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

Fantastic tool you have here! While I presume the uv scales are adjustable what is the default UV scale set to? Do you have a global default texel buget ie: 1 unity unit = 256px etc..?

 

Thanks, @shaderbytes! Yes, your presumption is correct - you can scale and shift u and v's independently. u and v values are mapped architecturally, meaning that they wrap around corners and cross over seams they way one might think. There is no global telex budget. The default scale is 5 units (meters) has a u-value of 1, so if your texture is 1024 px wide, then it would be 1024/5 px/unit. The ups scale and shift is done either by sliding the parameters in the TextureTool node or by manipulating the texture handle in the SceneView.

Here are three versions of the same parametric object, with differing texture scales:

 

Great that its all scalable , but based on what I quoted above the default calculation does not factor image resolution? Dont you think it would be better to have a texel budget per unit as default instead? I dabbled with building a much simpler tool than yours a few years ago but the same sort of path extrusions etc and at the time read up on other tools within the industry and it seemed that texel budget was the manner to define defaults for uv scales. This would really matter for people who have textures that are designed according to texel/unit sizes.

Parts of my code using texel budgeting was like this , somewhere I found this number "1.28" units per 512px , from a technical point of view I'm not sure why it was suggested but regardless it can be changed anyway :

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. float texelRatio = 0.78125f; // 1.28 world units for maximum texel density ( 1f/1.28f)
3. float texelRatioToPixelBaseline = 512f; // 1.28 world units mapped to 512 pixels
4.  
5. UTexelRatio =texelRatioToPixelBaseline / tex.width;
6. VTexelRatio = texelRatioToPixelBaseline / tex.height;
7.  
8. public  Vector2 GetUVPoint(Vector3 vertex){
9.         Vector2 UVPoint = Vector2.zero;
10.         UVPoint.x = UVPointStart.x+((vertex.x* texelRatio)*UTexelRatio);// you could multiply by a normalized scalar here aswell
11.         UVPoint.y = UVPointStart.y+((vertex.y* texelRatio)*VTexelRatio);// you could multiply by a normalized scalar here aswell
12.         return UVPoint;
13.      
14.     }
15.  
16.  
17.  

Not telling you what to do, just offering an suggestive opinion I think would make the tool even better in regards to the default uv scale calculation.

Let me know what you think , you can google around about it as well.

 

i found a reference to 512 been used , here you can see its a default in CRYEngine :

http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC2/Texels+Per+Meter

 

@shaderbytes, you are bringing this up at the perfect time, since, although I was going to add more texture mapping features in a later release, it would be good to make the decision now about the scaling number having more meaning in the first release. I will look into this a bit based on your suggestions. At some point Archimatix will be able to add metadata to a Unity Material so that one can define the size of it texture in units (or conversely, its density). Also, one should be able to designate padding and the size of a repeating bay within the texture. For example, if a texture has 8 bathroom tiles across, then the "bay" is at 1/8 the image size. In this way, the system can try to automate the lining up of grout lines to the edge of walls (but not necessarily to the end of the texture). For example, if with the density you chose, the end of the wall is has a u-value of 12.28, the system could snap it to 12.25 (2/8) to make sure it ends up mid texture, but on a grout line.

 

Here's a little bacon for all you pencil modeling enthusiasts out there... *and you know who you are!*





And with the nodes folded into a more concise arrangement...

 

I'm working on some "five-minute tutorial" ideas...

 

"That's odd," thought Robot Kyle, "I'm not expecting anyone..."







This scene was modeled right inside the Unity editor in a matter of minutes with the help of Archimatix!

 

Looking absolutely amazing!

 

This may have been asked before. Apologies if it has...

After you make your complex parametric object, can you save it "simplified" or "finalized" as a prefab?

 

Thanks, @DragonRider!

 

Great question, @Sabathius! The parametric model, or AXModel, maintains a hierarchy of GameObjects in the scene that have components attached to them that help AX to operate. When you stamp out a "frozen" instance of the model, AX strips all these production components away, leaving standard GameObjects with only standard components attached such as the Renderer, Collider, Rigidbody, etc.This means that after you stamp out a frozen version, you could delete the AX folder from your scene because the GameObject hierarchy is independent of the AX system at that point. When you freeze a model, a the AXModel still in the scene becomes inactive, awaiting later activation should you want to stamp out more variations. The frozen model can also be saved as a prefab or ProBuilder-ized for topological hand-crafting at the polygon or vertex level. If an .obj exporter is not in the first release, it will be there soon after.

