RageTools: Flash-like 2D Vectors and GUI for Unity

Hi Jeff. So, you don't need to fill in the "Filter" field since the only member in your group is already 'Rock'. Anyways, that shouldn't be the problem since you apparently typed it right. So, the most probable cause for you not being able to apply it is that "Rock" already has a RageSplineStyle (that last field in the RageSpline component) applied to it. To clear it up, simply click on the "aim" icon right next to RageSpline's Style field, a list will open - simply select "None" at its top. Now Group Styling will work.

The thing is that group styling only copies the style attributes to the group's splines, it does't "overrule" RageSpline's styles - it could clear it up automatically, but I'm not 100% sure that's what most users would want. Anyways, we intend to add a proper standalone style editor in the near future to prevent users to have to create a style into a RageSpline then have to clear it up afterwards.

 

Demo looks really cool. But ctrl-plus ctrl-minus don't seem to do anything on mac. Unless I can't see what is supposed to happen.

 

Hi Robin. I've no idea what's the shortcut in Safari to increase the zoom level, supposing you find it and it doesn't change the debug number please let me know, there'd be a problem with the Unity plugin on the Mac. For the record, I've tested it on a small and a large screen Android and it worked fine (and with smooth performance), some time later I'm gonna upload the .APK to the website for anyone willing to test it.

 

oic. Command-plus and Command-minus does the same thing on the mac (firefox). It works very well. Thanks.

 

Some news, we've been cranking out new code and stabilization fixes (directly proportional, of course ) in the last week or so. RageGroup now has a "Visible" checkbox and an "Opacity" slider, also accessible from RageConstraint. This means that it's super-easy now to make fade-in / fade-out animations of your vector art using whatever animation or tween solution you prefer. Having these controls accessible from RageConstraint means you can animate position, rotation, scale and visibility/opacity from a controller external to the RageSpline hierarchy, providing for perfect interactivity in Unity's Animation Window. Likewise, it'll now be feasible to create simple switch-type animations with RageTools, by simply enabling and disabling the visibility of each "frame"'s group.



With that infra-structure in place, we're now cooking up a high level switch-animation generation component, called "RageSprite" - the next RageTools Pro component. This cool dude will enable you to create "vector sprites" with ease, outputting standard Unity animation clips - meaning you'll be able to control them using any state controller (like Playmaker) or simply replace your existing animation clips with RageSprite-generated clips.

Some demos coming soon, meanwhile make sure to check out our latest RageTools Pro demo, simulating a 2D waterline using just a handful of RageMagnets and standard PhysX spring joints: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/94...-v1.1-RELEASED?p=971671&viewfull=1#post971671

PS.: That scene goes included in next RageTools Pro update

 

Any news on the Edgetune Orthographic Size support?

 

one question i have:

is it possible to import several svgs, let the user put them to certain positions and later bake them into one new texture i can put on other objects?

 

Sure, it's in! Actually I've just finished fixing the last bug related to it, actually not to the ortho size support per se, but to the fact that RageGroups weren't fully refreshing (in editor, out of play mode) with changes applied to a camera. It has to do with the super-slow refresh that Unity uses in edit mode, which quickly becomes no-refresh for components not selected and that didn't take a transform change. After plenty of sweat, I've managed to work around it using a bunch of tricks, which helps the refresh consistency across all components. Even so, I had to make the progressive updater only work during play mode - or in built projects, of course. In edit mode the group will always refresh at once, as if you had set Update Step to zero.

Sure, you'd have to use Unity Pro's Render to Texture feature, or other off-the-shelf solution for that - don't quote me on that, but I think I saw a component in the asset store that could do that with Unity Free.

