Cruncher - Polygon Reduction Plugin for Unity Pro

Hey All,
In case you didn't notice, Cruncher is on sale at 50% off. Grab it while you can!
Cheers,
Brett

 

Hi Brett,
I just purchased Cruncher and it works really good, thanks!

Just one thing:
I have an object (called Mesh) in my game hierarchy which is a child of another object (called Transform). When I select the Mesh object and run Crunchers Convert Selection the created Mesh LOD object is now in the root of the hierarchy and not under the Transform object. This breaks nested transformations. Is it a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!

 

@bilke

Glad you like it. When Cruncher converts a model it recursively processes the meshes and it assumes that the root selection is the root object. I guess I can fix this in the future, but for now it's best if you select the root object as there's no harm I think and it will leave a CruncherRoot script there to modify the children. Alternatively, you can manually add the Cruncher scripts to each object as you like and you don't have to use the utility fi you don't want.

Enjoy!
Brett

 

some meshes dissapear when i apply the cruncher script. What am i doing wrong i wonder?

 

@paulojsam

Hi there. Are you using LOGGroup? I had another user report some issues converting and linking an LODGroup and wondering if it's similar to your issue. I will try to add some LODGroup automated setup to fix that. Anyway, here is a guide for using LODGroups that might help. It looks worse than it is, but I wanted to be as complete as possible.

1. Select the base asset in the Project view.
2. Select the menu option GameObject>Cruncher>Convert Selection...
3. Choose to generate 3 LODs (or whatever you want) and configure each LOD quality
4. Choose Convert. You should now have the LODs. IMPORTANT: if you want to change a LOD, do it here. E.g. Adjust the Cruncher settings on the asset and preview it to get what you want.
5. Drag the firstLOD 0 to the scene.
6. Rename body to body 0
7. Duplicate body 0 and rename it body 1
8. Duplicate body 1 and rename it body 2
9. Keep doing this for however many LODs you have
10. Link each of these duplicated object's mesh to the correlating LOD asset
11. Add an LODGroup to the root GameObject (LOD 0 instance in the scene).
12. For each LOD in the LODGroup, choose the asset mesh generated in step 4 for each level.
13. Create an empty prefab asset
14. Drag and drop the LOD 0 scene instance onto this

Now you should have a fully working, LOD switching Cruncher enabled prefab.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Hi,

First up thanks for the plugin, it looks awesome, I just bought it on the strength of the reviews and your tutorials, and that my game seems to be running slowly and Im assuming its due to large meshes (I wish there was some sort of way to order things by mesh/verts size etc to compare them). although Im having some issues with it. I tried about 30 models and only 2 worked. The ones that worked I could do exactly what is meant to happen and its awesome - but they were VERY simple models, a cooling tower, and a simple man. But the ones that didnt work (more complex things like restaurant models), well they would jump very far away, then when I find them they are identical and the scollbar goes up and down on the quality level but nothing at all happens - possibly a TINY little triangle will sometimes be removed at 0 quality, but it wont distort properly like the dinosaur did (sometimes theyre only wireframe too, materials are lost). Im mostly trying to scale down buildings and things that I have bought from websites and sketchup etc - I think they may be needlessly detailed. Is there any way to deal with stuff like this? Im assuming the models are "badly made" or something and that is why they wont simplify properly? Can you simply select a game object and expect cruncher to go right through intelligently picking out and tinkering with the meshes or do you have to do each individual mesh separately ? The dinosaur example was so perfect and exactly what Im after!

Thanks, if this works on my models its going to be awesome!
Gaz

 

@radiantboy

Hi, thanks for your note. It does indeed sound like your models are badly made. Usually we see this with models in Google Warehouse. What happens usually is that each triangle is exported as a separate mesh and/or separate material. When this happens, Cruncher can't reduce a single triangle any more so it does nothing.

What you need to do is bring it into an art package and merge all the materials and weld the vertices. This will probably fix it. On my todo list is to detect meshes with numerous materials and then try to merge them before Crunching the model.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Thanks very much, Im guessing blender can do this. It would be excellent however if your asset (especially for the very high cost) can simply deal with all of this automatically for us - is that likely to happen when the todo list is done? If so how long do I wait? or shall I go ahead and learn how to do it in blender?

Thanks again,
Gaz

 

You shouldn't wait. It isn't that hard to do in Blender (I have been told) and it will take a while for me to do it. It's not that hard for me to do, but Cruncher is fairly complex at processing the meshes and I need to insert a new step to fix the meshes and I need to do it carefully to be sure I don't break something. So I can't promise when.

