Runtime Level Design

This is basic 3D knowledge: when you transform (move/rotate/scale) a game object, its children will be transformed along with it. If you try the same thing in the Unity Editor, you will get the same result.

 

Hi Andrew,
I have a few more questions.. it would be great if you could check the following:
- how can I change the fonts & text-position for the runtime prefabs title which will be shown below the 3Dobject?
- is it possible for you to integrate a feature which would allow us to combine runtime duplicated objects. My goal is to create for example Walls with a specific material & texture with normal and spec , but if I would just extrude the object the texture would get pixelated. The current method with "T" and duplication is causing some weird shadows between the duplicated objects if the camera is a bit far away, so ideally when extruding a specific object for example which is tagged as a "wal" the wall texture would get duplicated while extruding (without duplicating the object itself). Is this somehow possible?
- one more great feature woudl be: when selecting a specific prefab withing the GUI that it could be placed directly at the terrain (currently it´s just in the center of the cam - if the cam is pointing towards the terrain - which is no transparent grid - objects would be hidden below the terrain) - could this be somehow integrated?

 

Hi there,

So regarding your points:
1. you can configure the appearance of the prefab text, by modifying the properties of the button prefab:


The RTPrefabPreviewButton is used to create the buttons at runtime so you can make changes to this prefab to control the button appearance.

2. I'm not sure what I can do here. Would it be possible to send me some screenshots or maybe even a small recording?

3. yes, I will look into it and I should be able to make it work. I will keep you up to date.

 

hey Andrew,
thanks for your fast answer - I really appreciate that

1. perfect - that was exactly what I was looking for! thx
2. I have attached a screenshot where I am using hotkey "Q" at the left to duplicate the wall element and the extrude hotkey "T" at the right - you can see that the left version has ideal texture, but there are a lot of objects cloned which can´t be good for the performance, beside that the user cant select a specific wall by clicking on that (because there are a lot of cloned objects) - at the right you can see how the texture gets streched when pressing "T". T would be the ideal functionality but without stretching the texture. I guess this topic related a bit to this thread: https://answers.unity.com/questions...bjects-during-runtime.html?childToView=565528 - maybe this could give you some ideas?

3. cool! This would increase the User Experience a lot - looking forward to it

 

Hi there,

I've left you a message regarding the prefab spawn issue

Regarding point number 2. The T hotkey activates the box scale gizmo which stretches textures. The box scale gizmo should be used only when prototyping or when there is no danger of stretching or squashing textures.

Mesh combining is the way to go here, but this is not currently available in RLD. I am not sure when or if this feature will be available.

 

Hi!

I have a hotkey problem. Some hotkeys like undo(LCTRL + Z) conflict with the editor hotkey, and won't work. Is there a way to stop the editor hotkey when running?

Thanks!

 

just use SHIFT + CTRL + Z while in editor

 

Hi Andrew,

Loving RLD so far!
I have a couple questions to ask:

1. Is there a way to disable user interaction with the scene gizmo? I am using my own camera controls and I can't see an easy way of turning it off. (and no Docs for this module?)

2. The MultiDeselect doesn't seem to work as I would think it would.
It only works if there are NO selectable objects under the mouse pointer when the multi-select rectangle is first drawn.

IF a selectable object is underneath the mouse pointer when the Lshift is held down and user left clicks to start dragging ALL objects get deselected. I assume this is not intended? (I checked demo scene and it is repeatable there).

3. I've started to implement RTPrefabLibDb.
It works as advertised and will hopefully save me quite some time.
However I'd like to use it more like an object brush where the prefab buttons are like brushes in photoshop and the object is projected onto the geo in the scene and follows the mouse pointer. So the user can just click and place the object (very much like the surface snapping tool, which is amazing by the way!). At the moment it's very easy to shoot a prefab into a larger scene and have it vanish from the user.
There are no docs I can find on this module so it's a bit overwhelming. Especially since I am a rather inexperienced coder.
Any tips before I dive in?

