Octave3D-Level Design - Snapping, Prop placement, Multi-Prefab painting

Thank you for the info Andrew!

By standard poly I meant not stylized low poly assets but also not offline type high poly. Average 500-2000 poly models

 

Hi Andrew,

I am following along in your 'Octave3D - Intro (Building a small library)' tutorial and I keep running into the same bug.

I am dragging a folder into the 'Add Prefab' area and I get this error:

ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index

Eventually the 'Prefab Management' editor window either goes completely blank or changing the 'Active Category' stops functioning. By this I mean choose one of your categories and it ignores it and stays where it it.

This is a clean project with only Octave 3D and 3D Forge Assets installed.

Unity Version: 2020.2.6

I keep restarting Unity and staring over but this keeps happening and I never an get to the end of the tutorial.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Larry

 

Hi there,

Thanks for letting me know. I will look into it.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Hi there,

Hm... Interesting. I will have to take a look at this. Until I manage to track down the issue, please make sure that the folder you are dragging contains prefab assets. I will let you know when I have an update.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Thanks Andrew - I tried again and got through the whole library without a problem. The problem is either intermittent or some mistake I made. I'll keep you up to date as I go on.

 

Here is more detail on the bug I reported up above. I am currently working on the Terrain Placement Part II Tutorial. The yellow warning is strange since I don't have a 'Bookstands' category so it seems the program is remembering that from a previous scene. For the ArgumentOutOFRangeException you can see this error has happened 31 times while I have been working. If I brush the wood onto the terrain it does not happen but if the cursor is over the fence or another piece of wood, the error message will increment consistently (every time I click). I hope this is helpful.

-Larry

 

Ok. Thank you very much for the info. That is helpful. I will start looking into it and get back to you when I have a fix.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Hi there,

I have just remembered that these buttons were replaced with a context menu in order to save more space in the Prefab manager window. So the actions are still available if you right click in the prefab manager window. It will show a context menu with two items: Remove and Clear. Each Item has more children which map to the old action buttons.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Hi there,

I have managed to reproduce the bug and fixed it. Please send me an e-mail at octamodius@yahoo.com and I will send you the updated pack.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

Hi Andrew - Quick questions:

1) In the 'Octave3D - Object 2 Object Snap (Placement + Selection)' video there is a checkbox for 'Can Hover Objects' which does not exist anymore in the current Octave version. Has this functionality been replaced? Is so, how do I access it?

2) In the Octave3D - Selection Extrude video, it says you can hit the T key to activate the Extrude Gizmo - This button does not appear to work for me and it is not mentioned (in this context) in the Hotkeys.pdf. Is there a new hotkey to active the Extrude Gizmo?

3) In Object Placement Mode there is something called 'Path' and 'Path Construction'. I can see its kind of like Block mode. I was playing around with it and the hot keys G and H with Height Adjustment Mode set to Manual but they don't do anything that I can tell (I expected the blocks to move up or down) It has peaked my interest

4) In Block placement Mode, pressing G and H don't seem to do anything even when in 'Manual height adjustment. Also can you explain what 'E' does - what exactly is a 'block extension plane'?

 

Hi Larry,

I can only answer for point 1. for now and I will have to take a look at the others later.

So the toggle that you see in the video can be found in the ObjectSelection UI. Object-to-object snapping has 2 different set of settings: one for placement and the other for selection.

In placement mode, you can use the W key to toggle the same functionality on/off. In selection mode, you can use the toggle. It's not a very fortunate arrangement, I know, but I hope to completely overhaul the UI experience one day.

Note: I found out that actually the toggle was being ignored by the plugin in selection mode, so I managed to fix this bug. If you wish I can send you the pack, or maybe wait a bit until I manage to fix other issues too.

 

Hi Larry,

So to touch upon the other points...

2. It seems indeed that the shortcut key is now used for something else. It is used to snap the grid to the mouse cursor pick point. I remember deciding that this would be a useful functionality to have in selection mode once it supported object-to-object snap. So for the moment, no hotkey is available for the extrude gizmo. It's a bit difficult to come up with a new hotkey for a certain action since there are many of them. I will see if I can come up with something, but I can not make any guarantees.

EDIT: I just took a look over the code again and it seems that the Q key is now used for the extrude gizmo. Sorry for the confusion

3. I just tested this and it works. Just make sure that the prefab you are using is not planar. So for example, a quad, can not be raised, because it has a height of 0 along the height axis.