 

one more questions came up:

in the tutorial i read: "On Start – Imports the SVG File once the scene is played. Useful for tests and to reduce the file size of your deployed project, since you don‟t have to actually store the larger mesh file data. Attention: Only works for PC and Mac standalone builds."

does this mean i can only load svg files on start and only use them on pc and mac builds? i am looking for an importer that can import tons (and i mean tons) of svg files for a unity project. loading them at start is not really an option because we need the svgs as image data after import.

to get more into detail what we need:

we have a huge svn as texture for our level (like 200 x 200 meters). we want to clip that svg into 1 x 1 meter parts to form a nice grid. is that clipping possible or am i only able to import the svg as whole? if i can import the whole svg and clip it after the import that ofc is ok.

edit: and one more i have...
is it possible to merge svg files? like moving them "into" each other and create one merged file with it?

 

Definitely not, that's just an option, and not a commonly used on. The default is import the SVG directly in the editor (not in Play mode), then the vector data become static RageSpline shapes.

You can perform as many imports as you want in the same scene. If you want just send me a sample clip (contact@freakow.com), I'll test it out and send you a screenshot of the result.

Not sure what you mean here, but you can organize your shapes (position/rotation/scale) as much as you want after import. RageTools includes a component to re-place the rotation center (pivot) of your shapes in many ways, which's very helpful in these cases. Thanks and feel free to keep firing your questions up

 

RageTools 1.1.3 and RageTools Pro 1.0.3 submitted to the Asset Store! Get ready for the huge pack of goodies, list follows:

Oh and our website is finally updated, I've added all the links you've guys suggested, hopefully it'll be much more useful now. Check our spanking new RageTools Pro page: http://www.freakow.com/ragetoolspro.html

 

Guys, just a couple notes for when you upgrade to the latest RageTools versions - as usual backup your projects before updating.

 

Just grabbed the latest update. Thanks.

FYI: I noticed the new Visible property on RageGroup will not work on existing RageGroups. I had to remove/re-add the RageGroup components in order to toggle visibility in the inspector.

 

Hi Jeff. True, I haven't mentioned it but due to the new opacity-related fields you have to Update the RageGroups (just click update in the component, you shouldnt need to re-add it). Also, I'm not in the comp right now but I'm pretty sure we have a Macro called "RageGroup-Update All" that does it for all RageGroups at once.

 

First screenshot showing the FPE (Farseer Physics Engine) Unity port integration with RageTools Pro. If you don't know what his grandfather system, Box2D, and Farseer are capable of, check the demos in this link: http://www.catsinthesky.com/blog/article/2012/03/5/farseer-physics-box2d-and-unity-part-1

For the record, Farseer is an open source project originally created by Jeff Weber, which you've probably seen in this thread many times. All our contributions to the Farseer Unity project will be open source as well. Thanks for a great system Jeff, I had no idea you were such a community hero. Flattered to have you using RageTools

I'm hoping to have this demo done and live early next week. Much more cool stuff to come, sit tight!

 

Very cool to see you are using Farseer Physics Engine. Seems so long ago when I started building it. Box2D at the time really only handled box-box collisions. Farseer has since, thanks to a lot of people, taken on a life of its own. Always surprised to see it pop-up in unexpected places like Unity and now with Rage Tools.

Look forward to seeing the demo.

 

Awesome I admire Box2D from afar since a lot, but never got to use it. Very curious about the demo

 

Thanks Jeff and Daniele. I'm also very excited with everything I can add to RageTools with the toolset - ropes and bridges created straight from the ragesplines, feeding the collider data from the shape(s) points or subdivided vertices, etc. All with a stability and ease of setup that is simply not possible with Physx. Possibilities really seem huge! ^_^

Just gotta wrap my mind around some parts of it that are still a mystery to me, but I've already added some improvements relatively painlessly - so it's all looking good so far.

 

Hey MaDDox,

Congratulations on getting perspective to work! It's ace!

One thing I am having trouble with though is getting it to render at the correct depth amongst other objects in the scene, for some reason it always seems to render behind everything else. I tried adding ztest on in the shader code but that makes work a bit better but it gets all fizzy due to the svg elements being at the same location on the z plane.

Is the only way to adjust this by using the RageLayer script? Just wondering because there's one point where I'd like a character to be holding an imported SVG object where there'll be parts of the character in front and behind.