Fantastic product by the way, it's saved me a huge amount of time so far!

Cheers

DarrenR

 

Hi Darren,

Happy to hear you like RLD

Regarding your inquiries:
1. This can only be done using an API which is not documented:

Code (CSharp):

1. RTGizmosEngine.Get.GetSceneGizmoByCamera(yourCamera).OwnerGizmo.SetEnabled(false);

2. That is the intended behaviour when you hold down SHIFT. See doc https://rld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Hotkeys/ ObjectSelection section. You can turn this off by disabling the hotkey in the RTObjectSelection Inspector.

3. This is something which is not supported at the moment. Hopefully it will be available at some point, but I can't say when. For the moment, what you can do is use the PrefabSpawned handler to get access to the object that was spawned and from there you can decide what you want to do with it:

Code (CSharp):

1. RTPrefabLibDb.Get.PrefabSpawned += MyHandler;
2.  
3. private void MyHandler(RTPrefab prefab, GameObject spawnedObject)
4. {
5.     // Do something with spawned object
6. }

Now, I can not give you any exact pointers at the moment on how to proceed. Give me some time to see if teh current API can help you out and I will get back to you with a more helpful answer (hopefully).

 

Thanks for the answers!

Just to make it clear on point 2.
When the Multideselect square is activated (LShift held) when the mouse pointer is over a selectable object ALL objects in the scene are deselected no matter what the Multideselect actually selects.
It happens when you first click the mouse with shift held down. It's like it selects the object clicked before it does the Multideselect.

cheers Andrew.

 

Oh. I see. Sorry, I didn't get that correctly the first time. Seems like a bug. I will check it out. Thanks for pointing it out

 

Hi Darren,

I fixed the issue with multi-deselect, but I can not send you an IM for some reason. Can you send me an e-mail at octamodius@yahoo.com so that I can send you the updated pack?

 

Hi Andrew,

I'm playing with Selection Grab (Surface snapping). Its REALLY cool.
However there's one thing that is missing for me. It would be great to be able to set the mode to just sit the objects on the surface without aligning them to the normal of the surface.

For example trees will always grow upwards so this can't be used to move trees on anything but a totally flat surface. Its amazing for most other thing though!

Edit: Oh and thanks for fixing the deselect! I'll send an email right away. Amazing support!

 

Hi Darren,

In the RTObjectSelection Inspector, in the Selection grab tab, you have a toggle called Align axis.

You can also override alignment settings per layer if you wish as shown in this video.

 

Whoops! I managed to miss that.
Well thats amazing!

Thanks Andrew.

 

This is really great. Question: Is there a way to assign a "top level" game object and have all level objects underneath it? That would make saving and loading much easier and would help a lot with scene management. I tried doing this but the editor just sees everything as a single thing.

 

Nevermind - found it. ObjectGroupDb is just what I needed.

 

Yes. That's the one you need

 

Hello ,
i have a big model with 4 million vertices which i load at runtime.
Someone told me that i should use:

Code (CSharp):

1. foreach (MeshFilter meshFilter in meshFilters) {
2.             var rtMesh = RTMeshDb.Get.GetRTMesh(meshFilter.mesh);
3.             rtMesh.BuildTree();
4.         }

so that the model can be moved via your gizmos afterwards.
Since the model is very big and has a lot of meshFilter, this routine takes a long time until it is finished (some minutes).

The main problem is that the whole unity application is freezing while performing this, even when i outsource this part in a StartCoroutine. Is there any possibility that this process can be somehow executed in the background after the model is loaded?
I thought about one solution for me: I can implement my own logic to cast a ray into the scene when clicking on the model and then execute the function above to just apply it to the selected part. Or do you have any other possibility so the unity interface is not freezing so hard?

Thanks!

 

So I have managed to import the prefab that you sent to me and here are the performance stats that I see WIHTOUT RLD in the scene:



So the render thread takes 114 ms and CPU 159. These are HUGE numbers!!!! Please note that RLD does not exist in the hierarchy. This is just a simple scene with your prefab loaded into it.

The Unity Editor is extremely slow when when this prefab is loaded. I took a look at some of the models and they are extremely high poly. You have lots and lots of chairs and other models that are way to high poly. So at this point, it's not even an RLD issue. Unity itself is not able to handle all the geometry you are throwing at it.

I honestly suggest you find a better set of models to work with. If you made the models yourself, please read about low poly modeling techniques.

There is nothing I can do to make this work.

EDIT: I can also see that you have lots of materials so material batching is also inefficient.

 

Okay thanks for your time!

Regarding my question in

there is no other possibility than this code above to make a dynamic loaded model ready for gizmo use, right?

 

Can you tell me which function is first fired when i click on an object in the scene?

 

Hi there,

RTObjectSelection.Get.Changed is fired when the selection changes. For a more detailed explanation of this event, please see the doc.

Regarding the previous question, that is indeed the only way to make a mesh ready for interaction with gizmos.

 

Hi there,
I am using RLD and would like to use GPU Instancer (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/gpu-instancer-117566) - without RLD I have around 680FPS - as you can see here: https://imgur.com/4juF3Mx as soon as I turn RLD on the FPS decrease a lot - in the demo scene to around 30FPS - please take a look at this screenshot: https://imgur.com/LJUI5sq

I noticed the RLD.RTSceneGizmoCamera GameObject is decreasing a lot of FPS
Is there a way to improve the animation of RLD (as that´s most critical in the profiler - as shown in the screenshots above)? Or is there maybe another way how to fix this?

 

Hi there,

The scene gizmo camera is not doing anything special and RLD in general does not have anything to do with the animation module. Would it be possible to do a deep profile and identify the script that is causing the problem?

One thing that comes to mind right now is that RLD has to loop through every object in the scene every frame and check if its transform has changed. I see you have around 10000 objects in the scene and this might slow things down, but not to that extent.

 

Hi XGT08,

I want to control RLD from uGUI.
Please tell me the script to change to surface snap mode.
Other gizmos are able to call.

 

Hi,

thanks for your input. I tried to do a deep profile but unity got stuck a couple of times.. I had to restart it and its very very slow. However I did 2 screenshots using deep profile and without. It looks like this issue is related to RLDApUpdate as you can see here: https://imgur.com/a/eJKScVh

Do you have any idea how to fix that?

 

here is another screenshot showing the profiler in my project: https://imgur.com/a/wkmLcgS GC.Alloc has a lot of calls... it would be great if you would know how to optimize this

 

Hi there,

Thanks for the screenshots. I will have a look at this tomorrow in more detail and I will get back to you as soon as I have an answer.

 

@xkinginthecastlecastlex
Hi there,

I've sent you a PM.

 

Hi,

This is a phenomenal asset and has opened up a whole new world for my project. The flexibility behind the keybindings and UI is really a step above and having just read the first 5 pages of this forum I’m genuinely impressed with how much support is offered.

I’m a hobbyist and somewhere between beginner and early intermediate with C# so please forgive me if I missed this looking through the documentation and forum.

I was wondering if there is a list that keeps track of all the spawned objects from the prefab GUI in the level. My goal is to incorporate Easy Save or my own save modality to save the designed level, allow users to name this level, and reload or load a new level. (The big picture: design a level, click save, name the level, add the name to a GUI list, then work on the next level or go back to a previously saved level using that GUI scene select).

I believe as a first step I would need to figure out where the instantiated objects are being stored or instantiated to put them into my own saved variables for their position, rotation, etc this way I can reload these objects at their specific positions when called by the user.

To do this, I was wondering if there is already a list of all the instantiated objects in the code, or where the objects are instantiated from so I could put them into my own list and send them to saved variables. Sorry for such a novice question..it’s coming from a novice haha.

 

Hi there,

And welcome to the forum

This is not a novice question at all. It makes perfect sense that you would ask this. Even if it was a novice question, it is better to ask and get an answer

So there is no list of objects being stored, but you can register event handlers to different events that pretain to spawning objects:

1. RTPrefabLibDb.Get.PrefabSpawnd += OnPrefabSpawned;

where OnPrefabSpawnedshould have the following prototype:
void OnPrefabSpawned(RTPrefab prefab, GameObject spawnedObject);

2. RTObjectSelection.Get.Duplicated += OnSelectionDuplicated;

void OnSelectionDuplicated(ObjectSelectionDuplicationResult result);

3. RTObjectSelectionGizmos.GetGizmoById(ObjectSelectionGizmoId.Extrude).ExtrudeUpdate += OnExtrudeUpdate;

This is called when extruding objects with the extrude gizmo.

Prototype is:
void OnExtrudeUpdate(List<GameObject> parents);

You should register all these event handlers inside the app's post init event:

So I assume you have a monobehaviour where you keep some of the app logic. Inside the Awake function, of that monobehaviour, please write:

void Awake()
{
RLDApp.Get.Initialized += OnAppInitialized;
}

void OnAppInitialized()
{
RTPrefabLibDb.Get.PrefabSpawnd += OnPrefabSpawned;
RTObjectSelection.Get.Duplicated += OnSelectionDuplicated;
RTObjectSelectionGizmos.GetGizmoById(ObjectSelectionGizmoId.Extrude).ExtrudeUpdate += OnExtrudeUpdate;
}

I will have to send you the updated pack because the Initialized event is not present in the version that exists on the store. Wait for my PM.

EDIT: If you encounter any trouble with any of the steps above, let me know.

 

hi there,
I noticed if I leave RLD in runtime and don´t do anything for a couple of minutes, the framerate is continously dropping ... currently I have only 10FPS

here is another screenshot of the profiler: https://ibb.co/myFxGNV

Is there a way to fix this?

 

I do not know what is the root cause of the issue. I notice a lot GC allocations but I do not know where all of these come from.

Let's try the following:
-open up the RLDApp.cs file;
-inside the Start function, comment out the following line:

Code (CSharp):

1. RTGizmosEngine.Get.CreateSceneGizmo(RTFocusCamera.Get.TargetCamera);

This line can be found in the code block with the // Gizmos engine comment on top of it.

 

Looking at the other 2 screenshots I got from you in the PM, I could narrow down the code that might be causing the issue. It's really weird because I can see that you have only one camera in the scene, yet the code behaves as there are thousands...

I will send you a PM with another update. Let's hope this one works.

 

hey thanks a lot!

I tried your update but actually it hasn´t fixed the issue, but your suggestion to comment out the above mentioned line has indeed fixed the fps-drop!

Currently I just don´t see any difference with RLD & GPU Instancer - it looks like GPUi has no influence to the performance. I am not quite sure if it´s compatible as I need to use the GPUi Prefab Manager + the RLDPrefabLibDb

I contacted the GPUi asset developer, but he said if RLD can distribute prefab instances it shoud work with GPUi

 

hi there,
is RLD compatible with Time of day https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/time-of-day-7316 ?

I just installed TOD and noticed when I want to place objects from the ressource browser they just appear in the hierarchy but are not visible in the editor or build. As soon as I turn off the TOD-Sky-Dome Game Objects the objects can be placed normally.

Is there something I need to take care of?

 

RLD was not tested with other assets. I have no idea what TOD does behind the scenes that causes that sort of behaviour. Please contact the developer of TOD.

 

ok, thanks for your fast reply

 

Hello
When i move the camera forward with W + Right Mouse Click and then release W, the camera is still going forward. Is this the right behavior?