4. Same thing as above. Regarding the extension plane, for both path and block, the extension plane is the green plane that indicates the surface along which the path/block will be extending. By default, it is aligned with the scene grid plane. Which means that the path/block will extend along the world XZ axes. When pressing G and H, the path/block will be raised/lowered perpendicular to that plane. The E hotkey allows you to change the orientation of the plane which means you can extend the path/block along different axes.

Hope this helps,
Andrew

 

Excellent thanks, I got it.

Regards,

 

Thanks Andrew I can definitely wait a bit.

 

That for the elaboration Andrew. I was trying to raise a plane ha ha. Now that I know what I am doing this is so much fun, this tool just keeps amazing me me more and more!

 

I have the problem that the tool functions disappear as soon as the object (EmtyGameobject + script) is no longer checked.
2020.3

 

If

If by "no longer checked" you mean that the object is no longer selected in the hierarchy view, that was always the case in Octave3D. You must have the object selected in order to work with the plugin. This allows the plugin to be "toggled" on/off as needed. There may be times when you want to do other stuff in the scene without having the plugin get in the way.

 

Hello, before purchasing I'm wondering about the performance aspect, eg. if there are hundreds of wall prefabs for example

Is there a video on the mesh combine feature?

(+ HDRP?)

 

Hello,

There are currently no videos for the mesh combiner. It is a simple combiner that combines meshes based on materials.

I have not tested the asset with HDRP. For now at least, I choose to support only the Standard pipeline.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Click with the right mouse button on the Prefab Management view. The options are there. I had the same problem.

Regards.

 

Hey there,

Currently experiencing an issue with object groups. Last time I edited my scene I created some Object Groups. I've come back to it a few days later to the same scene, and it seems like Octave3D has completely forgotten about my object groups. Is there any way to prevent this from happening in the future? It feels kind of pointless to go through the time to set all that up if it's going to be forgotten each time I close my Unity editor.

Is this normal? Am I missing some documentation on how to use these properly? LS_Woods was my previously created Object Group which appears to not be recognized as a group any longer.

 

Troubleshooting further...

I re-tagged the Object Group in the hierarchy to try to continue working. Now hit another snag, related to it. I cannot assign these prefabs to an Object Group.



But if I switch to a different Category, it magically shows up. Just not for the Category I actually need...

 

I fixed this issue for myself (for now) by deleting the Category and re-creating it.

Not a great solution. I hope this gets fixed soon.

 

I've just gotten Octave3D and have watched the tutorial videos. Unfortunately, the "getting started" video is from 2016 and the interface no longer looks the same. I can't even find the button to open the prefab manager. I hate being so stupid that I can't figure this out on my own but can anyone help? Is there an updated "getting started" video, for example?

 

The button which opens up the prefab manager is labeled Prefabs... and it's location hasn't changed.

 

Hi there,

I will look into this. But just to make sure I got this right. So the object groups didn't disappear but their association with the categories is what was broken. Is this correct?

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Did I happen to mention that I'm not that bright? Can you point it out to me? Sorry for being such a pain

 

Hi there,

First click on the button highlighted in orange and then click on the button highlighted in blue. This will open up the prefab manager.

 

Thank you so much, both for the speed of your replies and your patience. I really appreciate it.

 

No problem

 

Hi,

Two (possibly related) questions for you:

1. When using "Block" or "Extrude" for placement, it seems to leave gaps; whereas, point and click doesn't leave gaps. I assume this is due to uneven mesh, and it taking the farthest point. Point and click is snapping to the grid, so it doesn't have the issue.

How do I resolve this issue to allow for use of block / extrude? Can I set it to ignore mesh and use by box colliders for determining placement distances?

2. When using decore painting, I have the same problem. It's attempting to snap based on mesh, which is uneven and causes some crazy rotations. I like the attempted alignment, but not against the mesh, but rather the collider..

Edit: And one more... I was getting a serialization issue on build that complained that the Octave3D script was missing (probably due to your use an IF UNITY_EDITOR directive). It was fixed by removing the world builder script before build. Is there a step I'm missing? I'm currently using Odin as well.

Thanks!

 

Hello! I seem to have found a bug, perhaps it's a misunderstanding but I don't think so. The "object group" dropdown inside the 'Prefab Manage' window disappears when I change the active prefab category, so I can't assign created groups to other prefab categories. Only the first group I create gets assigned to the currently active category, after that it's impossible to assign groups to other prefab categories because the drop down for doing so disappears on other prefab categories.

Edit: I can't replicate this bug in a new scene. Everything works as it should in a newly created scene.

Edit2: Deleting the object where the Octave 3D world builder script was attached and then creating another object solved the issue.

