After getting a lot of requests to update my Multiline Word Wrap DynamicText3D class to support the newest versions of FIVe3D, I have finally created an updated version. The new version supports both
FIVe3D_package_AS3_v1.1.3 and FIVe3D_package_AS3_F10_v1.0.2.

Quick example on how to use this class.

var dynText:DynamicText3DMultiline;
dynText = new DynamicText3DMultiline(new HelveticaMedium());
dynText.width = 200;
dynText.align =  DynamicText3DMultiline.CENTER;
dynText.lineSpacing = 5;
dynText.wordWrap = true;

Note: If you do not set wordWrap=true this class will work exactly the same way as DynamicText3D and will have no extra overhead.

To play the demo click here.

To get the demo source, including the newest version of the DynamicText3DMultiline class click here.

To download the newest version of the DynamicText3DMultiline class click here.

Source Requirements: You will need FIVe3D (AS3_v1.1.3 or F10_v1.0.2). To compile the demo source you will also need TweenMax.

A few weeks back I got thinking. Would it be possible to have a terrain within Unity deform in real-time? For example if an explosion went off, could it blow a hole in the terrain? I decided this would be a good project to learn the more ‘advanced’ features of Terrains within Unity.

It ended up being more challenging than I predicted, as it was difficult to get the framerate to remain stable while performing these operation. Using a few tricks I ended up getting it to work exactly as I had hoped.

The demo works like this. A script randomly spawns ’shells’ that fall quickly to the ground. Each shell has an onTrigger collider attached to it. If this collides with a terrain that has a TerrainDeformer component, the shell tells that component its location and the force of the explosion. The shell then instantiate an explosion (supplied by Ben Throop great Detonator framework), and removes itself.

The TerrainDeformer script then translates that position to the correct location relative to it’s terrain and modifies both the heightmap (terrain height) and the alphamap (terrain texture). A bit of math is used to find all the heightmap and alphamap position within the area of the impact circle.

The texture which is used to re-texture the impact area is chosen from the list of terrain textures based on the numerical index value passed into the script (Terrain Deformation Texture Num). In this example it is set to one, so it will re-texture with the second texture in the list.

When creating your own terrains it is necessary for the height of the terrain to be higher than 0 meters so craters can be formed. I recommend a depth of at least 3 meters. This can done by setting the terrain height to something higher than 3 meters, then clicking Terrain->Flatten Heightmap and entering 3 meters.

For performance reasons it is important to keep your terrain size small and more importantly keep your Heightmap Resolution low. In this example it is set to 33.

The current version does have limitations like lack of terrain edge detection and support for multiple terrains. This example is more of proof of concept to show that not only can it be done, but done without much of a performance hit.

Thanks to Calin for creating the dirt texture.

To check out the demo click here.

To get the source (unitypackage) click here.

Source Requirements: Unity 2.6 and the Detonator Framework.

A little annoyance I’ve come across when creating new projects was having to manually add my collection of custom editor scripts each time. Ex: TransformUtilitiesWindow

I found that every time I created a new project I would navigate to my last project and drag all the editor scripts from there into my new project.

I got thinking maybe there is a way to add these scripts to the ‘Import the following packages’ panel when creating a new project. Turns out you can do this fairly easily.

First create an empty Unity project. I called mine EditorScripts. Create a folder within this project and call it ‘Editor’ (editor scripts must be placed in this folder to work). Then drag into this folder all your custom editor scripts. Once complete click Assets->Export Package, and then click the Export button (all your scripts should be checked for them to export). You will then export this package to the ‘Standard Packages’ folder within Unity (Windows: C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Standard Package or OS X: /Applications/Unity/Standard Packages – reference link). Once the export is complete, save this project for later use.

Now the next time you create a new project you should see a new item in the ‘Import the following packages’ list (image above).  You can check this package and have those scripts automatically added to your new project.

As you find/create new editor scripts you can go back to the EditorScripts project, added them and re-export the package.

While I personally find this method most helpful for editor scripts, you can use the same process to create reusable and quickly addable packages containing any kind of assets.

So until Unity comes up with a way to share scripts across projects this seems like the easiest and quickest way to add editor scripts that you will need for every project.

My last Unity3D example showed how to interact with a standard Blender model. The TV model in that example had no animations just a separate dial object that I manually rotated in Unity. In this example I wanted to trigger a Blender animation when an object was clicked.

My brother Calin was nice enough to create the required Blender models for me and animated them using an Armature.  For these models he set each animation to 25 frames in length (length of the animation is important to know as it will need to be entered into Unity).

After importing each model into Unity each animation’s  name, frame start and frame end will need to be entered.

Ex: open 0-25, close 26-50

Once a model is added to a GameObject the animation component can be setup. In this example the default animation was set to none and ‘Play Automatically’ was disabled. This way no animation would be played at start up. Each previously entered animation can then be added to the animation list.

Once complete the default collider(s) can be added to the GameObject. Also if needed colliders that will need to follow the animation’s motion can be added to that joint GameObject. (ex: fridge door joint). This way during and after the animation all colliders will be in the correct location.