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

@MaDDox is RageTools Pro features compatible with all platforms like flash?

do you plan to be a part of Assets Store Madness?

 

Okay, I got it working by manually moving objects fractionally along the z axis with the shader set to zest on
Just wondering though, is it possible to move SVG elements z axis through rage tools? It looked like there was an option there but I couldn't get it happening and it would make it a whole lot easier.

 

Definitely, actually our demo game is *built* for Flash, using Unity.

We do, but it depends on the Asset Store. We're waiting for our turn

Don't get mad at me, I just can't resist making this joke: RTFM!!! ^_^ From this version changelog:

Should be pretty straightforward to use, if you have any trouble with it just ping me.

 

Hey MaDDoX,

Opps, sorry, But does that mean I have to ad a rage layer script to every object in my scene and preset their depths? 'Cause that sounds like it's not going to work here, there's things that go in front and behind other objects.
It's a shame the depth part of shaders is so finicky. I think it's going to mean it's back to bimaps for me

Pete.

 

Pete, you're right that right now all we have is a fixed ordering for shapes that doesn't fit shapes changing their relative order dynamically. The problem is not even with the shaders, but with a well-known issue related to computer graphics cards - transparency sorting. RageSpline uses transparency for its anti-aliasing. If you can forego anti-aliasing, it's relatively simple to have a shader that automatically sorts shapes depth correctly.

One of our buds is a "shader master" and he says there'd be a way to do it automatically while keeping anti-aliasing, but it's a quite involved change that would involve a deep RageSpline update, so we can't promise anything on that front - at least yet.

 

I only ever had a brief look at Flash back in the days and it probably wouldn't help me anyway, but - how are character animations created and handled in this? I have watched the video but it didn't make it very clear to be honest.

 

Thanks MaDDox,
Let us know if you have any breakthroughs!

Pete

 

Sure, I'll let you know first hand, Pete

Hi c-Row. I guess you're talking about the RageTools Pro animation features video? Actually that's more of a feature showcase, we have a couple videos coming that'll show the actual process in detail.

Anyways, with RageTools (standard) you can have what's called "split-parts" character animation, which's basically animating each separate part (arm, forearm, hand, etc) independently. The base version also has RageConstraint and other macros to help you tie-up separate parts of your art, like you would do with Blender, Maya or any other rigging-capable 3D-animation software.

On top of that, with RageTools Pro (that's just the pro version of RageTools, it doesn't require Unity pro) you can define regions for each part in contiguous shapes, using "magnets" - basic Unity colliders that define a region of points which will be transformed (moved/rotated/scaled) following the associated magnet object.

Weather using magnets or not, you then create the actual animation using the standard Unity Animation window, meaning these animations are as compatible and future-proof as it gets. The Pro version of RageTools also gives you a sophisticated multi-segment IK system (a way to pose long chains like ropes and tentacles using a single controller) with per-segment angle constraints.

Of course we're still not satisfied, we have much more coming in terms of animation + GUI, keep tuned

 

Hey people, RageTools' spanking new "Tentacle" demo is now live: deformation, IK, text and more, 100% vector-based. Check it out: http://www.freakow.com/ragetools/demos/tentacle-demo.html

Provocative question of the day: How'd you do this with bitmaps?

Special thanks to Izitmee for his super-cool HOTween (this used no code due to his new editor prowess!) and syko227 for his Farseer Unity port - plus everyone behind Farseer ofc, including Jeff Weber.

 

very nice demo!

 

Ohgod, each time I see something RageTools I just lose a lot of time staring at the vector beauty of it. Great and effective demo

Oh, BTW, I know how to do that with bitmaps!!! 1) you import the bitmaps into Illustrator, 2) you trace over them, and 3) you import the SVGs in Unity with RageTools. Easy

 

to use rage tools pro will i pay 75 + 70 + 80 = $225 ?

