Neko Factory (Beta)

EDIT: Trees have been added and the boot should work 100%!

Please take another look and let me know if you see any problems!

http://ulognep.notics.net/NekoFactory.html

I've been working obsessively on a project for www.nekofactory.com. The deadline is this Friday, and I want to get what I have out there for all to see. It's good enough to view at this point.

NOTE: It's an animation, not a game. After the animation is over, you can control the camera with WASD, QE, and mouse.

Please post your thoughts or email them to me samkalman@comcast.net.

 

Hehe. Neat. Nice work getting all that camera animation worked out. Did you do it with the built-in keyframe editor? (Because that can be really hard to work with sometimes.)

My only comment is that it might be nice if the finished product slid out of the funnel instead of just materializing right underneath it.

Quite fun, even though I have no idea what it's for.

 

Very cute, just a couple of notes. Near the end, I kind of got a little lost during the 'big fly around', I lost track of the pieces I was enjoying following along. Also the foot kicked one of the characters backward away from the box.

I'm curious, is there a special reason you used Unity for this instead of creating a fully 3d rendered movie in your 3d app. of choice?

I love seeing Unity used for things besides games, really shows it's versatility.

 

Very cool
Would love 2 know how you got the scripts to activte to start fps?
Thru applicationloadlevel and object:dontdestroyonload?
AC

 

Awesome, the boot is my favorite part.

 

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone! It's nice to see that it's basically working. If anyone has any problems, please let me know somehow!

Fun facts: I did use Unity's built-in animation keying to create the camera movement. It took some time, and I had to reference some timestamps religiously. Plus, Aarku's TransformSaver script (on Unify wiki) was a huge help!

I hear you on this. I feel that the big fly around is a little disorienting. I'll try to keep track of all the pieces while showing more of the factory at work, maybe a zoom-out.

This is important. Did anyone else see this? If there's a bug here, I need to fix it. Anyone who sees the foot kick the Neko backward, please post a reply.

Sure! For one thing, this animation is going right onto the nekofactory.com homepage. When we were planning the website back in March, we started developing a flash animation. However I was already waist-deep in Unity, and didn't care to learn how to do flash when I could do so much more with Unity. These little Nekos are 3D versions of stuffed animals, so they actually look much better in 3D anyway. I'd like to provide some minimal interactivity as an easter egg too, so that's another reason for going plugin rather than flash video.

The script that allows keyboard input is actually active for the whole time. The camera is a Kinematic rigidbody and the script adjusts its transform values. But when I have an animation playing on the camera it overrides the input. So when the animation is done, the input automatically controls the camera.

 

Really great Sam! I can't imagine how long it took you to script that whole camera sequence inside Unity. The boot at the end didn't kick anything backwards, but it did kick thin air when the camera first arrived at that point before it pans over the box and then back to the boot.

[Edit] Just played it again and noticed this time that there were quite a few problems at the boot stage. The finished animals were falling off the box before getting booted, one even fell "through" the box. And one got kicked off to the side as it was falling off the box. Maybe you could animate them being placed on the box before getting booted instead of using physics to drop them onto it?[/Edit]

My only suggestion is to maybe add a bouncy little music track because the machine noises actually sound slightly menacing by themselves and detract slightly from the overall cutesy vibe.

 

Thanks Ethan Setting up the camera animation took me about 7 hours, all done yesterday from noon til 10pm or so. Breaks for food and all.

The music is about halfway done, but I'm not a musician and trying to make some good catchy music that isn't annoying is proving to be a real challenge. I also agree with you that the factory sounds are not great. I haven't been able to find a good resource for a variety of factory sounds.

If anyone has any leads though...

I'll be posting a new webplayer as soon as I get the music done (probably tonight).

