Ninja Camp VI

Hey guys,

We held our sixth Ninja Camp this week here in Copenhagen. This is a week for all of Unity's developers to come together from around the world and group up into small teams to work on projects that we are passionate about and/or wouldn't usually have the time to focus on during our regular development cycles.

Some of these projects are purely for fun or research and might never see the light of day in an actual release while others might be seeds planted for Unity's future.

Please check out the page and let us know what you think as we always love feedback from the Unity community

http://unity3d.com/ninjacamp

We just finished up the week tonight with showing all the week's projects off internally, but not all of them are up on the site yet so make sure check back in the next few days for more updates. At the moment there are only 11 on the site, but we had around 2 dozen in total so there is much more to come!

 

This was awesome! Holding my breath for a 2D physics engine implemented in the next unity update
(Okay maybe not, but it's something I've been wanting for quite a while so thumbs are held)

 

Juha Kiili, who made Rage Spline, recently joined Unity and worked on this Ninja Camp project so only good 2D things can come in the future ;-)

 

Full namespace support for MonoBehavior derived classes. With the ever growing asset store, I've found that the likelyhood of naming collisions increasing all the time.

Editor scripting support for adding imput, tags, etc. Again related to asset store items not being able to add the input dynamically when you import... often leaving you scratching your head why a controller isn't working until you notice the warnings about all the missing tags and input.

 

Agreed, but this isn't a wishlist topic.

I do hope that hardware cursors project ends up being "for real".

--Eric

 

Yeah good point. Maybe the input/tag "scripting" could be considered an editor improvement.

Of the existing ninja projects:

• MMO Networking - Interesting... improvements to networking always a plus even if you don't need that much concurrency.
• 2D - A 2d mode would be great, especially if it keeps draw calls way down. Optimized 2d physics also a plus for me. Of them all this is most interesting to me.
• Fluid Solver - Bit beyond the scope of games I'm working on.
• Editor Improvements - Improvements here are all good. Interested to see what the asset bundle improvements would be.
• Future Demo Projects - Love to see what is coming.
• Voxel Terrain - Second most interesting item because I love voxel games.
• Draw Call Stepper - Helpful debugging where all those draw calls are coming from.
• New Bug Reporter - Haven't yet used the old one. More system info and screen capture is good... used in the app I work on as my day job.
• Sprite Packer - Speeding up mobile always a good thing.
• Editor on Android - Not too interested.
• Hardware Cursors - This also would be good.

 

Oh my... a Unity editor for Android! yea!!!!! MAKE THAT HAPPEN, then I can work on my game on the buss.

 

Now I have to buy an android...

 

Do you know if the Android editor will still be worked on?

 

maybe I am misunderstanding, this quote is taken from the ninjacamp section of 2d tools project. Can we use tablet pressure in the editor already on mac? If so... how?

"
Implemented drawing tablet pressure input support on Windows (it was already working on Macs).
May 25, 2012 13:15"

 

What I would like is the 2D physics engine fully integrated with working raycasts and identical workflow to physx with same commands - except ignoring Z.

That would be a dream come true. Free speed for 2D. It's tricky because it has to feel the same as the 3D version and it's a 2D library that's different. But I think it has a place even for 3D games.

The project with the light bouncing stuff is cool too, although not sure how realistic/reliable it will be... it could suffice nicely for a preview of beast.

 

Cool indeed! Hopefully we'll see this introduced in Unity 4.0.

 

Aras, thanks so much! My native plugin always crashes the editor, this will be so nice finally being able to test without building. Will this work for standalone builds as well so I can abandon the plugin entirely?

 

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/06/06/ninja-camp-vi/

 

All of those projects look really cool!

Side note: Who in the world is that guy who posts "It is also important to note that Unity must also start testing these things for the next release of Unity 3D:" on every single blog?

 

voxel terrain and script editor ftw!

 

AngryAnt, put on some shoes, ya goddamn hippie.

