[RELEASED] Piglet: glTF Importer

Hi, I just purchased Piglet and am not getting materials set up on import. I am exporting .glb files from blender, which worked great on your demo site. When I drag and Drop the import fails, but when I place the gltf file into the asset folder the prefab is built but the materials are pink. All the texture files are imported, however. I am having the same issue using the Gltf demo files from Khronos group. Pretty new to Unity here....
I am using unity 2022.2.3f1 with URP.

 

Hi @zaptastic,

Hmm, that doesn't sound good.

I don't think I've tested with Unity 2022.2 yet. I'll install it and see if I can reproduce your issue.

Can you share a screenshot of the errors in the Console window?

In the meantime you are welcome to a refund, of course! (Just let me know the email for your PayPal address, either by DM or by emailing "awesomesaucelabs" at gmail.)

 

@zaptastic,

I'm not seeing any issues when install Piglet in a fresh Unity 2022.2.3f1 project and import some models. (I'm using Windows 10 btw, but I often test on Mac as well.)

I'm wondering if Piglet is interacting badly with some other asset/package in your project? (The error messages in the Console might give some clue there.)

If you haven't done so already, could you try using Piglet in a new/empty project and see if the problem goes away?

 

Thanks for the quick response. I did a fresh project using 2022.2 and also 2021.3 and both had the same issue with URP. I was able to get it to work with a new standard render project. It sounds like something is off on my end. I will look into this more and post some screen shots of the error.

 

I made a fresh project using 2022.3 URP on windows 10, the only package imported is piglet. when I drag a gltf to a new folder I get this error in the console:

A meta data file (.meta) exists but its folder 'Assets/Objects/Trim Atlas Opt' can't be found, and has been created. Empty directories cannot be stored in version control, so it's assumed that the meta data file is for an empty directory in version control. When moving or deleting folders outside of Unity, please ensure that the corresponding .meta file is moved or deleted along with it.
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:Refresh ()
Piglet.AssetPathUtil:RemoveProjectDir (string) (at Assets/Piglet/Scripts/Util/AssetPathUtil.cs:296)
Piglet.EditorGltfImporter:Clear () (at Assets/Piglet/Scripts/Importer/Editor/EditorGltfImporter.cs:978)
Piglet.EditorGltfImporter/<>c__DisplayClass2_0:<GetImportTask>b__2 (System.Exception) (at Assets/Piglet/Scripts/Importer/Editor/EditorGltfImporter.cs:103)
Piglet.GltfImportTask:MoveNext () (at Assets/Piglet/Scripts/Importer/GltfImportTask.cs:371)
Piglet.ProjectBrowserGltfImporter/<GltfImportTask>d__17:MoveNext () (at Assets/Piglet/Editor/ProjectBrowser/ProjectBrowserGltfImporter.cs:899)
Piglet.ProjectBrowserGltfImporter:OnEditorUpdate () (at Assets/Piglet/Editor/ProjectBrowser/ProjectBrowserGltfImporter.cs:93)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions ()

 

I also tested by adding the GLTF to the folder directly and it is giving the same error, it displays the file in the project window but does not process it. In this screenshot I am importing a Gltf from Khronos, and I have clicked the open button in the inspector which displays it correctly in the windows viewer.I will try some more tests later when I have time. Thank you for your help.

 

Update: I just did a fresh install of Unity 2021.3.25f1, Created a new URP project, imported Piglet and got the same issue..Stumped. I will check back later, thanks for helping with this.

 

@zaptastic,

I think I know what happened now...

You need to manually unpack the URP shaders by double-clicking

Assets/Piglet/Extras/URP-Shaders-2020.2.unitypackage

.

It's mentioned in the manual, but I don't think it's prominent enough, because a couple of people have gotten stuck there before. Unfortunately, if I include the URP shaders in unpacked form, they cause errors in projects that use the built-in render pipeline (this is a known Unity bug/quirk).

 

@zaptastic,

I forgot to mention that I did actually test it (a URP project in Unity 2022.2.3f1), and I was able to import models successfully.

I did see an error that said

Failed to find entry points

when I first installed Piglet into the URP project (which I've never seen before), but it seems to be harmless.

 

Great! That makes sense. Thanks for the help. I will look at this and let you know how it goes.

 

Excellent, works like a charm. Nice work on this project.

 

Happy to hear that, and thanks! (I put a lot of work into it!)

 

awesomesaucelabs

First of all, thanks for awesome tool)

I've installed Draco package using version 4.1.0 .

Yet, I always get Failed to load Draco-compressed mesh because DracoUnity package is not installed. Please see "Installing DracoUnity" in the Piglet manual.

Any possible reason why?

 

@OmarVector,

Hmm, that's strange.

I haven't tested Draco in a while -- I will check it and get back to you.