It looks like the Key is somehow buffered.

 

hi there,
is it possible to extend the behaviour of the RTObjectSelection to combine it with runtime inspector: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/gui/runtime-inspector-hierarchy-111349

basically the idea is to click on the runtime instantiated objects and display e.g. Transform data with the Runtime Inspector Asset using a code like this:

public RuntimeInspectorNamespace.RuntimeInspector inspector;

public void InspectObject( GameObject clickedObject )
{
inspector.Inspect( clickedObject.transform );
}

this is a code snippet from the Runtime Inspector developer, unfortunately I haven´t been able to get this working with RLD. Would I have to modify the RTObjectSelection.cs or do you know a way how to be able to use RLD and still be able to showcase the data with the above mentioned asset when I click on a runtime spawned prefab?

 

You can capture the selection changed event when an object is clicked. Please see the doc about the object selection changed event: https://rld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ObjectSelectionEvents/

And also, please see object select/deselect reasons: https://rld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ObjectSelectDeselectReasons/

So you would do:
RTObjectSelection.Get.Changed += OnSelectionChanged;

....

private void OnSelectionChanged(ObjectSelectionChangedEventArgs args)
{
if (args.SelectReason == ObjectSelectReason.Click ||
args.SelectReason == ObjectSelectReason.ClickAppend)
{
var objectsWhichWereSelected = args.ObjectsWhichWereSelected;
InspectObject(objectsWhichWereSelected[0]);
}
}

 

Hi,

thank you very much for your quick answer and code!

I read the docs https://rld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ObjectSelectionEvents/ & https://rld.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ObjectSelectDeselectReasons/#object-select-reasons but I am struggling all the time to implement this functionality and it´s driving me nuts

It looks like I did something wrong as I am getting the attached error in the console:





Here is my code:

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class ClickInspect : MonoBehaviour {
public class ObjectSelectionChangedEventArgs
{
public ObjectSelectReason SelectReason { get { return _selectReason; } }
public List<GameObject> ObjectsWhichWereSelected { get { return new List<GameObject>(_objectsWhichWereSelected); } }
public ObjectDeselectReason DeselectReason { get { return _deselectReason; } }
public List<GameObject> ObjectsWhichWereDeselected { get { return new List<GameObject>(_objectsWhichWereDeselected); } }
public ObjectSelectionSnapshot UndoRedoSnapshot { get { return _undoRedoSnapshot; } }
}
// Use this for initialization
void Start () {

RTObjectSelection.Get.Changed += OnSelectionChanged;
}

// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {

private void OnSelectionChanged(ObjectSelectionChangedEventArgs args);
{
if (args.SelectReason == ObjectSelectReason.Click ||
args.SelectReason == ObjectSelectReason.ClickAppend)
{
var objectsWhichWereSelected = args.ObjectsWhichWereSelected;
InspectObject(objectsWhichWereSelected[0]);
}
}
}
}

Could you please take a look at the code and let me know what I am doing wrong
Sorry for the noob question..

I would really appreciate your support

 

This code and the updated package you sent worked perfectly to make my list of prefabs that were spawned. In the process I've learned how to properly use event handlers- invaluable experience for me. Thank you very much!

 

Any idea? I also have sometimes the strange behavior that when i press W + RMB and look for example in direction of the y-axis the camera moves in z direction for example.

 

The camera input is not buffered, it simply, responds to the state reported to me by Unity. Out of curiosity can you give me a screenshot with your framerate?

 

It depends. It goes from 9 -22 FPS.

 

I tested it now by 40 FPS and the same behavior as here occurs:

Not so extreme as when using the big model, but you can see it.

 

So it is because of the framerate, right?

 

That is my best guess. As I said, it doesn't happen to me and nobody has ever reported this to me before. And there is no piece of code that can cause that kind of behaviour.

Judging by the type of objects you are using and the frame rate, I would assume it's that.