 

Thanks Jeff and Daniele

Aww no man.. you gave it up! lol

That's the sum of each package's price, yes, and it's worth mentioning that RageSpline is not our product. Of course different users will have different needs so it's nice for them to be able to buy only what they need, knowing they can upgrade later. Also, most of our demos and new features have been going to RageTools standard, so it's not like we've pushing for our higher end package only.

 

i need rage ik so i mast pay total and it is too much for me. as you know RageSpline is discontinued product. both rage tools and pro based on this discontinued product. i bought ragespline from assets store madness. i can pay for ragetools and pro just for madness discount

 

It's still being maintained for bugs and it's definitely not meant to be discontinued, we're actively trying to work out the situation with Keely. We already got his greenlight to add a couple new features that make more sense at the RageSpline level - including the FarSeer connection.

We're "in the line" for it, but since it doesn't depend on us I can't make any promises for when it'll happen.

Just as a final comment about our products pricing, we're pretty shocked at some "competing" products charging more than all three products combined for a "bitmap baking" solution. We always try to do our best while not talking about other products, but we feel obliged to alert our current and potential users: before spending your hard-earned money, watch the product's unity web player demo(s). "Scalable Vector Graphics" means you can scale the screen up and down and graphics will keep their original sharpness. If it doesn't happen in the Unity demo, that's selling a pig in a poke.

RageSpline, RageTools and RageTools Pro are the only true vector-based solutions for Unity that run on Indie, no Pro-only shaders, no Hardware-AA or fixed-resolution render-to-texture cheap tricks required.

 

Firstly, I have purchased rage(spline|tools( pro)?) and am happy I did. Very nice work.

Do you have any tutorials/examples of using vector graphics for GUI elements?

 

Thanks a lot Palamas We're at your service for any needs, and if you get the time for a short review in the Asset Store it would be highly appreciated.

That and the RageIk tutorial are the next in line. Actually we have been interacting with Izitmee (HOTween developer) to make the tween animation of these vector GUI elements as easy as it gets (you can read more about it in his thread), and we also have a new component called RageButton that makes managing these states and animations super-easy. As soon as it's a tad more robust I'll show it in a video - but if you need something ASAP drop me an e-mail, I might have something for you

On a second note, yesterday I got the first version of RageSprite (WIP Pro component) working. Let me just say.. wow!

 

RageTools and RageTools Pro are in the Asset Store Madness sale - 40% and 50% off!

It's your chance to acquire RageTools Pro's awesome (and quickly increasing) features with a super-low price! Check here for the details, plus some product development news that I haven't shared yet

 

Is there something up with the store?

I purchased downloaded and imported all of the files for Ragespline, but the store won't let me purchase Ragetools and therefore I can't purchase Ragetools pro.

I brought ragespline to try to take advantage of the sale for tools and tools pro.

Is there something I didn't do? Is there a special way to buy things with requirements?

 

No help available?

If I can't get ahold of rage tools then can I get a refund on ragespline?
I wanted to get a rage tools as a goal but if I can't I'd just like to opt out.

 

Sorry Fred, I was traveling and didn't see your post. Actually this is quite weird, I've just checked the our Publisher Administration screen and we're getting sales in normally. Can you send your Asset Store username / e-mail to contact@freakow.com?

Don't worry, Caitlyn (Asset Store manager) is very responsive, I'm sure we'll work this out quickly - and even if everything else fails I can make you a direct sale, no problem.

 

I am very interested in buying the whole package while discounts are active.

I have read about mobile performances and optimizations you implemented but would like to test on few devices anyway.
Since there's no trial available would you mind to share the name of any published Android game made in Unity using RageTools?

I am not able to rotate the camera in your web player demo (http://www.freakow.com/ragetools/demos/ragetools-perspective.html).

 

Thanks for your interest nikolic! I know of a couple under development, but only about one published for iOS. Nevertheless, I can send you an APK of our W.I.P game and even a couple demo scenes, so you can test on your own device(s). Just drop me an e-mail: contact@freakow.com

First time I hear such a complaint, it's working fine here. What browser/OS are you using?