 

Really nice, Sam! By far it wins the award for "Most complicated animation done in Unity" (At least what's shown publicly that I've seen!) I too lost a bit of the sense of what pieces are going where near the end. I did not experience the "boot bug." My two criticisms are the initial outdoors scene is the most boring part visually but it's also the "first impression" -- some more touches to it could help sell the whole animation I think. Secondly, inside the factory there are a lot of bright foreground elements against a bright background. It's pretty hard to see sometimes compared to if there were more contrast between foreground and background.

-Jon

 

overall... cool! really unique and well done.

i agree with jon's graphical comments.

i did have the boot bug. i left the camera alone after the animation ended and watched the boot kicking them off. seemed like a timing/physics thing. it was more like the boot was swinging back and a neko dropped. i also had the boot start swinging late so there was one neko on the box and one falling. both got kicked into the box though ;p i had pieces falling through the funnel occsionally and destroying on the floor too.

also... hehe... i steered the camera into the funnel to see how you were handling things. got stuck. oh and iirc you can steer the camera through the floor...

 

Thanks Jon and Pete. I will confer with my interior designer over the bright-on-bright look of the scene. Maybe we can darken the walls a little. I've got to add some trees to the outside grassy area, and I'd love to spice up the skybox. There is supposed to be a tokyo-like city in the background anyway.

FYI the camera will be disabled in the finished version. I might allow a click to change angles to a preset angle, but we'll see how much time there is.

 

I didn't see the "boot bug", but I have noticed generally that the physics engine isn't 100% consistent. (Maybe it would be if you cranked the fixed timestep way up?) You can keep tweaking stuff so it does the same thing almost all of the time, but the only way I found to 100% repeatability is to give it a "helping hand" with some triggers or whatever that assign exact velocity/angular velocity values at critical points.

--Eric

 

That's a great suggestion, one I didn't think of. It shouldn't be too hard to implement either. Where do you think I need the triggers?

 

I put them just before a spot where I need to have an object or objects doing the exact same thing...I was having an issue with objects in controlled circumstances still rarely reacting differently to collisions or what have you and going off the playing field, which would be frustrating to players even though it was rare. After spending time adjusting various parameters and reducing--but not eliminating--the issue, I came up with that idea, and it works well. I think it's called "clubbing the physics engine into submission".

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. var test : boolean = false;
3. var theVelocity : Vector3;
4. var theAngularVelocity : Vector3;
5.  
6. function OnTriggerEnter (other : Collider) {
7.     if (test) {
8.         print ("velocity x:" + other.rigidbody.velocity.x + " y:" + other.rigidbody.velocity.y +
9.                 " z:" + other.rigidbody.velocity.z);
10.         print ("angular velocity x:" + other.rigidbody.angularVelocity.x + " y:" + other.rigidbody.angularVelocity.y +
11.                 " z:" + other.rigidbody.angularVelocity.z);
12.     }
13.     else {
14.         other.rigidbody.velocity = theVelocity;
15.         other.rigidbody.angularVelocity = theAngularVelocity;
16.     }
17. }
18.  

Put that on a trigger...if "test" is checked, it gives you the velocity/angular velocity info for an object hitting the trigger, which you can then plug back into the appropriate variables and uncheck "test".

--Eric

 

Hey all. I've updated the player! It now has a full music track, a better camera move in the middle, and Joachim helped me fix one other serious bug. The boot might still have problems though... Let me know what you think, and how I can make it better!

http://ulognep.notics.net/NekoFactory.html

 

Sweet, that music adds a lot. It made the whole thing much more "friendly". Now just synch those machine noises up to the beat... just kidding, that would take you forever :wink:
But maybe put the machine noises through a low pass filter to take some of the edge off.

The boot still does some strange things, but not too much to ruin it. The only things I'd change are the checkered floor, a few cartoony trees on the outside of the factory to flesh it out a bit, the pedestal on which the animals fall onto before they get booted (it falls through this funky funnel onto a plain old cube which is a little ho hum), and I'd let the music loop (which I'm sure you've already done).