Finally from within the GameObject containing the model with an animation you can call ‘this.transform.animation.Play(“animationName”);’ to trigger that animation.

While setting up each animation and all the colliders can be a little time consuming once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty easy.

Thanks again to Calin for creating these models.

To check out the demo click here.

To get the source (unitypackage) click here.

Source Requirements: Unity 2.6, you will only need Unity Pro to use the Render Texture feature used for the TV.

This post is long overdue as I put a lot of effort into the code behind this and when it was finally finished, I just never got around to blogging about it.

A little while ago katopz a new member of the JigLibFlash team started work on Flash Player 10 specific version of JigLibFlash. Once he got it up and running I started work on optimizing it’s performance. I had done performance optimizations for many different projects in the past,  but I had never undertaken an optimizing task quite this complex. Overall it was a very great learning experience, learning the ins and outs of the Flash Player and gaining more knowledge on the weird thing that is the Flash Compiler. While I thought I understood people’s frustrations with the Flash Compiler, it wasn’t until my second week into making performance tweaks that I began to see how poorly the Flash Compiler actually works.

In the end my work finally paid off as JigLibFlash began performing 150% faster than the previous version.

Once that was complete I fixed up the JigLibFlash FIVe3D plugin to make it work with a slightly modified version of FIVe3D (just modified enough so it would compile under Flash Player 10). This is the point when I decided that since I had learned so much about FP10 and the Flash Compiler, I should take a stab at creating a properly FP10 version of FIVe3D. What I thought would be a quick task ended up evolving into me completely rewriting the library. When this new version was complete it ran well over twice as fast as the old one. I contacted Mathieu (creator of FIVe3D) so see if he wanted a copy. It turned out that during the same time period he was also working on an FP10 version of FIVe3D.

Not all was lost, he sent me an alpha version of the library, so I could perform some benchmarks. While my code performed better in certain situation, his performed better in normal uses cases. With this new information in hand I began work trying to incorporate some of my feature enhancements into his version of the library. The most important feature being the addition of ‘direct transform matrix manipulation’. Mathieu and I had spoke of about this feature a few times prior, but understandably he had more important items to tackle. For people that don’t know ‘direct transform matrix manipulation’ is so important because it is a requirement for JigLibFlash to work. This is why in the past to get FIVe3D and JigLibFlash to work together you had to download a custom Sprite3D class from my site.

After a lot of thought I managed to come up with a way to not only incorporate this feature, but also make the library a little bit faster in the process. I sent the modified version back to Mathieu and this code has since been added to the FP10 version of the FIVe3D library. Mathieu was also nice enough to add me as a contributor to the library.

This means that need to download a custom Sprite3D class is no longer required. All the code (minus the Cube class) for using JigLibFlash together with FIVe3D is now added to their respective libraries. This also means that things are a lot faster and in the end; speed = fun.

All the pieces you with need to download:

• JigLibFlash FP10 – http://code.google.com/p/jiglibflash
• FIVe3D FP10 – http://code.google.com/p/five3d
• FIVe3D FP10 Cube Class – http://blog.almostlogical.com/resources/Cube.as

To see the demo click here.

To get the source for this example click here.

Note: This demo is the same as my first FIVe3D JigLibFlash example the only difference being it is using the FP10 version of both JigLibFlash and FIVe3D.

Update: Some people are having problems with the scale of objects being too small. This is a bug in the original Flash Player 10 player. This bug has since been fixed so make sure you get the newest version of Flash Player 10, Flash CS4 and/or Flex SDK.

If you missed the first part of this Unity3D series you can read it here.

This example demonstrates how to interact with with objects in Unity.

The mouse cursor was removed and replaced with a cursor in the middle of the screen similar to an FPS. When this cursor is over an object that support interactivity, the cursor changes and the GUI will display a message based on the possible interaction. This is achieved by creating an abstract class called ‘Interactive’ with two abstract functions GetInteractionMessage() and Interact(). All interactive objects will inherit this class and support these two functions.

Within the Update() in the GUI class a Physics.Raycast is done using a ray moving outward from the center of the screen. This returns the first GameObject in which this ray collides. Then it tests to see if this object or a parent of this object has a component of type ‘Interactive’. If type ‘Interactive’ is detected it then can retrieve information about the possible interaction or if the left mouse button is down tell this object to perform an action.

In this example clicking on each TV changes its channel (based on multiple materials) and rotates its dial.

As you may have noticed the TV model has received a significant upgrade. A thanks goes out to Calin Reimer for creating this new model.

Hints and Gotchas:

• Use an abstract class as the parent class for all interactive objects, this way you won’t have to rewrite the basic interaction code for each object. This method also make detection a lot easier.
• To create a Ray moving outward from the center of the screen, use the following code: Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(new Vector3(Screen.width/2,Screen.height/2));
• Use layers to have certain materials ignore light sources (ie. TV Screen), then use a Self-Illumin shader to brighten this material.
• If you can get someone else to model for you, do it. It speeds up development

To check out the demo click here.

To get the source (unitypackage) click here.

Source Requirements: Unity 2.6, but you will still need Unity Pro to use the Render Texture feature.