Cheers,
Brett

 

I would assume anybody importing badly made 3d models, or free stuff from Sketchup, isn't actually using them in a production environment but instead they're just temporary working graphics.

In other words - give priority to other more important and much-demanded functionality such as the holy grail known as in-game polygon reduction.

Joking aside, it's such a superb tool and I look forward to any future developments.

 

@fanjules

You'd be surprised then to find that many users are using models off the internet for production use and needing help getting these working. I'm exploring the runtime reduction idea, but a plugin has to be built for each platform and tested and it's a lot of work. A fully managed version isn't possible at this time, other ideas are being looked at, but nothing firm in the works yet, sorry!

Cheers,
Brett

 

How about just a C# version of the library? Performance will obviously be slower but that isn't a show stopper (it can be worked around) and it will work across all platforms.

 

@fanjules

As I said, a managed (C#) version isn't possible at this time unfortunately. The code uses a lot of C++ templating and other stuff that just isn't portable to other languages, sorry. We're looking at alternatives ways to compile or refactor the code to get it into a managed assembly, but for now it will remain fully native.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Hi, Im not a modeller at all, I grabbed blender, I can find people talking about merging vertices manually etc (with some knowledge of 3d too), but is there a way to simply select all and then click merge or something? These models are from google warehouse, I want them to be working with this script with minimum effort, if not then the script is completely useless to me :-( I doubt I can afford more than turbosquid or google warehouse models, many indies will be in the same situation so people should not under estimate the budgets many of us have and just how rubbish our 3d models are

PS, I could potentially save them out from sketch up again if there are any setting that will help me avoid problems it would b e good to hear.

Pps, tried saving with different settings in sketchup, even imported into 3d max and resaved, but same issues, I saw:

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow.UpdateConversion ()
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow.OnInspectorUpdate ()
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/b59ae78cff80e584/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/b59ae78cff80e584/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/b59ae78cff80e584/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/cac08d8a5e25d4cb/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:234)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/cac08d8a5e25d4cb/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:227)
UnityEditor.HostView.OnInspectorUpdate () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/cac08d8a5e25d4cb/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:192)


In console.

 

@radiantboy

I replied to your private message already, check your inbox.

Cheers!
Brett

 

Hi,

I wrote you an email to your RealWorldUnity mail address. I'm not sure if you already use that email, but since the forum was down for a while I sent you a mail.
Anyhow, here is what I wrote:


...Unfortunately Cruncher doesn't work for me. For instance, it crashes after creating the first Dinosaur LOD mesh (no matter how many target LODs I want to create). In my mail I prematurely wrote that the original model is discarded, but this is NOT the case.

The error message I get is this:


IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow.UpdateConversion ()
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow.OnInspectorUpdate ()
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/3df08680c6f85295/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/3df08680c6f85295/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Applications/buildAgent/work/3df08680c6f85295/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/812c4f5049264fad/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:234)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/812c4f5049264fad/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:227)
UnityEditor.HostView.OnInspectorUpdate () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/812c4f5049264fad/Editor/Mono/GUI/DockArea.cs:192)

I also receive another error message on a different mesh. It is attached as screenshot. It seems to be caused by a mesh that is too large in terms of vertex count. However, this mesh has already been splitted into smaller meshes by Unity during import in order to adhere to the vertex count limit. But when I run Cruncher on the split meshes the vertex count suddenly seems to be a problem again. It looks like Cruncher tries to merge the split meshes into one huge mesh again after reduction. I guess that shouldn't be the case. Instead Cruncher should work on the split meshes that Unity created. Or am I wrong?

I also received this error message with yet another mesh:


Plugin operation failed, aborting. Check the plugin log in the project's root directory for more information.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
CruncherPlugin.CruncherPluginManager:AddMesh(CruncherIO, CruncherMeshConfiguration)
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherUtilities:ConvertUserPrefabInstance(GameObject, CruncherAdjustment)
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherUtilities:ConvertObject(Object, String, CruncherAdjustment)
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow:UpdateConversion()
CruncherEditorPlugin.CruncherConverterWindow:OnInspectorUpdate()
UnityEditor.HostView:OnInspectorUpdate()


Btw, I'm using Unity 4.0.0f, Win7 x64, Intel Xeon Dual 6core, NVIDIA Quadro 4000 if that matters.


Any idea what is causing this bug?

