New Resources Released

Some new resources are available on our site:

Character Customization
Learn how to make Customizable Characters in your game, and learn something about AssetBundles along the way.

External Lightmapping Tool
Create great lighting for your Unity scenes using 3D Studio Max.

Lens Flares
Sixteen lens flares for your Unity projects

 

This will certainly be useful, thank you very much.

 

cool thanks

 

These resources are really nice, but I seem to be having a problem with the character customization web player demo. (Which looks really cool by the way).

After running it for a couple of minutes, I get an NVIDIA driver crash (version 191.07). I have tried upgrading video drivers to 195.55 (beta), and it does the same thing. It actually causes artifacts all over the screen after the video driver crash, and requires a reboot to restore normal video.

Hardware configuration:

Video card: NVidia GTX 295
Windows 7 64-bit ultimate
8 gb ram / Q9650 quad core cpu

I can run other 3d applications/games with no problem, so I am thinking it might have something to do with a driver conflict in the new version of the unity web player when used by this web player application.

Only seems to happen when running this particular web player app. I can run the web player version of the tropical paradise demo without artifacting/driver crash from this website.

If you'd like any more information about my configuration, I'd be happy to provide it or run tests.

Thanks

Brian

 

Any time you get crashing like this please relaunch Unity and log a bug via the Help menu as that will capture and send us a lot of good data for bug hunting. In this case you can cite the project as we'll have copies, in other cases provide the project folder or a link to it if you can so we can try to reproduce the problem on our end. Thanks!

 

I have a curiousity question about the Character Customization demo.

Was there a particular reason that the scripts in it are in C# as opposed to UnityScript?

I'm in the process of barely trying to learn UnityScript, so reading the C# scripts was a little confusing. Not a big deal as I eventually hope to figure it out. Was C# used because of particular functionality that was harder in another language? Or was it just the programmer's personal preference?

The project is awesome by the way. After Unite, I was really looking forward to this eventually being released. Hoorah!

 

Thank you very much.

I'm kind of in the same boat as WinningGuy. I'd like to see JScript, too, but I'll take the Character Customization any way I can get it. I won't complain. This is what I was looking for.

 

Great stuff - thanks to all

And I find it fantastic that we finally have a resource using C# - thanks Bas (and Lucas?).

/Thomas

 

/signed ;-) ... in general, I think C# is very nice for tutorials / resources as it naturally provides more information than UnityScript which can do a lot of "implicit magic" that can make it quite a bit harder to understand what's going on "under the hood" (which, of course, is just my opinion ;-) ).

Of course, it's possible to also write "verbose UnityScript" but I think fewer people do so because the language makes it optional (and I remember having kind of a hard time when first learning Unity - even though I do have a Web-background of JavaScript ... my C# background and preference obviously outweighing that, though).

 

I completely support Jashan on this: it was about time that we get some example projects written in C#...

 

Logged! Thanks for the tip.

Brian

 

(X-Posted from Support)
Very cool stuff, and definitely a good example of the async loading. I was playing around with the skinned mesh renderer (SMR) combiner included in the project (which is super-keen, BTW). I do have a question about it, though. It appears to generate new instances of materials for the combined SMR which, in turn, causes there to be (at least) as many draw calls as there are customizable pieces. I'm sure this approach is preferable to retaining multiple SMRs each with a single material, but if we're using a single material with a texture atlas, is it possible to set up the skinned mesh renderer to use that material for all parts? All of my efforts to remove duplicate materials have resulted in the ancillary body parts not being rendered, but I'm not overly familiar with the SMR API.

 

Do any of you C# guys know if this was done because of functionality or preference?

Sorry to sound like a programming noob... ummm... but that's what I am.

The only thing I really don't like about it being in C# is that it strays from consistency. As a learner, it makes it harder to pick up.

I don't mind the language itself. But it's not like there are a lot of Unity tutorials in C# for reference.

Hopefully someone translates it to US.

 

@WinningGuy: The character generator, in particular, relies heavily on generics which are difficult (or impossible, I'm not sure) to do in Unity's Javascript. The Wikipedia page I pointed to above gives an example of how to read those things like "List<[SomeClass]>," although the Character Generator is a fairly complex example to start off with if you want to learn C#. As you get more confident with Javascript-style scripting, I'd suggest reading up on things like generics and software design patterns (if you understand Unity's component system, you've got a leg up on the Composite pattern) and when it's appropriate to use them (that last bit is very important). You can do some complex stuff with the Javascript-style scripting, but it's sometimes easier to operate on more complex structures using C#.

 

Thanks for clearing that up!

I have read mixed things when it comes to languages in Unity. I've sometimes read posts where people have said all the languages are pretty much the same. But I've also seen a post here or there that spoke of certain things that you could do in C# that you couldn't do in others.

I guess I'll pass this along to one of our programmers and I'll stick to the easier stuff for now.