 

Since Unity 4 is obviously going to be rolled out in the near future, is Unity planning on rolling any of the vector abilities into the new version?
I notice the 40% discount for RageTools, but is that because you guys know something we don't?
And if I were to buy this 1.1.3 version, will it work with Unity 4, or would that require buying an upgrade as well?

 

Not that we know of - and we tend to know a lot (hint!) Just check the emphasis Unity gives to 3D, triple-A features. That's where their money comes from, Pro licenses. 2D is mostly focused by indies = mostly free Unity = no money. Yes, I am generalizing here, but that's how high-level decisions are made.

We've been "in line" for many months now to get into Asset Store's official promotion, which's in a "first come, first serve" basis, no chance we could orchestrate that with Unity 4's release - which also won't "feature-compete" with or affect the product in any way.

All Asset Store product upgrades are free. If anything, cost could go higher (although there's no plans for that atm), then you'll be saving money for buying it now.

PS.:: If you're into Inkscape, check this awesome vector tracing time-lapse by my bud Cícero Moraes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMuubk8rmMc

 

Hi,

i made a character with some animations using Ragetools pro. I have a problem when i try to duplicate or make a prefab with this character, the magnets doesnt seems to work anymore. I though i could fix it by ajusting the magnets but there is a problem with the shape and i didnt find a way to fixe it. I also tried with one of the example (the running dude) and i didn't succeed either.

I must do something wrong, do you have an explanation on how i can duplicate a character with all his magnets / controllers ?


Also i got another smaller problem, sometimes the shape get distort while playing or moving the character inside unity (with magnet and controller) and instead of keeping the shape normal the distortion stay and i end up with the anchors from ragespline at very wrong positions. When it happens i adjust by hand to put it back or i restart unity without saving. Is there something i can do to prevent this ?

Thanks !

 

Hey MaDDoX and keely,

Thanks a lot for your plugins allowing us to use the .svg file format ! Look at my video (3D fake with 2D graphics !) :

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/147191-3D-fake-with-2D-graphics-thanks-to-RageTools-RageSpline?p=1007159#post1007159

6R

 

Hi Elzean. Actually we mostly use prototypes (disabled game object hierarchies that we eventually instantiate) so we've never tried prefab-ing Magnet hierarchies like this. There's indeed a problem with the way things auto-initialize but we're already working on a fix. Meanwhile that's how you do it:

1. Duplicate your entire magnet structure (Ctrl+D).
2. Keep the root object selected - it's the "Vilas" game object in our demo scene case
3. Component > RageTools > Macros > RageGroup Hierarchy Group Update
4. Component > RageTools > Macros > RageMagnet Hierarchy Set Rest Position

This way all contained groups will be re-set and the duplicated magnets associated to the new points instead of the original ones. This approach won't work with prefab-instanced magnet hierarchies.

Hitting undo (ctrl+Z) a couple times should you get you back to the original state, but always try to not move the magnet when it already has a controller for it, that'll result in double-transforms that are a recipe for disaster. The same concept applies to when you're preparing to animate the character, always create one controller for each magnet you want to animate and make sure it's out of the splines hierarchy.

This way when you add an animation component to the common parent of your controllers, you won't affect the actual RageSpline points when auto-recording any changes. That's what I did for Vilas as you can see in the demo scene, the Animation component is in 'Controllers', so it doesn't affect it's sibling "_Splines" members.

We're continuously working to make this process as effortless as possible, also thanks for your understanding as we iron out its remaining bugs. We expect to have them in for the next release.

Lovely p6r, thanks for sending us the video link

 

I tried to follow the Vilas exemple as much as possible. I did separate the splines, the controllers and the magnets. I couldnt fix the problems on my last character, it was looking fine inside the editor, animation was working but as soon as i was hitting play the points was going crazy. Today i tried from begining, i made 1 new animation it was working but then i hit play again and few things was at wrong place, then again it was fine in the editor. Right now i can't fix it either.

