Vectrosity - fast and easy line drawing

I'm afraid there's not an easy way. As far as I know, you'd have to do a line intersection test, presumably for each segment of a VectorLine compared to each segment of the other VectorLine, unless someone knows of a better way.

I think what you've written is probably the best way to do it at this point. I haven't really done anything myself with lines in edit mode so I'm not sure if there's another way.

--Eric

 

Hi - I am working on a retro 80s style cityscape with Vectrosity, and have encountered something odd I hope you can help with.



The only difference in code between those two is in "VectorManager.ObjectSetup (gameObject, line, Visibility.Always, Brightness.None);"

Visibility.Dynamic or Visibility.Always

Full script as follows:

Code (csharp):

1. import Vectrosity;
2.  
3. var vectorData : TextAsset;
4. var lineMaterial : Material;
5. var lineColor = Color.green;
6. var lineThickness = 8.0;
7.  
8. function Start () {
9.    
10.     var linePoints = VectorLine.BytesToVector3Array (vectorData.bytes);
11.     var line = new VectorLine ("Object", linePoints, lineColor, lineMaterial, lineThickness);
12.        
13.     VectorManager.useDraw3D = true;
14.     VectorManager.ObjectSetup (gameObject, line, Visibility.Always, Brightness.None);
15.  
16. }

 

You'd want to add "false" at the end of the ObjectSetup parameters; see the discussion of MakeBounds in the ObjectSetup section in the docs.

--Eric

 

Perfect - thanks Eric. Which leads me onto a rendering issue - the 3D meshes z-fight with the 3D lines - like in the screen below.

Is there any way to improve this?

 

You could try using a shader that has "Offset -1, -1" in it, or possibly just make the lines a little thicker.

--Eric

 

Hey Eric,

I am having a problem with Join.Weld on my dotted line. In certain areas the dots become stretched and look odd, especially when moving via SetTextureScale():
pathLine.SetTextureScale( null, 1.0f, Time.time * -1.4f % 1 );

I am using a 3D line, but am using a bogus reference camera to keep the line in the x-z plane. The line looks fine with a maxWeldDistance of 1, but the line looks broken on corners.

Here is a video of the line in action:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/89o0jef1ylhorsk/join weld line.mov

 

What does the wireframe of that line look like? Could you add more points to the line, so the segments are shorter?

--Eric

 

I added more paths by making the maximum line length .1, I still get the same effect... The line breakage is not super noticeable so I think I will just have to live with it. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I had problems compiling for iOS in Unity 4.1.5 on Mac OS 10.8 with an error in the AOT compiler. I tracked it down to Vectrosity and using the source code version of the plugin instead of the dll eliminated the error. Is this a known error? Or is there something I'm doing wrong? I made a simple project with the example code that shows the error. See attached.

 

The DLL should be named "Vectrosity" rather than "Vectrosity_Unity4".

--Eric

 

Ah. Thanks. Vectrosity is excellent. The documentation, examples, support, and the logic of API are all top quality and has made it really easy to implement even for functionality that is not common or straight-forward. Good job!

 

Hi, I'm a complete noob to Vectrosity and have just imported it from the asset store and are getting 2 errors straight away pointing to 2 C# scrips, can someone please tell me how to solve this problem please.

Assets/Standard Assets/Image Effects (Pro Only)/ImageEffectBase.cs(5,14): error CS0101: The namespace `global::' already contains a definition for `ImageEffectBase'

Assets/Standard Assets/Image Effects (Pro Only)/ImageEffects.cs(6,14): error CS0101: The namespace `global::' already contains a definition for `ImageEffects'

I'm using Unity Pro 4.1.5f1

Thanks.

Kevin.

 

One of the demos contains a couple of standard assets; you can either not import the demos, or import them into a new project (recommended).

--Eric

 

Hi Eric, thanks for creating this

So I'm developing a game that I need to draw lines with touch input, for now I'm using LineRenderer which provide some nice results but it is not smooth enough. I decided to give a try to Vectrosity.

I'm testing your demos (DrawLinesTouch). As you can see in the ScreenSchot I'm getting some "sharp" corners, is there a way to avoid this?