Could you please let me know:

(1) Which version of Piglet you are using? (As indicated by the Package Manager window.)
(2) Which version of Unity you are using?

That way I can test with the same versions.

 

@OmarVector,

I just tested, and I successfully imported some Draco glTF models in the Editor with the following combo: Unity 2021.3.11f1, Piglet 1.3.7, DracoUnity 4.1.0, Windows 10.

I did see the error you mentioned when I first tried to import the first Draco model, immediately after installing DracoUnity with the "installer package" from the GitHub home page (via Assets -> Import Package -> Custom Package... from the Unity menu). But then about 30 seconds later, some Unity build dialogs popped on the screen (presumably for compiling DracoUnity), and after that importing Draco models worked correctly.

Did you try closing and reopening your Unity project after installing DracoUnity? That might help too.

 

Found out that I must add all DRACO_UNITYs Define symbols manually in the script compilation settings

I'm using unity 2021.3.8f1
piglet version : 1.3.7

 

@OmarVector,

Hmm, that's strange!

I'm still not sure what happened, but I'm glad you found a solution.

 

Thanks for follow up)

 

Hello.
I am considering purchasing this asset.
I have one question.
Can I create a glb model from Stream?
I am unable to file it even for a moment due to circumstances.
I would like to do something like byte[]→MemoryStream→glb model creation.

 

Hi @yoshisan!

Sorry, Piglet can't load a model from a

MemoryStream

, but instead you can load a model from a

byte[]

array, containing the raw byte content of the .gltf/.glb/.zip file. Would that work for you?

It would require significant changes to make the code work with a

MemoryStream

, because the underlying JSON parsing code doesn't have a method to read from a stream (it can only read from a

byte[]

array).

If you send me an email (awesomesaucelabs at gmail), I can send you a free evaluation copy so you can try the asset yourself. Also, if you already bought the asset and it doesn't work for you, I can send a refund.

 

Thank you very much.
Generating the model from stream was not required, the ultimate goal was not to read it from a file.
No evaluation version is required.
I will purchase it and check it out.

 

@yoshisan,

Okay, glad to hear!

There is an overload method for

RuntimeGltfImporter.GetImportTask

that accepts a

byte[]

argument instead of an URL. For example, in the code example from Runtime Import Tutorial, you could replace the

piggleston.glb

URL with a

byte[]

.

 

Hello @awesomesaucelabs

I tried the RuntimeMaterialVariants scene in Unity 2022.3.8f1 (URP) and the shoe model loaded in pink. I unpacked the 2020 urp package from the extra folder too so i'm not sure what the issue is. I also didn't receive any errors. Could you help me out, please?

Thanks in advance and have a great day!

Keith

 

Hi @Legendary_keith,

Hmm, I'm not sure what the problem could be. Bummer that there aren't any error/warning messages to provide some hints.

I'll have a look tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, and see if I can reproduce it using something similar to your setup (Unity 2022.3.8f1, URP, Android build target, Windows 10).

KHR_materials_variants is a new feature that I added in the last release, so maybe I haven't caught all the bugs yet.

If you run the other example scenes (RuntimeImport, RuntimeAnimation) do you also see pink textures there?

 

Hi @Legendary_keith,

I tried to recreate your bug today in Unity 2022.3.8f1, but so far I'm not able to reproduce it on my machine. To test it, I did the following steps:

(1) Created a new Unity 2022.3.8f1 project using the "3D (URP)" template.
(2) Installed Piglet 1.3.8 from the Package Manager window.
(3) Double-clicked the

Assets/Piglet/Extras/URP-Shaders-2020.2.unitypackage

file to unpack the URP shaders.
(4) Ran the materials variants test scene by double-clicking

Assets/Piglet/Examples/RuntimeMaterialsVariants/Scenes/RuntimeMaterialsVariants.unity

and clicking the Play button.

I tried with the target build platform set to Windows/Mac/Linux and Android, and it worked as expected in both cases.

I included a screenshot below, so we can compare with your screenshot and look for any telltale differences. (So far I don't see any, though.)

I'm running these tests on Windows 10. What O/S are you running? (Maybe the bug only happens on Mac/Linux?)

Are you running the materials variants scene in the context of your own project? If you haven't tried yet, can you try running the materials variants test scene in a fresh Unity project, and see if the problem goes away? Maybe it is conflicting with something else in your project. Or maybe you have some non-default Project/Player settings that are triggering the bug.

 

I made a new Unity 2022.3.8f1 and tried out the RunTimeMaterialsVaraints scene and it worked here.


Previously, I followed the steps from 2 - 4 in my main project.
I'm also using Windows 10 and this pink model issue happens on other piglet scenes too.

 

My main project isn't big, i created it a few days ago. It's for VR. I think I'll just create a unity package and send it to you, is that all right?