 

@SeanM3D

I believe this is because you tried to create multiple LODs from a scene object? If this is the case, this isn't supported and I need to disable multiple LODs when doing this. It's because it switches out the underlying meshes on LOD0, then when it gets to the second one things aren't what they should be. Also it doesn't make sense because there's only one scene object and creating multiple LODs would leave behind only one object. Anyway, the fix is that for multiple LODs it's assumed they are created from assets selected in the project view, not the scene.

If this isn't what is causing your specific problem, please email me at support@realworldunity.com so I can look at this ASAP!

Thanks,
Brett

 

So I must be doing something wrong - can you help me out?

I am creating 2 LOD levels of a mesh in the project view.

I then create an instance of the uncrunched mesh inside a prefab, add the two lod levels as siblings to it.

I configure all of the meshes to use the same root bone so that the animations will be synched across the different views and remove the other unused bones.

I set up a LODGroup and add the three meshes to it - everything looks just fine in the editor.

I press "Run" and the meshes all disappear, when I stop they remain gone...

 

@whydoidoit

Hmmm, seems correct to me. I assume when you say it looks correct in the editor that you tried zooming in and out and it worked as expected? Did you check the Main Camera settings of your scene since that differs than the editor camera? Are you playing an animation at runtime? If you pause the game while playing and go back to scene view, do they show up?

If you like, send me a PM with a Dropbox link with a test project showing the problem and I'll take a look.

Cheers,
Brett

 

@bibbinator - I looked around on your website and this thread, but couldn't find an answer. Sorry if this is a dupe.

What model file formats are supported? I typically use fbx or 3DS.

Thanks!

 

@Groucho

It works with any Unity supported mesh since Cruncher only reads the Unity mesh data and doesn't care about the external data. So yes, it works with both FBX and 3DS

Cheers,
Brett

 

Excellent, that's exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks!

 

Hi recently updated my project to unity 4.3 and i noticed that if i click on a geometry with cruncher unity crashes, if i click in another game object (even the same but without cruncher) it doesn't crash. My question is...is the latest version of cruncher compatible with unity3d 4.3?

Thanks!

 

Does cruncher have popin when switching lods

 

@iguana_02

It works fine for me. Strange. Maybe send me your error log to support <at> realworldunity.com and I'll take a look and see if I can help you figure out what's going on in your case.

 

Hi, I'd like to optimize a unity terrain mesh.
I exported the mesh data and crunched it. I got a good result, but my camera will move only on X axis, looking always in direction of positive Z. So ideally I'd like to have higher definition near the camera and less definition going farther.
Can you suggest me how to approach this?
Thanks.

 

@mcmorry

No way to do that at the moment. In theory it could be done by supplying some hints to the API, but this isn't supported yet and even if it was would require some scripting to get it working. Wish I had better news for you. Good luck!

 

Thanks. So the only approach could be to split the terrain in more bands and apply a different reduction.

 

Yep, that would work.

 

I have this strange problem where a object decimated by cruncher is drawn with double the verts than it should. Object_original is 28776 verts, 30438 tris, Obect_cruncher is 19387 verts, 18370 tris. So far so good. But when I render the objects, both with the same lightning sources, shaders and scene objects, I get 117.000 verts in total for the (whole) scene with the object_cruncher and 67.000 for the object_original... Huh? So the decimated has more verts on the renderer than the original object although it has less in the mesh preview.

Any idea what could cause this? Is it possible that the cruncher model is somehow blown up by the unity renderer because of hard edges or something like that?

 

@dixitalgorismi

That is a bit strange. There's a few things you can do to isolate the problem:

* Check the crunched mesh asset in the project hierarchy. That will show you the verts, tris, etc.
* Assuming that looks good, replace the material assigned to everything to the default textureless white material. Then check the stats in the editor and see if it made a difference to the numbers.

If all that fails, send me a Dropbox link to a small project that includes these two files and let me take a look.

Cheers,
Bret

 

A runtime feature or edition would be amazing!

 

Hi, just purchased your plugin. It's great but i'd like to have the possibility to hardly reduce the number of polygons of a model: doesn't matter if i loose volume precision, just want to sculpt down and have an approximate mesh (even like a convex hull for examples).

Disabling "Remove T-Junction" and "Merge Vertices" should be a good option, if only plugins starts to remove from the smallest triangles, leaving the biggers visible.

 

@XeviaN360

Glad you like Cruncher. The algorithm works by identifying the triangles that have the least impact on the shape of the mesh and preferring to remove those first which doesn't always mean the smallest ones are removed first. As you discovered, disabling t-junctions and merging options allows for a different removal sequence.

