Basics

Hey-o heres my lab rat Q&A
(hopefully from some guys in the know).

The 1st thing I would like to do is modify the 1st person tutorial to make the player move faster. How do I do this?

If I had a script that is a "toggle between walk and run" command, would I paste it in after the 1st person walker script, and if so where exactly is this? Is the script written in a chronological hierachy, from top to bottom?And is it important to script things in the right order?
Ta
AC

 

The speed setting in that script is a public var that you can change in the inspector... if you want to change it programmatically to some faster speed, a run button at "run-time" (god forgive me for that pun), you need to have some input/if statement. I think you should start out simpler by just deconstructing how the FPSWalker script works. Take small steps trying to learn scripting and you'll be up and running in no time (again god, spare my soul...) :wink:

 

Ok hey yr advice sounds sound(does that make sense?)
We are having trouble getting the unity activation to work here so until My tutor sorts it out with the OTEE crew I cant actually use the programme. In the meantime Im working on a character, a couple of buildings, a camel and cinematics. At the colledge here we have bryce5(although it doesnt seem to work with OSX-can anyone direct me to a patch?) and we are purchasing poser. We also have Vue5. I've got quite a few years experience with Poser and Bryce, but am fairly new to Maya. I think I'll use a skeleton from poser, wrap some cloth on him(with a bit of help from my tutor) and turn him into a mummy, make a snake(or use a poser snake)and use them in my game. It looks like I cant actually bring a scene into maya from bryce so I will use it for cinematics only. My goal is an egyptian theme FPS called "The Oasis"
In other news: The computer colledge tutor has a friend whos apparently a bit of a code genius and hes keen to meet with me to possibly work together - with his and people like anTENNA trEE(interesting handle) willing to advise me, I feel pretty damn excited.
Tlk soon
A

 

Bryce 5.5 works properly with OSX. Unfortunately, unless you bought it very recently, there's no upgrade pricing and you have to buy the new version at full price. It isn't particularly expensive, though (it was about $70 with discounts when I bought it).

 

I'm fascinated by a new app I saw tonight... RealViz ImageMapper (or similar name). It runs on mac and it seems to be the next gen of MetaCreations old photo 3D app (which I can't remember the name of either). The premise is you take a load of pics of an object from different angles and then connect the parallax points within each image. Has anyone used this on these forums? From what I saw of the app it seems like such a great way to replicate realworld objects, especially architectural shapes. It not only generates the geometry, but texture maps them as well. And it can do human geometry mapping if you have enough points to work from.

Anyway just curious if anyone has used this yet and how it might integrate into Unity.

 

There is a product around called photomodeler but I dont know who makes it or if its very handlable. There is a program by Pixelfarm called PF Match which enables real motion video to be mapped into 3dspace. Its very clever. We have a cutdown version called PFhoe, and the theory goes its gonna make my compositing really accurate.
I had a blast on Vue5 yesterday and made a big polygonbasin for the game arena"the Oasis". I anticipate there are restrictions forhow big my .obj files are that I import into unity, so whats a good way to think about bringing in a landscape from Bryce or Vue or Maya? Tiny bumpmaps all joined together? Or one filthy big polygon? I set up a 10 second render with film motion zooming into a small pool with papyrus and palms, and have left the render settings on ultra so I hope to goto school on monday and find a nice video clip. It would be great to know how to script it into unity as an opening sequence?
Have a good weekend
A

 

We have now got Unity registered so tonite Im going to get on it for the first time in a few weeks. Im going to try and import a polygon temple, whick is a fairly basic maya model, and also my character, whick is rigged. Will look at texturing and will trawl tutorials to find a way to link a quicktime .mov to the game (somehow,anyhow)
Can anyone give me a heads-up?
Read an article on Real-viz-Is exactly what A.Tree thought,can map realworld models into 3d Space..
Definately worth a look.

 

You cant link a .mov to unity you have to import it as a animated texture. As you probably know animated textures dont get compressed making long videos huge. I am pretty sure thats you only option right now until unity support compressed movies. Any one else got an idea?

Bill

 

Ok thanks for that
So what about getting a Wav of aiff or mp3 playing music during a game. ie how would I set attatch this to the FPS Walker tut?
Thanks again -I value your assistance
A

 

Just drag and drop. Once the file is in your assets just drag it onto the camera. Make sure the camera has a audio listener component. You know you might want to try things before you ask, they might be easyer then you expect :wink:

Have fun!