I just send you an email (awesomesaucelabs) with the package.

 

For others that might be interested, I was able to solve @Legendary_keith's issue by:

(1) Upgrading the "Universal RP" package in the Package Manager window.
(2) Opening the Piglet URP shader by double-clicking

Assets/Piglet/Resources/Shaders/URP/URPMetallicRoughnessOpaqueOrMask.shadergraph

, then clicking the "Save Asset" button in the shadergraph editor window.

My *guess* is that clicking "Save Asset" fixes the problem because it regenerates the underlying code for the shader, using the new version of the "Universal RP" package.

Unfortunately, there's not much to learn from this. It's just one of those inscrutable errors you get when using a big complicated piece of software with lots of dependencies.

 

Sorry, I don’t quite understand, is there a way to compress textures in GTF directly during loading in runtime?

 

Hi @ignarmezh,

Good question. Unfortunately, the answer is basically no. (At least not without a lot of work to implement a custom runtime texture loading solution.)

For PNG/JPG textures, Piglet uses UnityWebRequestTexture to load the textures, and UnityWebRequestTexture only supports uploading textures to the GPU in uncompressed RGBA format. (See the

TextureUtil.LoadTexturePngOrJpg

in

Assets/Piglet/Scripts/Texture/TextureUtil.cs

for the relevant Piglet code.)

While it would be possible to call Texture2D.Compress in the Piglet code after loading the texture, that would be a bad idea because Texture2D.Compress is synchronous and typically runs for hundreds of milliseconds (and would therefore cause stutters in your game/app's frame rate).

There is one possible solution, which may or may not work depending on your application. If the textures in the glTF file are in KTX/Basis format, then Piglet uses KtxUnity to upload the textures to the GPU, and KtxUnity does indeed upload the textures to the GPU in optimal compressed formats. In practice, you usually need to preprocess your glTF file to convert the textures from PNG/JPG -> KTX, and if your application is loading user-provided glTF files, it may not be possible to do that preprocessing. (See Supercompressing Your glTF Textures in the Piglet manual, for instructions about how to convert the glTF textures from PNG/JPG -> KTX using the gltf-transform command line tool.)

 

Sorry, could you please clarify what Name and Value I needed to set in Environment Variables?
When I install KTX-Software I got a warning "path too long installer unable to modify path" and it can't create environment path.

Edit: I found that I need just it:

Spoiler: Image

gltf-transform works, foreaxample I can execute "gltf-transform optimize input.glb output.glb --compress draco --texture-compress webp" command
But it is still not work with KTX-Software, I got error (I installed version 4.2.1) when try to execute "gltf-transform uastc input.glb output.glb":
error: Command "toktx" not found. Please install KTX-Software, from:
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/KTX-Software

Edit.: I transfered from global Environment variables to local (only for one user) and reboot pc, it works now.

 

@ignarmezh,

Ah, good. Glad to hear you got the

gltf-transform

part working.

Yes, in Windows, I usually set user environment variables rather than global environment variables. I was not aware that global environment variables require a reboot, but I guess it sort of makes sense.

I did not mention it, but you will also need to install the KtxUnity package into your Unity project. Usually the "Installer Package" link from the KtxUnity github page works fine, but if you run into any issues, there are more detailed instructions in the Installing KtxUnity section of the Piglet manual.

 

I want to do an animation reset.
I played StaticPose, but instead of initializing (resetting) the animation, it stops at that frame as if I did a Stop.
How do I reset the animation when I play the StaticPose?

 

Hi @yoshisan,

Sorry for the slow reply.

Yes, I've encountered that problem before. You have the right idea, but probably you need to add a call to Animation.Sample after calling Animation.Play on the static pose clip.

I think the following code sample might be helpful. It implements the drop-down menu for selecting the animation clip in the Piglet web demo, and it includes the static pose clip as one of the options:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.             _dropDownState = GuiEx.DropDownMenu(
3.                 dropdownRect,
4.                 clipNames,
5.                 _dropDownState,
6.                 _dropDownIcon,
7.                 _styles.DropDownButton,
8.                 _styles.DropDownListBackground,
9.                 _styles.DropDownListForeground,
10.                 _styles.DropDownListItem);
11.             // if a new animation clip has been selected, stop the
12.             // current clip and start playing the new one
13.             if (_dropDownState.selectedIndex != prevSelectedIndex)
14.             {
15.                 anim.Stop();
16.                 if (selectedClip != null)
17.                 {
18.                     selectedClip.speed = 1f;
19.                     selectedClip.time = 0f;
20.                 }
21.                 // Restore the static pose before we start playing the
22.                 // new animation clip. This is necessary because
23.                 // an animation clip will not necessarily reset
24.                 // all position/rotation/scale values for
25.                 // all game objects in the model. Any unspecified
26.                 // transform values are assumed to come from the
27.                 // default static pose.
28.                 anim.Play(clipKeys[STATIC_POSE_INDEX]);
29.                 anim.Sample();
30.                 // start playing the new clip
31.                 var newClipKey = clipKeys[_dropDownState.selectedIndex];
32.                 var newClip = anim[newClipKey];
33.                 newClip.time = 0f;
34.                 newClip.speed = 1f;
35.                 anim.Play(newClipKey);
36.             }
37.  