 

Hi there,

1. The Block and Path placement modes always calculate the object positions based on their mesh bounds so depending on the mesh, this can happen. There is only one way to avoid this and that is to use the Padding along extension plane field to define a custom padding. This may need a bit of experimenting.



2. Yes, that is correct. The mesh is used again for calculations and I would prefer to have it like this for now.

3. This bug has been reported to me quite a few times but I had not managed to find a solution for it up until somewhat recently. I believe I have a solution for it and i will let you know when it is done.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

@XGT08 This bug (gray prefab thumbnails on Prefab Management window, while using Direct3D Graphics API) still happens to me even with Octave3D's latest version. Have you ever checked this out?

With Graphics API set to Direct3D 11:


With Graphics API set to OpenGL Core:

 

Hi there,

Interesting... I will take a look at this. It does seem like the texture format is not supported which is strange. Until, I take a closer look at this, can you maybe try removing Octave3D from the scene, change the Graphics API and then initialize Octave3D again? I know it sounds a like a silly thing to do, but to be honest I can not see why this wouldn't work.

 

Actually, I think the issue was something corrupted in my old Octave3D GameObject (from an older Octave3D version).

Now, I just created a new GameObject with Octave3DWorldBuilder component (after updating Octave3D to latest version), and the prefabs thumbnails worked again in DX11! I didn't even have to change the Graphics API.

Thanks for the help!

 

Aaaa wonderful! Thanks for letting me know

 

I have a problem with prefab previews too: they look too bright, with low contrast. Therefore it is sometimes hard to recognize what is displayed on preview. This looks not like in videos and screenshots, and not like in Unity previews:





I tried to update an asset, change Graphics API and recreate the GameObject with World Builder, this not helped. Is there anything else what I can try?

 

Hi there,

I believe this is due to the selected color space. Although I remember fixing this a while back. I will have to see.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Yep, that's correct. I think whatever holds the reference was wiped somehow. It's not happening any longer after I went and recreated the groups but it could be some edge case situation.

 

Hi there,

There seems to have been a problem when using the Linear color space. Please send me an e-mail at octamodius@yahoo.com and I will send you the updated asset.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Hey, I recently bought the asset. I'm not sure why, but the behavior of multiple things aren't acting right. for instance. I don't see the grid the way it is on any videos or screen shots from other people. So when I press J to move the snap point, I can't see any of that under the asset nor the yellow balls. I can't get any objects to snap to other objects no matter if the "enable object to object snap is on. I've never seen the green grid that was in your video's on the object to object snapping. I can see the objects snapping to places on the grid, Just can't see the grid. I hope that makes some type of sense. I've removed and reimported octave3d, same issues persist. Also, a lot of the buttons are gone that were there in your videos and I can't seem to follow along to learn because i can't find the things your are talking about. is there any updated videos or documentation that i can look through to help my learning curve? Using unity 2020.30f1
Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Hi there,

@donniecostin
I will have to look into the grid not showing.

There have been changes to the UI, but nothing that drastic. You should be able to follow along with the tutorial with no problems. In terms of prefab management, probably the most significant change was that there were some buttons removed and replaced with a context menu. You can right click in the prefab manager window in order to bring up the context menu for the missing buttons.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Please make sure that the gizmos are being rendered for Octave3D world builder as shown in the image below:

 

Ok, thank you so much! I made a new project in Unity 2019 LTS and it seems to be doing fine there. I saved the default preset in Octave3d there as soon as i seen it. I'm going to try loading it on my 2020 version to see if that makes a difference. I appreciate the reply and the help! Thanks, Andrew!

Update: I just checked and the gizmo's are on it's still not showing in 2020 for some reason. I'll probably just work in 2019 for now, Most of the tools that I'm using seems to have issues with 2020. Guess, They don't like that year either =P

 

I saw a post from a few years ago that mentioned there is rotation randomization but don't see it on the options menu. Is this still in the product? Where can I find it?

 

Hi there,

There are different options for different placement modes. What is the placement mode you are using? (e.g. PointAndCLick, DecorPaint, Brush)

 

I am using PointAndClick mostly and sometimes decorPaint

 

Sorry to bother with a dumb question but I can not figure out how to randomize the rotation on different axis using the Bush Painter. Painting small details and want to randomize the rotation of not only the Y but also X & Z to give natural chaos to the detail.

 

For both PointAndClick and Decor Paint, you need to expand the Roation Randomization Settings and then check Randomize rotation. After that, a whole bunch of other settings appear as shown below: