[RELEASED] Realtime CSG - level design for Unity

Thanks for this man looks like a lot of hard work went in to this, cant wait to check it out.

 

What sets this apart from SabreCSG? Just that it is realtime?

 

Are there any plans to have Realtime CSG work at run-time so that players could create levels with an in-game level editor?

 

Can you explain what 'realtime' means in this sense? Despite being in the title of the asset I'm not sure I understand.
For example in SabreCSG, when you switch on 'auto-rebuild', geometry rebuilds right as you modify a brush. Does 'realtime' mean that it rebuilds faster or are there other benefits?
Anyways, nice to see a new player has entered the field. So far it's looking very promising.

 

Thanks for clarifying!
About that half-life thing. That was pretty impressive.

How did you do that? Is the plugin capable of loading bsp/map files, so we can do this ourselves?

 

This is really cool - reminds me of using unreal editor and udk.
Can imported meshes be used as brushes? I think yes - but it wasn't explicitly explained above and I didn't see an example of it in the videos.

Awesome work!

 

That's incorrect, SabreCSG's Auto Rebuild feature only rebuilds brushes that it needs to. As you edit changes are tracked and the build engine selectively builds the brushes that have changed, ignoring unchanged brushes. Here's a video of editing in realtime on a scene of 2500 brushes with SabreCSG:

 

Similar functionality as I remember unreal ed (2004) and possibly udk used to have.
I might be assuming a bit too much from past experience also. As I remember in udk most everything was considered a brush - that could be used to boolean combine or out of other volumes. So if I wanted to remove a complex tunnel/dungeon shape - I could roughly model the shape in 3D and import it in to remove the space from a volume.

That is probably a bad example and backwards thinking for designing a dungeon. I might give your tool a look soon and see how it works.

Can you briefly explain brushes?

 

While we're on the topic of exporting I'd like to start a conversation about a workflow I was thinking of since I started using SabreCSG, but equally applies here. This is a bit of a long shot, but how I see it the ideal workflow would be this:
You block out a level in Realtime CSG. At some point you export the mesh to work on some finer details in Blender for example (maybe even ProBuilder), maybe bevel some edges etc. Now, what if at this point you could still continue work on the brushes in Realtime CSG. I wouldn't mind if brushes that got tinkered with aren't modifyable anymore. Do you think this doable somehow? I think it would greatly improve the utility of the plugin.

You mentioned you had this map file importer for Realtime CSG. Not sure if this is of help but I did read that earlier versions of Blender had quake map file exporting capabilities. If you google it you find a couple of posts. Here's one:http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/exporting-models-as-bsp-maps.php
Here you apparently can still download the plugin for Blender (didn't try it): https://sourceforge.net/projects/q3mapexporter/
Could this be a start for a common ground between Realtime CSG and Blender? Any thoughts for another way to have a two-way workflow?

 

So, I tried out that .map export addon for Blender I linked. Couldn't open the resulting file in the trenchbroom map editor. I guess it doesn't work. (I'm sure you do, but just in case you don't know the trenchbroom editor, it's an open source map editor for .map files. Might be a good resource for your importing code if you still want to do that).

 

Hello.

I can do subtraction models in application builds in realtime?
To which platforms (WebGL, Android, ...)?

Example of code:

Code (CSharp):

1. void Update()
2. {
3.     if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.K))
4.     {
5.         GameObject bigGameObject = Instantiate(...);
6.         GameObject smallGameObject = Instantiate(...);
7.         Mesh resultMesh = CSG.Substract(bigGameObject, smallGameObject);
8.         bigGameObject.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().mesh = resultMesh;
9.     }
10. }

Example of use:
There is a room with six walls and the floor plane. It is necessary to trim the plane on the wall to get the correct form the floor.

 

Access to a runtime API would definitely be a bonus - for procedural generation with CSG, end-user level editing etc.

 

Wow. This looks really good. I'm very interested in buying some in-editor way to build levels and looking at different options. The "features" page on your website is very informative, but is there a comprehensive manual that I could look at? For me I find that reading the manual is the best way to get a full picture of what I'm getting.

 

Has anyone used both this and SabreCSG? It would be great to have a comparison since the two seem exceedingly similar.

 

Realtime CSG has instant feedback, which allows you to scale/move/modify things and immediately see the results, and this makes it easier to work with. I'd also like to think Realtime CSG is more user friendly.
AFAIK SabreCSG development has stopped or at the very least slowed down dramatically..
Realtime CSG is very much in active development with bug fixes and features being released regularly

 

Hey logical,

Awesome work! Tried Sabre for a while but so far this has been a little nicer, more responsive, better UI, seems like a cleaner design. Has been a smooth ride so far!

Few points of feedback though:

-I would love the grid system to be more general and optionally snap 'normal' game objects to the same grid when using unitys normal tools
-Group all files under the some root folder (in Plugins/RealtimeCSG). I like to keep everything under the same root, the editor default resources stuff could be loaded with AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath();
-Quick hide with H is great but personally I would like it to toggle hide instead of only disabling
-I would like dedicated hotkeys for Object/Generate/Mesh/Clip/Surfaces mode vs the page up/page down cycle.
-I don't like the errors 'can use xx Tool in yy mode'. I'm not always CSG modelling and maybe I just need to use these tools for something else for a bit

Few bugs:

-Turning Do Not Render back on still has the object hidden
-Generating an object -> extruding it -> Undo throws a Null reference error
-Window mentions alt to extrude, but it seems broken? It just rotates the scene view still. Plus isnt extrusion the default anyway?
-The V hotkey for free draw interferes and bugs out the vertex snapping unity has. Probably needs a different key :/ (thankfully easy to edit in Keys.cs but just needs a better default)
-When moving an entire model the CSG sometimes doesnt update
-When closing a scene I get an error:
-It frequently seems to interfere with unitys selection I sometimes cant use the move tools / drag select anymore. Removing realtime CSG fixes the issue.

Spoiler

Destroying object multiple times. Don't use DestroyImmediate on the same object in OnDisable or OnDestroy.
UnityEngine.Object: DestroyImmediate(Object)
RealtimeCSG.CSGSceneManager:OnDestroyed(CSGModel) (at Assets/Plugins/RealtimeCSG/Editor/Scripts/Managers/CSGSceneManager.cs:974)
InternalRealtimeCSG.CSGSceneManagerInstance:OnDestroyed(CSGModel) (at Assets/Plugins/RealtimeCSG/Editor/Scripts/Managers/CSGSceneManagerInstance.cs:23)
RealtimeCSG.CSGModel:OnDestroy() (at Assets/Plugins/RealtimeCSG/Runtime/Scripts/Components/CSGModel.cs:69)
UnityEditor.SceneManagement.EditorSceneManager:CloseScene(Scene, Boolean)

Then some larger feature requests:

-Instead of generating separate objects for each material, generate a unity submesh for each material and keep a CSG model as one gameobject. Should be more efficient for unity, especially for the Physics engine.
-Some vertex coloring options - no need for full vertex painting but even just selecting a face and picking a colour would already be great!
-Options to Bevel edges. Possibly per edge, possibly to control how brushes merge. Not sure how doable this is for a CSG.
-An option to generate a (Hemi-)Spherical surface
-Support the scale tool in Mesh / surfaces mode, saves some time vs manually moving vertices in/outwards.
-I have a few scenes in which I don't need any CSG modelling - the ability to turn off the lower toolbar would be nice.


In any case thanks for the development on this! It's already working wonderfully with some impressive results. Looking forward to updates to come, will post here if I have some more requests - or have some nice looking results I'm using it alongside my own Voxel Cone tracing GI system and it's really been a pleasure to build stuff with this!

 

Hi pvloon!
I'm glad you like Realtime-CSG

"Group all files under the some root folder (in Plugins/RealtimeCSG). I like to keep everything under the same root, the editor default resources stuff could be loaded with AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath();"

Unfortunately "Editor Default Resources" can only be put in the root folder..
If I put my icons in another folder then they might end up in your final build ...
I suppose I could put the prefabs folder in Plugins/RealtimeCSG ..​

"When closing a scene I get an error"

Could you tell me the error message?​

"Instead of generating separate objects for each material, generate a unity sub-mesh for each material and keep a CSG model as one gameobject. Should be more efficient for Unity, especially for the Physics engine"

Unfortunately then Realtime CSG would be limited to 64k vertices per model. It wouldn't really save anything on the vertex count either since vertices that are shared between multiple surfaces will still each generally have different texture coordinates and/or normals..

I already have a ticket to create collision meshes separately ( https://github.com/LogicalError/realtime-CSG-for-unity/issues/99 ) ​

For all the other things you mentioned I created tickets at https://github.com/LogicalError/realtime-CSG-for-unity/issues

Requests #100 #101 #102 #110 #111 #112
Bugs #103 #104 #105 #106 #107 #108 #109



You can submit tickets there directly in the future if you want.
I also just set up a forum at https://prenominal.nl/forum/
It's quite empty at the moment since it's new, but I'm sure things will pick up once people start posting there

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Hi Logical,

Thanks for the detailed reply! Great to see the GitHub page, didn't know about that. I've created an issue there with the error mentioned.

As for the other two points:

-I understand that Editor Default Resource has to be in root - but I'd suggest just dropping that folder entirely. From code you would have to replace EditorGUIUtility.Load with AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath. It does indeed mean that people could accidentally reference an icon from their game and include it - but I guess if someone really wants to show some GUI icon in their build why not - at least I think it's not a huge issue.

-The splitting I mentioned does not happen based on vertex limits though. CSG also splits meshes into seperate game objects based on their material. It is not a huge overhead (except for loading a few GO's more) for rendering purposes, but for physics purposes it seems this still could just consist of one mesh, which is more efficient for PhysX. It is not a huge deal though - especially if we get vertex coloring so I'm assigning less materials to an object!

If you'd prefer these discussions about feature requests on github / other forum let me know and I'll make some tickets there

Thanks for the great work though, looking forward to the upcoming updates for sure!

 

Hi pvloon, thanks
Could we continue those discussion on the issue site? I also have some questions about some things, like with this one: https://github.com/LogicalError/realtime-CSG-for-unity/issues/105

 

Realtime CSG now has better curve support for brushes!

https://prenominal.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16

 

Nice. Do you have spheres and bevels? Does subtracting complex curved objects in realtime cause any slowdown?

 

No spheres or bevels yet, but they are in the planning!
The idea is to extend shape drawing w/ extruding them over a spline, and that will make it trivial to also create support for bevels.

And no slowdowns!

 

Ouh, extending over spline sounds awesome. How about revolve extrudes, are those coming, too?

 

Yes, once extruding over a spline is implemented, revolving extrudes would be easy to implement as well

 

@logicalerror I just purchased your plugin. I love it!
However I miss a sphere primitive and the freeform curves are not always correctly smoothed, as you can see in the screenshot below: it keeps making creases even when I specifically select the surfaces and reset them to smoothed.
(all curves here are set to smoothed, even the low-poly ones. It shouldn't look like this. Increasing poly count is not an option for me, I need the good old fake polygon smoothing)

 

Don't worry, I'm looking into it, this will get fixed!
Keep in mind that the curve support is relatively new functionality, it'll get better and better over time

 

Seriously, I'm glad you're working on it because now I just can't use anything else for level design than your awesome CSG level editor!

 

Thanks!

 

Greetings! I just bought Realtime CSG a few days ago and haven't really had time to learn it yet, but I wanted to let you know that (modulo an automated API update) it seems to import fine into Unity 5.6.0b1. I happen to have just finished a project, and as I start my next I am doing a little early "sandbox" testing of 5.6 beta, with the question being "Do I start a brand-new project in 5.5 and then upgrade, or do enough of my tools work in 5.6 that I could go ahead and get ahead of the curve?"

As it happens, I was doing a sandbox empty-project test in 5.6 the day I bought Realtime CSG, and since I used that version to download RCSG from the Asset Store to my local asset library, I thought, "What the heck, let's see if this thing imports!" It did.

I have two new-user questions, if I may: First, how do I turn off all RCSG UI elements during the time when I happen to be working on something else in the scene view? I know how to dock the RCSG window, but what about the gizmos and other things that are in the scene? Second, what is the correct procedure to uninstall RCSG from a project? When I tried that in my sandbox, I was left with a visible rendered mesh in the scene that was not selectable and also did not appear in the scene hierachy, yet which somehow persisted even across stopping and restarting Unity.

This looks like an excellent tool. The ability to do subtractive prefabs is going to be really handy for door and window openings, as my project is in the visual/simulation area.

 

Hi @syscrusher !

You can turn realtime-CSG on/off with control-F3 (you can see all the keyboard shortcuts here)
As for uninstalling realtime-CSG .. if you want to keep your meshes, you can export your models by going to your model in the inspector, selecting mesh at export and pressing the export button. Then you can delete your plugin folder and no hidden objects should remain ..

Let me know if you run into any other issues

 

@logicalerror Thanks for the reply and the links to the keyboard documentation. I actually do RTFM on assets I buy. In this case, I literally was just testing to see if it would even import into the beta, on a whim. You've got some excellent tutorials online, and I'm going to take some time this weekend to work through those with Unity open as I follow along.

In the delete situation I asked about, I didn't want to keep the mesh; I was cleaning out my 5.6.0 sandbox so I could test the next asset import into a blank project. No worries, really -- since it was just an empty sandbox, I nuked the empty scene and made a new one. This is why I don't test in a production workspace. The main reason I asked the question was that I'm puzzled how Unity could "remember" the presence of that mesh when it wasn't in the scene hierarchy. I've not seen anything like that before. But, hey, we're talking not just about a beta, but the very earliest beta for 5.6, so all bets are off.

 

@atomicjoe the smoothing issues should be solved in version 1.339 !
@syscrusher Ah ok. Well unity has had the ability to have GameObjects be hidden for a long time. Realtime CSG uses this to hide the meshes it generates so you don't accidentally delete, move, or modify them .. which can create all kinds of headaches. Of course if you delete Realtime-CSG, realtime CSG isn't there anymore to clean it up ...

 

Thanks for explaining. I wasn't aware GOs could be hidden. Is there a way in the UI, short of a script, to unhide all?

 

Unfortunately no. Unity doesn't have a way to do this from the UI, a script would be required ..

 

Hi!
I just put an evaluation version online for realtime-CSG:
https://logicalerror.github.io/evaluate.html

It's limited to 200 brushes, doesn't have an editor API and lacks the export ability that the asset store version has