In this screenshot, you can see the GameObject hierarchy under the AXModel. Each tower is a GameObject because I have checked the "Combine Meshes" box in the node graph palette for the FloorRepeater (named "Tower").



If we don't have any "Combine Meshes" checked, then the hierarchy looks like this:



If you combine meshes, you have fewer GameObjects, but larger meshes stored in the AssetDatabase. If you don't choose to combine meshes, you have more GameObjects and their associate overhead, but they are sharing fewer meshes, basically functioning as Instances of a prefab so your game's download size will be smaller. These are the same trade-offs a modeler must make when creating assets in a third party application, but here, you can click "Combine Meshes" on and off and quickly test which is more optimal for your needs.

 

Brilliant. Thank you kindly.

 

@roryo Looks great - and hopefully release is drawing nearer?

If so, any thoughts/indications on pricing?

 

Despair not, @puzzlekings, for the day of release is indeed drawing nearer! I think just one more beta cycle should do the trick. Before inviting the next beta group in, I want to be sure to have a couple of tutorials at the ready and a first pass at a manual. A couple of weeks ago, I predicted it would be a couple of weeks to the next beta cycle, but I need a couple more. I will blame Robot Kyle's recent lack of code commits for the delay (R. Kyle always takes the fall!).

For pricing, I have been thinking $135, but I am planning to release with a with an introductory price of $95.

 

Thanks @roryo. Do let me know if there is any chance of getting on the next beta. I'm looking at generating some simple geometric environments that I can feed into Apex Path, maybe using a look of the Marvellous Techniques Package.

Cheers

Nalin

 

Wow..so this makes me think I really can use this for my city!

I sent you a PM with some concept art. Let me know if it looks like something that might work for me.

Thanks!

 

Thanks, @Teila. Heading over to conversations now to take a look...

 

Here are some random AX shots from about a year ago:

 

This Renaissance villa is made from very few node: the arch with a column PairRepeated and fed into a ShapeRepeater that uses an I-Shape as input. The cornices are a PlanSweep.



Changing the textures a couple of node textures gives:

 

Another oldie, but goodie!

 

Very beautiful. I love how mystical all these pictures look, the water, reflections, ships...gorgeous.

 

Knowing that Archimatix won't be able to do 3D booleans in the initial release, in a beta conversation @elbows asked if it would still be possible to cut a door out of a lighthouse base with a sloping wall.

Here is what I was able to wrangle AX into doing:



The solution to simulating a true 3D boolean cut out was to feed the section shape for the lighthouse (the leftmost node in the image below) into a ShapeMerger for 2D booleans. The rectangle is the "cutter" Shape. The "Difference" output goes into one LatheMesher, while the "Intersection" output goes into another Lathe that has an end angle less than 360 to create an opening.


The model is still parametric so you can move the rectangle cutter up an down to change the height of the door or alter the shape of the section. The two Lathes are then fed into a Grouper to form a node that represents the entire lighthouse.

Every mesh in this scene was modeled right in the Unity editor (except the Standard Asset water) using Archimatix!

 

Oops, I did it again... spent to much time playing with Unity's rendering features!

 

@shaderbytes, I think I have an intermediate solution for accommodating users who design with texels per unit in mind.



The texels per unit value is now displayed in the stats line for a Material node palette, in an analogous location to where the vertex and triangle stats are in other node palettes. The scale parameters of the Material Node shows the total number of units in the texture (regardless of its pixel density). This brick texture is about 2 units wide (if units are thought of as meters). As you adjust the scale, you see the texel density adjusting at the same time.

For the most part, one might make the texture with a scale in mind, but then while editing different objects in the scene that use that texture, a larger or smaller scale is more desirable than originally planned. While doing so, the texel density display can help you make editing decisions.

For example, in this next shot, I decided to scale the bricks down to 1.03. Though I may like the look better in the scene, my texels per unit has risen to 994.