The source code for the Piglet web demo is available on GitHub at https://github.com/AwesomesauceLabs/piglet-viewer. Here is a link to the above code example on GitHub, in case you want to see more context: https://github.com/AwesomesauceLabs...1e/Assets/PigletViewer/Scripts/UI/Gui.cs#L762

Hope that helps!

 

@yoshisan,

By the way, here is a screenshot of the animation dropdown menu in the web demo, so you can see what I'm talking about. The dropdown menu doesn't show until you load a glTF file that contains animations (e.g. drag-and-drop "Dragon [anim]" link from left panel onto the view area).

 

I could not fix it.
However, it was very helpful.
Thank you very much.

 

Hi!
Is it possible to import multiple gltf objects (with different paths as array) via GetImportTask or another function?

 

Hi @ignarmezh,

There is no built-in function for loading multiple models, but post #275 from this thread has code example that shows how to do it:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-piglet-gltf-importer.928446/page-6#post-8532593

 

Hello,

Is there a tutorial for WebGL? For Standalone, I use http requests to download locally from web server, but it seems like I need to import by url for WebGL, so I expect a problem because it doesn't include an authentication header (maybe...).

 

The server you download from must config CORS policy , otherwise it will refuse to download... this only happen on webgl inside browser and not inside the editor

 

I thought about when I don't use my HTTP client with importing GLB in WebGL, because there is no token authentication header, but I'll also look into CORS.

Thanks!

 

@tkdwnsable,

I second @OmarVector's advice.

The server that hosts the glTF file needs to be configured to allow CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) requests -- in other words, the server needs to explicitly allow the glTF file to be downloaded from websites other than the website where the file is hosted (e.g. downloading a glTF file hosted on "filehost.com", from a web page hosted on "mywebsite.com").

Many times I have been confused about CORS errors, and it takes some patience to understand it. The MDN article about CORS has some explanations about why CORS permissions are necessary, which I found helpful. For instance, they provide a simple example of a Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) that is prevented by using CORS permissions.

 

@tkdwnsable,

I forgot to mention, if you want to use some custom HTTP client code with Piglet, it is possible.

You could perform the download yourself to a

byte[]

or a temporary file using UnityWebRequest, then pass the

byte[]

or file path to

RuntimeGltfImporter.GetImportTask

, instead of passing the HTTP URL directly.

 

Thank you very much!!

 

@awesomesaucelabs Hello! Any chance you could share an estimated timeframe for the Export features? Super excited about getting my hands on that.

 

Hi @eightbitbrainpower (love the username!),

Sorry for the late reply (I missed your message).

Sorry to say, but the export feature won't happen any time soon. These days I'm mostly working on other projects, although I still maintain Piglet and support it.

I've heard that glTFast has export capabilities, although I haven't tried it personally. I can provide a refund for Piglet, if you find that glTFast is a better fit for your project. (Just let me know the email for your PayPal account and how much you paid for Piglet.)

I've also heard about Plattar glTF Exporter, although I think it only allows exporting from the Editor (not at runtime). Again, I haven't tried it personally.

 

Hi @awesomesaucelabs,

first of all, your Piglet Gltf Importer tool is fantastic! Used it for more than two years! Thanks for the great work!

By the way, I'm a bit stuck now because I'm trying to upgrade from Unity 2021 to Unity 2022.3.25f1 and it seems I can no longer use the com.atteneder.draco package and gltfImporter.

To be clear, everything works fine inside the editor, but when I try to create a build I get this error:

Library\Bee\artifacts\WebGL\build\debug_WebGL_wasm\build.js: undefined symbol: _ZNSt3__212basic_stringIcNS_11char_traitsIcEENS_9allocatorIcEEEC1ERKS5_ (referenced by top-level compiled C/C++ code)

It seems that the error is not related to gltfImporter but to draco package, everything is explained here:
https://github.com/atteneder/DracoUnity/issues/55

I tried to:

- upgrade to the new Draco for Unity (https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.cloud.draco@5.1/manual/index.html) but it is obviously not compatible with the package

- install gltfast, but it broke all the logic of my application (which deeply uses Piglet)

I was wondering... What should I do to use Piglet and com.atteneder.draco with Unity 2022.3 without changing everything in my real-time import logic?

Thank you in advance for your precious help!

Best,
Dan