 

Very nice, both of the issues I had with the previous version are fixed. I no longer feel lost during the final fly around and the boot worked fine this time. I watched it kick in a good 15-20 and it never messed up.

The music is a great addition. I don't know if you think people will hang around and watch the boot kick the little guys into the box, but if you do maybe consider looping or extending the music so it does not go silent ever.

 

i think some more musical involvment would make it alot better...as mentioned if you could sync the machines noises (not nessicarily the same sounds you have now) to the music...even making them an integral part of the musical gesture it would be alot more involving and would capture attention alot more....

 

If only I had another month... I would love to focus down on the music and sound fx. My absolute deadline is this friday. I'm not opposed to replacing all the sounds before then, but I don't think I'll be able to do a really good integration between the sounds and the music in that time.

If anyone has any pointers on some good sound fx websites, I'd love to hear them. I have looked through the links on the unify wiki but it is like drifting in a sea of sfx links. The quality of sounds is inconsistent and unreliable... any help?

 

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/

 

I like the music... :O)

 

I like the textures. The whole look needs to be more cartoony IMO.

 

Credit for the textures (except the building and neko) goes to Macupuncture! Credit for the music goes to me and my co-composer, who also makes the Neko toys in real life.

I'm glad everyone is enjoying it.

Just because I'm curious, what would you do to make it more cartoony, Yoggy?

 

No 90 degree angles in models, more contrast in the textures (especeally the conveyor belts) some crazy wood structures holding things up and stuff. Mainly I want it to look more like a picture someone drew and less like a 3D animation full of un-reality (real reality or comic reality) like the fact that everything is floating and some of the factory components don't look like they work. The boot works. The cone that assembles the nekos works I guess. But those tubes around the conveyor belts don't make sense to me.

 

A third update has been uploaded. The deadline is close now. I've added some trees and a city, and fixed the problem with the boot at the end. Please take another look and post if you see any problems, or with new feedback.

http://ulognep.notics.net/NekoFactory.html

Thanks!

 

that dang boot! it's not doing what it was before and i don't think this is a deal breaker but... it will free fall occasionally before it resets and depending on timing, it will kick a neko and miss the box (fall short because the boot isn't at full speed). is the boot framerate dependent? i was getting pretty low fps when physics (i assume) was kicking in. no pun intended! and that's not your player it's my weak cpu (733 g4).

 

Very cute!

Trying to upload a QT mov of the boot but its taking a while to upload so I scrap it. The boot swings intermittent and misses some of the targets.

Ray

 

OK so is the boot worse than it was before?

 

no the boot is much better now at least for me.

 

Nice work on the update, I see big improvements.
I have no problem with the boot, it works 100% of the time on my end (1GHz G4 Radeon 9800 Pro)

Suggestions:

• • A few textures seem low quality compared to others in the scene (the funnel that drops completed nekos for example)
  • I would hide the mouse
  Code (csharp):

  1. Screen.showCursor = false;
  • Incase you care; Up the maximum size for the leaves on the trees (so that the leaves don't 'shrink' when you get close to them)

The factory looks great, keep it up.

 

Wow, regarding Ray's post... I had no idea people could share files that large on this forum!?! Seems weird (and cool) that OTEE doesn't put a smaller cap on the file size. That's great for people that want to share/showcase stuff and don't have their own site. I hope this post doesn't put an end to it :wink:

BTW, the infamous "boot bug" is gone for me on the latest version. Two more suggestions, the tree leaves have an alpha halo that is some beige color. You may as well make it black (it would just look like cartoony outlines then). And maybe darken the interior walls of the factory just a smidge. I like the look though, and it's cool to be able to see the buildings and trees out the windows.

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/attach_rules.php?f=4

Should be big enough.

 

Please, please put a Warning on the page: I just saw NekoFactory while iTunes was on, playing Gorillaz.
My teeth don't feel right.

 

What should the warning say? Was the music too loud?

 

***warning*** don't enter this site if gorillaz is playing!