Since I am trying to stay around 512 texels per unit, I realized from my texel number that I had more detail in the original image than I really needed. To reduce the texel density, but maintain my scaling, I reduced the max size in the texture importer. As soon as I hit "Apply" in the importer, Archimatix sensed the change and recalculated all the new texel densities that use that texture. The new number displayed in the node palette dropped to 497 texels per unit, as is shown below, getting back into the range of my budget.



Hopefully this will help those designing with texel densities. As I said earlier, @shaderbytes, your comments were good and timely! Thanks for you help with this!

By the way, while demonstrating scale during this texture work discussion, Robot Kyle has not been just sitting there looking pretty... with his right hand (in the first image) he has been testing the new SceneView handle for controlling the bevel of the Extrude Mesher. He has discovered that one knob controls the radius of the bevel and the other, the number of segments.

 

Another Mesher has been added: the Polygon. Now any Shapes that you create by combining other Shapes and Offsetting and Thickening can be turned into a flat Polygon. You can choose to make the Polygon double-sided.

In the image below, an arch was subtracted from a circle with the output fed into a ShapeOffsetter node and thickened, with the output of that fed into a Polygon node. The resulting three polygons can behave as separate rigidbodies.

 

Hey @roryo !

I've been watching this thread for a while and have just been so amazed at how amazing a tool you've created. It's also lovely that you continue to add bells and whistles to make it the most robust tool you can! I'm 100% convinced this tool would dramatically optimize design time for my team.

I know you've said for a while now that the asset will be available on the store "soon" , but I was wondering if you had some kind of closed/open beta/alpha program, and if you are accepting volunteers. I really just can't wait to get my hands on this beauty.

Also, as for your pricing points, I would be comfortable paying $135 or $95 for this tool.

 

Thanks, @McMayhem - that's just the kind of post that makes my day! Yes, there will be a new beta cycle starting soon, well, sooner than the AssetStore "soon", at least. I will put out the call for beta testers on this thread in the next couple of weeks - stay tuned!

 

Ok, while testing the PolygonMesher and fixing a bug in the GridRepeater, I added a translation Jitter to the Grid of hexagonal polygons... I spent way too much time jumping around the platforms with a first-person controller, trying not to fall off and onto the sloping plane (or worse off the plane too)! Here I have been making all these fancy architectural examples of game environments and it turns out the simplest can be the most fun and the most distracting (at least for today ).



For this scene, I grabbed a Circle from the 2D Library items in the left sidebar, took the segments down to 6, connected it to the new PolygonMesher, then fed the output of that to a GridRepeater. To the GridRepeater palette, I added a JitterTool for translation, with the greatest randomness (actually Perlin displacement) in the y-direction... and, voila, an hour of jumping around and not coding!

 

This looks like an amazing tool. I love the repeaters (radial repeater and floor repeater with jitter) and I'm wondering if Archimatix can perform a certain function that I used in Bryce3D, years ago.

Basically, it could repeat an object a number of times, while allowing you to alter its x,y,z offset, rotation, and size relative to the previous instance.So, for example, if you repeated an object on top of itself with a rotation of 5 degrees, the next one would be rotated 5 degrees more, and so on. The result would be a twisted, spiral-like object, like this image:



Here are YouTube videos showing the concept, including the creation of this building:

The above example is a somewhat simple example of just altering the rotation angle. Altering the offset, rotation, and size could come up with some very abstract, almost fractal-like shapes - although I realize that this might be outside the scope of what you want Archimatix to be. It seems like the JitterScale function might already do something like this, just with the scale. I image that if you applied this to other this to other Archimatix functions, you could come up with some wild creations.

 

Hi @Hitch42, thanks for your post! And nice images!

There is a progressive rotation on the Repeaters as well. This was added at first to allow a row of column instance to not look like they are repeating, but it also allows you do do this:



The FloorRepeater is set to rotate 11 degrees each step. The tower is then fed into a LinearRepeater that is set to rotate 40 degrees each step. This scene is the sum of only the nodes you see below (and was created in the few minutes since your post ).


This example is not very elaborate, but I wanted to get it out quickly. Now to resist the awful urge to sauce it up with U5 rendering!!!