If i move the parent of the controllers it seems a bit slow, and sometimes some points don't follow anymore. Inside the Vilas example i did reproduce this kind of bugs by moving the magnet hand fast (inside Vilas > controllers > Root....) and ctrl+z doesn't make the original state come back.

I'm not sure if this is the same problem or not, with my first character i did succeed to make several good animations (idle, walk, jump) and it was working nicely. Now it seems very difficult to make it work even with a complete new character, may be because the scene is more complex, its a bit slow in the editor but still running fine (i say slow but just when i move the controllers around it feels that way, manipulating other stuff in unity is not slow).

May be if you had a way to save the original setup at least, for example if i make all the magnets and controllers (usually it seems to work fine at first before starting to animate) it could be nice to be able to reset to that state (shape included). Now the only way i see is redoing everything, when i build the character everything is fine, little by little all the parts move well and then everything broke and i can't figure what i did wrong all of a sudden to break it that much.

I'm really confuse cause it was working superb few days ago, i will try inside a brand new scene, but i already dont have much stuff on this one apart from few graphics to decorate.

Let me know if you have any other ideas of what i'm doing wrong or if those bugs are normal for moment (just trying to find out if i'm really doing something wrong or not).

When it was working i saw that i could make animations that feel much smoother that what i can achieve with sprites, the small game concept i did was looking good, i hope i will find a way to make this work again

 

Just to clarify the bugs :

1. the shape get distort / broken and ctrl+z doesnt always restore it

>> you can reproduce it in the Vilas scene by just moving the hand from the left side to the right side.



2. Everything looks good in editor but when hitting play the shape is not placed well

>> when this happen is i move a little each controllers in the editor view while playing the shape looks normal again until the next time i hit play. I can see in the editor view that while its playing only the shape is at the wrong place, all the controllers / magnets are well positioned.



3. Not everything move at the same speed

>> i just put the shape + magnets without animations, when i start moving the character left, right, jump not all the part are moving at the same time, a leg might be slower than another and the shape get deformed even though it should be completely fixed. For that last part i am using LangmanController to move the character around, it can be found here : http://vonlehecreative.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/unity-resource-langmancontroller/
and the direct link to the sources : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2760522/Unity/LangmanController-Example.zip

My hierarchy is like this :

>Player (with LangmanController)
>>Character (the shape)
>>Magnets

I tried the same test using controllers but its the same problem :

>Player (with LangmanController)
>>Character (the shape)
>> Controllers
>>Magnets

 

You're right Elzean. Actually we've added a ton of performance optimizations to our code and ended up causing one problem - when you transform a magnet which's child to another magnet, and the parent magnet is not transformed, the shared points (between both) aren't properly updated. This is especially noticeable in editor mode, since it's refreshed much slower than the play mode. That's why ctrl+z wouldn't work, it'd also move back only the child - if you simply moved the parent a notch, it'd restore everything. We've had a similar problem with IK, and solved it by adding the 'passive' toggle. I'll add a similar fix to Magnet, just smarter since we have access to the full hierarchy. Meanwhile, please apply the following fix:

1 - Edit RageMagnet.cs (it's in your project's RageTools\Code folder)
2 - Look for the LateUpdate block, should be somewhere around like 220
3 - Comment out like 223. You should end up with:

Code (csharp):

1. public void LateUpdate() {
2.         if (!Live) return;
3.         //if(!Changed) return;

Save and alt+tab back to Unity. After compilation, the performance should go down sensibly. While we don't release the next version, you can use this to edit your animations, then un-comment that line again before the final build. It's harmless, you can edit it again and again without fear of interfering with your "rig" or animations.

Thanks a lot for your understanding and detailed report Elzean, not to mention the uploaded project and link, I'll check it out tomorrow for sure. Sandro is also working hard on the prefab bug, it's a little more involved I'm afraid, but we'll get to the bottom of it. TA!