Thanks



*EDIT: I'm using Unity 4.1.5f1

 

Thanks Eric ..

 

You could reduce maxWeldDistance, which will prevent those segments from being welded at all. If that's not acceptable, you'd have to find some way to add more points at those parts to give the welding routine more to work with.

--Eric

 

Hi Eric5h5,

I have a large procedural 3d plane that changes shape quite quickly during the game. What method do you recommend? I need to use Draw3D as it is FPS based. Thanks. Paul.

 

Hi, since you've already decided on Draw3D, I'm not really sure what you mean by "method". Can you explain more?

--Eric

 

I'm using Xray to look through walls, what I'd like to know is it possible to easily add mesh data to XrayLineData.js ?

I'd like to add a humanoid mesh data or just the outline ..

Thanks.

 

You can use the LineMaker editor utility for new mesh data, though you may prefer to use vector files instead of putting the data in scripts (using the BytesToVector3Array function); see the Simple3D 2 example script.

--Eric

 

Thanks Eric,

Is it possible for the vector of the humanoid I made to animate as the humanoid does or is that just to much ?

Thanks.

 

You could use SkinnedMeshRenderer.BakeMesh for that, though you'd need to use VectorLine.MakeWireframe rather than a custom wireframe made with LineMaker. I suspect it wouldn't be very fast though.

--Eric

 

Thanks for that.

 

Hi Eric,

Is there any code you could point me at so I can have a look how MakeWireframe works as I'm getting a bit confused as I can't seem to find any relating to MakeWireframe in the demos.

Thanks.

 

It's described with a code example on page 35 in the docs.

--Eric

 

Thanks ..

I really should have seen that ..

 

Hi Eric, Sorry that question was badly worded, the peril of late night posts

Effectively I am looking to have the wireframe overlay on top of a plane that forms the landscape, which is constantly changing shape. I need the lines to be occluded by other parts of the plane and objects. After reading the documentation I think I need to use Draw3D. Am I on the right track? Is there a recommended method you would suggest on how to deal with this scenario? Is it even possible? Thanks and I hope this makes more sense

 

If you need the lines occluded then Draw3D is really the only choice, so I'd say you're on the right track. You would of course need to feed in the data for the array of points that makes up the lines, but there's not really much else to it.

--Eric

 

Hi,

just tinkering around with Vectrosity and came across a little problem.
I created a VectorLine (myLine) object and set the parent for it by calling: myLine.vectorObject.transform.parent = otherTransform.
Now when I am checking if the line was selected with: myLine.Selected... I noticed, that a selection only gets registered for world point coordinates of the line, so the parent transformation is not considered. Is this a bug, or am I missing some additional setting here?

Many thanks in advance, any help would be much apprecciated!

Best regards
Mario

 

I would strongly recommend not using vectorObject in most cases, since it interferes with the functionality of Vectrosity unless you really know what you're doing. I'm not sure what you're doing with the parent, but it's likely you can pass in the transform of another object when drawing the VectorLine instead. e.g., myLine.Draw (someTransform).

--Eric

 

Great news! I already have an array of information I use to update the vertices etc so I guess I can use that. I'll have a play and see what happens. Thanks Eric.

 

Hi -

Continuing to love Vectrosity, awesome and essential addition to Unity, thank you Eric5H5!

I have a question which I'm sure has been asked before, but neither google nor Unity's search has yielded decent results, so hopefully someone will indulge me here . . .

A year or two back (in this thread somewhere!) there was talk of providing some support for SVG-import/conversion. I didn't see anything in the docs to that effect, but maybe there is some ad hoc method?

This would be huge . . . at least until I can build my superformula spline generator, that is.

thanks!

 

There isn't any SVG import yet, but the more it gets mentioned the more likely it becomes.

--Eric

 

Thanks.

I guess I'll mention it again tomorrow.

 

+1

 

Thanks for the fast respone. Just tried it out and the drawing with myLine.Draw(someTransform) works fine. Unfortunately the myLine.Selected does still not work with the applied transformation. Line points are definitely checked as word coordinates without the transformation given to myLine.Draw().
Any thoughts why this issue arises?
Thank you for your help!