Thanks again, @Hitch42 - it is really helpful to see examples from other modeling applications!

 

For translation, you can add a Jitter and decrease its Perlin scale to make a smoother wave form.

In these next two images, the Perlin scale jitter for translation is high and then low, but both have the same translation
range:

 

Here is a brief video clip showing the workflow.

 

Thanks for all of those examples. They look great. It looks like you've really thought a lot of things out. What I'm wondering is if the "progressive" element could be applied to things other than rotation and jitter.

As another, more advanced example, in your image of how to subtract a "thickened" circle from and arch and then extrude it, you show several variations.



Would it be possible to replicate the arch and circle with the same process, but to gradually (and maybe using jitter as well) alter the circle? So that there is a series of arches, but each arch has a different extrusion?

I guess what I'm asking is if the "progression" part of Archimatix could be used with... everything. The way that objects taper, roundness, thickness, the way that they intersect... everything that can be adjusted. This is getting a little abstract, I know.

 

That's another excellent question, @Hitch42!

Any parameter in Archimatix maybe related to any other parameter. If there is an engine, such as a Repeater, that drives a parameter progressively, then the system does not inherently care if the parameter being changed is rotation of the repeated object or radius of an arch. There is a caveat though. A floor of a skyscraper being instantiated with a different transformation matrix is relatively fast computationally. On the other hand, if each floor is a completely different mesh, then the build is a bit more computationally intensive.

Basically, once people can generate many individual meshes, the Archimatix work flow will need to be tuned to less than 15+ permutations per second (the realtime modeling currently and somewhat luxuriantly happening in AX now). What I am calling "Replication," where generative variations are automatically applied to general parameters, is already implemented in the system, but I will hold off on enabling this in the first release. In the future, once Replication is enabled (and the less than realtime workflow tuned), AX will be able to generate villages and cities full of buildings where no two are exactly alike, and yet appear to be from the same culture/aesthetic/style (albeit, without realtime handle dragging).The release following Replicants release will provide for runtime variation of models to allow players to vary forms in-game.

All that being said, all the examples posted thus far in this WIP thread are without Replication, so Release version 1.0 should still pack a powerful punch.

 

Robot Kyle couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't gotten off on the wrong floor...



The view of the landscape from this level did not look quite like he remembered it.


"Then again," he mused, "all that twisting in the elevator on the way up may have scramble my positron memory core."



Yes, you have caught me indulging in a bit more twisted fun! Now back to work !

 

Some more examples of RadialRepeater...

 

It wasn't only the anticipation of what might lie just beyond that next Perlin ridge that fired up Robot Kyle's curiosity circuits, but also the strange things that might be lurking in the bottomless voids between the cylinders.

 

And miles to go before I sleep...

 

That looks scary! Poor Robot Kyle walking through rows of grinding teeth!

 

Before its all over, his journey could turn out to be a bit of a grind!

 

Yikes!!! Noooo, I want a happy ending for Kyle!

 

*rubs arm like jones-ing Herion addict*

Dude...just...just gimmie the thing! I'm dying here! Aftering seeing the latest screenshots, I'm positive I'll be able to create anything I can imagine. *Looks over at H.P. Lovecraft books and thinks about non-Euclidian geometry* Muahahahahaha!

 

*in best Yoda voice*

Not ready is it! Too soon to release is it! Still bugs... workflow issues...

*the disembodied voice of Unity3D 5.4 comes in sounding strangely like Alec Guiness*

Yes, but was I any different when I was first released?

*yoda*

Humph!

 

@roryo can it be used at runtime?

 

@puzzlekings - the definitive answer to your question is yes... and no. The mesh generation code can be fired at runtime, but none of the editor code will be available runtime, for example, the node graph window. In the initial release, I am focusing on testing and documenting Archimatix as an editor extension for modeling assets, but in a future release, there will be an API to allow you to hook runtime GUI elements up to the parametric models you have rigged up in the node graph editor.

 

thanks @roryo makes perfect sense!

 

Mind.blown = true;

 

its more awesome every weeks and become hard to wait to put my hands on Archimatrix

 

Thanks, @Damien Delmarle!