next couple of days. What shader did you use?