Bill

 

Yep-all good-thanks definately good fun
So as far as using animated textures as cinematics, does that mean importing a bunch of stills and creating a sequence in unity, or can I export an audio+video file from final cut(or incidently Maya or whatever)
What format exactly?
So I create a primitive plane and apply it to that?
A

 

Heya all. Having a lot of fun w unity. Figured out how to change walk speed, add some music and so on. Ive imported a building from maya, and as a player I keep walking straight through it. Can anyone tell me what I have to do to make it "solid" I've tried a few options, but if its not falling straight thru the ground due to gravity, its continuing to be "nonsolid".
Can I keep rigidbody attributes generated in Maya?

 

Click on the object in the Project view... then click on "settings"... then check "Meshes have colliders"... then click on import. You don't want this to be a rigid body, you just want it to have a collider on the mesh.

 

Someone was asking about Photo based modelers above in this thread. Strata has just released a new one: http://www.strata.com/foto3d.asp

I don't really know that much about it but it might be worth checking out. I've been a long time user of Strata's modeling and rendering software and have been really pleased with both the company and the product. My only real issue right now is that I cannot export from Strata directly to a format that I can use in Unity.

I've been using Wings of late for my Unity models b/c I can make such nice little low polly models in it easily.

Cheers!

Kev[/url]

 

That program (the old one by Meta Creations) was Canoma- bought by Adobe and never developed, but RealViz makes some extraordinarily powerful produtcs today. Look at their motion tracking software to get an idea.

I have used Image Modeler and can attest to the wonderful models it will generate with cool textures. As with any technique, there are quirks- but easily addressed by anyone with photoshop knowledge.

As for human faces, they don't get much better than this software- windows only, but at least we Mac users have alternatives now, don't we?

http://www.facegen.com/

Use this software and tell me it doesn't knock your socks off. I made a 3d model of my own face in 10 minutes, and then used the sliders to make myself more asian, more European, and even older!

It is used by police departments now to generate suspect pictures. Bad for sketch artists AND criminals. ;-)

 

AHAI knew I was almost there...I had a better read of the unity documentation (overdue?)and kinda gettin a feel for it.

In the documentation About splash screens I have a question: Is there a final step that wasnt included in the instructions?Or am I misssing the point?My fps controller drops due to default gravity to the ground where the interaction begins(fine/great). Should the splashscreen have the same amount of grvity so when we both fall I'm looking at it? or is the documentation describing something where the said texture is snapshot' by the fps(or other?) camera, and gan be manually set to be visible(In the style of a typical splash screen )for a set period of time?
Jeez I know that probably sounds a bit complicated but please bear with me.

I have also learned that if I drag too many assets into the asset folder the g5 im working on has a bit of a(10min) spaz updating the assets.

*The lesson here is to keep assets down to a minimum, isnt it?

*So should I reduce the size of texture files where possible?(in Photoshop)

*Is there a ideal target amount of textures to have in the assets folder, and an ideal amount of polygons in a scene(/level)?

Thanks again-Im completely excited about Unity
A

 

Okay...
Correct me if Im wrong, but Unity handles importing meshes up to 65000 polygons.Say if I have 4 detailed terrains, 65000 polys each, What is the best way to join them in the program? Just sit the nicely beside each other?Overlap? I'd like to work towards joining enough terrains together to make a spherical planet that is detailed enough (in its geometry) To be interesting enough to walk/fly around. Any suggestions. I will post something in the wishlist about stitching Terrains/meshes together...

 

Couldnt you break up the geometry in your modeling app and split it up into 4 individual objects, then import?

Bill

I just realized that the limit might be per import and not per object. Any one know?

 

Bill
If I break up my Geometry into 4 bits, I still have the issue of joining it up in unity. If using translate functions in the editor I can get the pieces to fit nicely, then thats fine, but I have had trouble lining things up so far, I keep seeing seams. Will try overlapping terrains also...
Thanks for the idea though. I might make a filthy big polygon, as big as maya can handle, and chop it up. I have a feeling this may be troublesome though. Gotta be worth a go.

 

I am not sure I follow. If you have one huge terrain (over 65k) and then seperate it into 4 pretty square peices (under 65k) they will fit together exactly the same as when they were one object. Then import into unity and drop the file into the scene, the transforms should be exactly the same. The mesh should apear to have to gabs, or overlaping.

Bill

 

You sure thats the case? Because now you would have two edges that may have different normals than the one that was there before giving the geometry seems. I tryed this a while back and ran into that problem. Jeff

 

Cant you set the normals and then break it apart with out messing them up? I should try this... but im busy right now.

Bill