If the mesh is well-formed to begin with, Cruncher will be able to reduce the mesh quite well down to a more hull-like shape. It's when there are small problems with the mesh's duplicated materials or back facing triangles got exported that reduction is hampered.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Hi, it looks awesome!

I have one question, can Cruncher be used in real-time, something like a dynamic level of detail? Or I have to generate meshes in the editor and use the Unity built-in LOD.

 

@dronman5

Cruncher is currently for editor usage only. In order to get it working at runtime I need to try to create a fully managed version of it.

 

+1 For Real-Time.
There is real need for Real-time and seeing that there are more and more crunching types of solutions popping up, someone will probably be creating a Real-time solutions for the Asset Store in the future. Why not be ahead of the game.

 

Hi,
In the Unity app I'm going to create we have to load very large 3D models(exported from Rhino from size 100MB to around 1 GB). Also we need to load them in iPads. So we need to come up with a way to manipulate these large 3D models. e.g may be we can show a low quality model at the first and then when user zoom in we can show the more detailed view of that part using LOD. A collegue told me about this Cruncher plugin. So I would like to know whether I'll be able to do my work using this. Like reducing the size of large files unto 1 GB and showing higher quality detailed versions on zooming etc..
Please share your ideas on this.
Thanks

 

@madhur

Cruncher can handle almost any size mesh, but it's an editor thing not a runtime one. You can certainly create LODs for when you're viewing the whole object, but to make it work at the higher polygon counts when you zoom in you'd have to break your mesh into small parts and use other tricks like culling to have it perform well on iPads. Once you're up close to a mesh, if it's all in one mesh, you'd still be throwing too many polygons at the iPad at LOD0 if you didn't.

Cheers,
Brett

 

I've been happily using Cruncher and am pleased with it. One thing I would love to see is the ability to preserve the edges of non-manifold meshes. I would love to use Cruncher to generate LODs for mesh based terrain chunks, but have to do it manually in other software since the edges can't be reduced without creating bad seams.

 

@niosop2

This is something that I can do and it's on the list of todos. Unfortunately I can't say when it will be done as it's a bit involved. I'll look into adding this into the API as that's easier and would allow you to process things like terrain chunks pretty easily.

 

Thanks Brett.
To break the mesh into small parts, can we use the cruncher plugin or do I need to do it some other way? We'll have 100s of models and need to find an automated way to do that.
Thanks

 

@madhur

Cruncher currently doesn't have any feature like that. If it's modeled, it's probably better to break it into logical pieces in a modeling program and then export that. It would still be one model in Unity with child objects and Cruncher can iterate over all the children with no problems. So that's the cleanest way I think.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Thanks Brett.
When I import the 3D models from Rhino to Unity, I get them broken into small parts like this.So I guess I can use them as logical parts.


So what you mean is, then I can create LODs for each of these parts so that when zooming a particular part we load the LOD where it has that part in full details and all the other parts of the model are in low polygon counts(low quality) so the model is not that big?
Sorry for troubling you, I don't have much experience in Unity.

Thanks again for your help.

 

@madhur

Okay, you have a couple of options. The model structure above will work fine with Cruncher: it will allow you to reduce the entire model or individually modify any of the children. So you could create a separate LOD off the original model and Unity will switch between them as you get closer. Assuming the parts are spatially coherent and don't contain long, thin polygons that stretch across the whole model, then Unity should cull off the child objects if they're no in frustum as you get up close.

That said, this will likely be fussy to get working well in Unity because you'll have to set the LODs up so that you have to be pretty close before it switches to the higher meshes.

If you want to send me a PM with a sample object I can try it out for you and see if it will work well or not.

Cheers,
Brett

 

HIHI~~~ I got a quick question~
After I am done with reducing the poly count, do I have to remove all those Cruncher related script/components attached to the object and its children?
Would it ever effect the performance if I just leave the Cruncher components on?? Would you suggest us to remove them and add them back only when we need to tune the poly again?

 

@ZOwiz

You can just leave them there. They are wrapped by defines for the editor and won't be included at all in the runtime. So no harm or overhead.

 

I bought this a while ago but it didnt handle my sketch up models very nicely, just wondering if theres any progress on handling models that have been exported from Sketchup?

 

@radiantboy

There wasn't really much for me to do. If you remove the back face materials from the sketchup model they then reduce fine in Cruncher. I used the tools here: http://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/material-tools

Give it a try and see if this fixes your issues. If not, let me know.

Cheers,
Brett

 

Hi Brett,
When we buy the plugin can we install it in any number of computers or is there a limit?
Thanks