 

"Draw Call Stepper" : http://www.unity3d.com/ninjacamp/projects/10100

This one would be incredibly useful !

 

Mesh Painting Update

 

Pls...

Pretty pls...

 

Hi Ethan and Aras. I have a question: Is there really all that much point to having separate "Terrain" objects these days?

I know separating terrain engine functionality out from the main 3D engine made sense in the past, but I can't help feeling it's not particularly useful to do so now. It also arbitrarily limits some features of Unity's Editor at present.

For example, you've just shown "painting stuff onto an arbitrary mesh" can be done. Just add the ability to paint any 3D object onto any other mesh's surface and that's pretty much every Terrain feature covered. Any code that specifically needs to know where the 'ground' is can just look for, say, a "ground" tag. You already have LOD and improved culling features too, so that's less of an issue than it was.

I ask because I've noticed that things seem to get noticeably simpler the fewer edge cases and special cases you have to deal with. APIs become easier to learn and master the less of them you have to deal with. Like any interface, the less unnecessary bloat you have in that API, the better.

And it'll be easier to maintain too, I suspect.

Presumably there's a reason why I'm wrong, so I want to know what it is!

 

Hey guys, are you using some sort of RGBA masks for the color layers?
Do the mesh needs to be unwraped?
Where those pixels are going? UV channel 2?
That would be awesome if we can paint over the lightmap channel (or why not, choose the channel we want to paint).
Keep it up, looks awesome.

 

Mesh painting seems very nice, but is that vertex painting, or actually painting on UVs? Both solutions would have their own advantage for sure.

 

Definitely it looks like pixel painting (using layers). And i guess the shader used blends pixels with RGBA masks (similar to what the terrain painting does).
I really want to see this project fully integrated into future versions of Unity, working with any arbitrary meshes (terrains, meshes, standard primitives) would unleash the power of Artists (and non artists -_-) right inside Unity.

 

I'm looking forward to the code editor seems very cool.. and the 2D tools would be interesting...

 

Sweet stuff..........
Can we blend material with it??

Come on guys, put all those stuff from ninja camp into the next release of unity

 

Hum,
Giving a second look to the "Mesh Painting" video. It seems that is a single layer with diffuse, normal and possibly specular (not sure). No visible RGBA masking. Looks like painting is done directly to the UVs channel (1 or 2). If that's the case it wont work on gigantic meshes (as terrains). Also, It will be problematic on mapping with overlapping faces. As soon as you start painting on the texture, you will see the same painting patterns on surfaces sharing the same UV data.
Still, I'm not sure, would be nice to know the inner work of the tool.
Anyone?

 

The android one sucks, cant they put up some video of what they have done?!?!?! even if it just crashes the phone or whatever.

 

For example you have two types of scene, one is in summer and one is in winter, and with winter one you just go over all models and brush them with snow on top a little Just one idea...

 

I hope this will be integrated, if only to paint shadows on my maps.
I really like to be able to just paint fake occlusion and make an artistic lighting palette.
And will it support wacom pressure on mac? that would make it super awesome

 

I was wondering if you'd be implementing dynamic fluid surfaces?

 

What about this ?

 

Definitely, having both available channels (UV1,UV2) for painting would be awesome. Artists will get crazy with such tool, painting all kind of details all over.
I've written a similar but limited tool in the past (without the crazy brushing style/effects) but ended up abandoning the idea. Even if this tool never get parts of Unity itself, would be nice for others to have it.
Looking good. Keep it up!

 

Slightly dated, but the 2D feature looks so great! Knowing the Unity team they could do a lot of great work with that.

 

Keep in mind that those projects are not a commitment. They for instance ended up implemented in a future version of Unity or get lost in limbo. XD

 

Any word on when this code will become public ,

 

Waiting for Clive Spectrum to pop up any day now demanding dynamic fluid surfaces at once, with an imperious gesture of sweet trolling.