 

The character customization _library_ is written in C#.
It comes with two examples. One in Javascript, and one in C#. (The VirtualWorldDemo, and the DressingRoomExample)

The reason the library itself is written in c#, is that it's relatively complicated code, and also serves as an exampleproject on how to use assetbundles in a slightly more complicated project. We also want to give more advanced programmers some c# examples to learn from.

Note however, if you only want to use the goodies, and just drop in some characters in your game, you can just control all the functionality using Javascript no problem. (See the virtualworlddemo for a good example for that).

I hope this is useful for people out there.

Lucas

 

Thanks so much for the new assets could I just ask a few noob questions on using them.

Would it be possible for someone to explain how to use in a new project.

1.To use in creation of a character

2.Save and launch into your world

3.Step on decal or spot in dressing room to call up Hud to change character

4.Click a button to call up Hud to change character

I know it's a lot but it would really help Noobs like me in the learning curve.

 

If you want to go the super easy route, you could just import the character into your 3D application. Then just create your own meshes and textures to bind to that skeleton. Just make sure that you follow the same naming convention for any new assets.

 

Hello,

I have incorporated the dressing room scene into my own project and plan on extending it for my own needs. My question though is in regards to the models themselves..

I am not a maya / 3d max pro or anything and definitely have a limited knowledge in regards to animation. Therefore, I am contracting a freelancer to model my character and a freelancer to rig and animate it. So my questions are these...

When talking to my 3d modeler.. Say I want to replicate the characters provided.. ie one basic character with 2 variations on everything and shared animations. Does my 3d artist need to model 2 separate characters which are combined when rigged? Are the body parts (ie Hair) separate objects attached to the overall model?

If say the character has two shirt options and has been animated to walk.. at a later date I want my 3d artist to add a 3rd shirt would the model have to be re-rigged and animated as well in order to incorporate the new shirt?

I realize these may be basic questions for 3d artists but I'm definitely more of a programmer than an artist. I guess if someone could explain a little of what one would ask from a freelance artist in order to use their own model in this application it would be a big help. I don't want to buy something that I find out I don't need or worse needs to be done differently down the road. :?

 

Hi,
first i wanna thank you for the new resources.It´s good to learn. But thereby i have a question. I want to know how i could use loading assetbundles at runtime from a webserver. So i compare the old "AssetBundles (AB)" and the new "CharacterCustomization (CC)"-resources.

In the "AB"-project you can build AssetBundles from a small script "InstantiateResource" where it generates "xyz.unity3d"-files.

In the new "CC"-project there will be generate "xyz.assetbundle"-files. So it would be great to know about the differences and there advantages/disad.

(I´m unity-pro-user) Thanks for your help.

 

@yosh: I don't know the specifics of those two variants but I can say that hiding* your question here isn't the way to go, please start a new thread of your own in Support and ask this same question and you'll likely get better help.

*And yes, you're "hiding" your question here as you're burying it at the end of a thread with a heading that doesn't match what you're asking about at all. Putting it here means some folks might glance past the thread and not see it and thus not help you. It's also hiding it as if someone comes along later trying to search for answers to the same or a similar question they may also skip over a thread with a mis-matched subject. So start a new thread and let's get the answer sorted!

 

Ok, thanks. I´ve posted a new topic.

 

Is there any chance Unity could post the cannon firing animation demo from Introduction to Unity 2.6 at Unite 09? It's a great insight into what Unity's animation editor can do so it'd be nice to have a closer look.

 

Let me dig into that and see!

 

Thank you! Would it be posted in the presentations section if it were made available? http://unity3d.com/support/resources/unite-presentations/introduction-to-unity-2.6

 

I'd imagine so, yes.

 

Hiya, so a couple of comments regarding the character customisation demo:

1, It doesnt work out of the box with unity indie. Character Element and Character generator scripts are not indie compatible.

2 the texture references are broken WRT the "room". When you open it in a modeling application, all the materials are broken. *Note to artist: To avoid this, you must not move the model or textures around in the Unity project. Its a knee-jerk reaction to move them around, to "Tidy up" a project, but it makes editing the scene in a modeling app a pain in the ass.

For example I have to make some tiny adjustments to the room and change some objects and textures. This should be simple but because the artist on this project broke the fbx material assignments, its uneccessarily complex. Add that to time required to fix the broken scripts = borked client quote for tweaking room model.

Its always a bummer when the first thing you have to do to a project is figure out and fix someone elses' mistakes.

2c

AC

 

Bummer indeed, sorry about that Aaron. I'll forward this information on to the right people so they can digest it and fix things as appropriate.

 

Cheers Tom its the scripts thats the main thing. I can probably figure this out but I doubt newcomers will be able to.

Aaron

 

In retrospect, the download page for the Character Customization demo does state that AssetBundles are used/demo'd, and those are Pro-only (hence the issues with the scripts above). No, it doesn't explicitly say "Pro only" on that page and perhaps it should, but this just came to mind so I thought I'd put it out there. Carry on!

 

Any luck digging up that animation project? TiA!