Mario

 

That would appear to be a bug/limitation...good catch on that, will be fixed in the next update.

--Eric

 

Hi Eric , great package ! saves us a lot of time..

Have a few doubts about how to go about on a few things:
1. How to go about selecting seperate segments of a vectorline? ex: Line 1 has points 0,1,2,3 and i want to select the segment from point 2 to point 3?
2. Same thing about selecting dots?

cheers

 

1. Vectrosity 2.3 (not quite done yet) has the ability to get the segment index for selected lines.
2. VectorLine.Selected doesn't really work right with points, now that you mention it, but as long as Vectrosity 2.3 isn't done yet anyway maybe I can do something about that....

--Eric

 

Hi,

Not sure if I'm missing something but if I change the thickness of my 3d lines the thickness remains the same regardless of the distance from the camera. So if you zoom out you get huge lines relative to the objects in the scene.

My aim is to create laser tracers by the way.

Thanks!

 

Hi Eric,
just would like to thank you for your Vectrosity asset! Bought Vectrosity last year and loved it!
Thanks to this we could add a cool Tracing effect to our game

The Game is called 5 Vikings. It just has been released and is now available on the App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5-vikings/id659539981?mt=8

Thanks once more for this trully great asset!

 

Yes, that's by design; Vectrosity line widths are based on pixels, so you can do things like wireframe effects. It's not really appropriate for something like tracers.

Looks good!

--Eric

 

I'll put in my vote for SVG / Flash import. +1000

 

I need to render single pixels to a large RenderTexture (4096x4096) in order to use the rendertexture as a sort of datastructure to hold scalars in pixels. The data will be accessed on the GPU and displayed on a 3d model as a sort of visual 3d-representation of a graph. To implement it, my idea is to create 4096 VectorLines with 4096 points each, and then just render them to the RT using VectorLine.SetCameraRenderTexture. Then I can update a single scalar value very quickly by changing a point on the appropriate VectorLine and re-render it to the rt.

My problem is that I don't know if a VectorLine with as many points as the pixels it will cover is going to render itself pixel-perfect. That is, if I have a straight line created from 10 points, spanning 10 pixels in the RT, will point number 5 directly correspond to pixel number 5?

 

Thanks Eric,

Out of interest then. What would be the most efficient way to achieve a tracer effect? If I user trail or line renderers each laser segment incurs 1 draw call.

 

It will for sure if you make sure the vector cam is orthographic by using SetCamera (true). This code:

Code (csharp):

1. function Start () {
2.     VectorLine.SetCamera (true);
3.     var points = new Vector2[10];
4.     for (var i = 0; i < points.Length; i++) {
5.         points[i] = Vector2(i*2+100, 100);
6.     }
7.     var dots = new VectorPoints("Dots", points, null, 1.0);
8.     dots.SetColor (Color.green, 5);
9.     dots.Draw();
10. }

results in this, enlarged to make it easier to see:



That's with AA off, though of course the rendertexture would not be using AA anyway.

Would you have more than a few visible tracers at any time? That's just a few draw calls.

--Eric

 

Probably around 50 - 100 on screen.

 

Svg for the masses...
haha - isn't it time for vectrosity 2 ?

 

Thanks for the quick reply, and double thanks for providing an example, too.

One more question, though: VectorLine.SetCamera is not being called by myself, so I can't pass true to it to make the camera orthogonal. I understand it's being called for me in the implementation of VectorLine.SetCameraRenderTexture? There doesn't seem to be an overload of VectorLine.SetCameraRenderTexture that accepts a boolean.

So, rather than passing true to VectorLine.SetCamera, could I use the camera returned by SetCameraRenderTexture and modify it myself? Like this:

Code (csharp):

1.         Camera vectorCam = VectorLine.SetCameraRenderTexture(dataRenderTexture);
2.         vectorCam.orthographic = true;
3.         vectorCam.Render();
4.         VectorLine.SetCameraRenderTexture(null);

 

There is in Vectrosity 2.3.

--Eric