Object Viewer/Editor

Hey All,

I picked up Unity a couple of months ago. This meant, similar to some others, I had to also buy a pretty new Mac. We went with Unity 3D for a specific project we had in mind. Can't get into the details, but one of the core components was the ability of our end users being able to submit their own 3D content for other users to use in game.

First task was building the editor/viewer that allows for some simple modifications and the ability to submit their product to the catalog which is viewable online by subscribed users as well as will be viewable in game.

I present a quick video which allows for the import of collada models. This required writing a collada importer. Also all functionality has been tested on both Windows and Mac.

http://www.screencast.com/users/Danto/folders/Default/media/29ab9bf6-74bf-40d7-8c25-5ae70049e6f8




We're a small team (I'm the only programmmer / UI Artist) and have found that working with Unity thus far has been a fun and rewarding process. There are still some things we are working out that Unity does not directly offer, but so far so good.

 

That is really interesting!
I would love to hear more about how it works.
You are using Unity's mesh manipulation functions to build the object in Unity as you read the files?

I have been dreaming of creating a virtual robotics environment in Unity where people could build their own robots, program them, and then enter them into competitions (like a cross between the "DARPA Grand Challenge" and RoboCode), and the ability to import and edit models in a running Unity player would be a step in that direction.

 

That's fantastic!

I would love to see Unity implement a standalone object browser/editor. It would so simplify the process of working with artists who do not own the Unity engine.

 

Yes. Basically what I'm doing is taking the .net xml parser object and reading in a collada file. As it reads it in it generates a new game object for each mesh object in a "scene" attaching it to a master parent. As it goes through the collada file it builds the meshes/submeshes, sets up the materials and attaches it to a gameobject. This allows for single as well as multiple meshes inside an exported collada file. There are minor diferences between exporters so currently it is only tested to work with 3dsmax and sketchup.

Our project is catalog based so this editor also handles the product setup and upon submit rewrites the mesh data into a custom model format and uploads it and it's textures up to our web server.

 

Going for some sort of virtual world setup? Something a bit like Second Life?
I would love to see unity used for a collaborative 3d environment.

 

Something similar, but a bit different from Second Life. It is, however, a 3D social networking project.