So I was wondering how can I make a Line Renderer between to points (joints) be a 3d model or at least how can I make a separate 3D model to follow the movement of the line renderer.
I have an AR project where, for a finger there is two points calculating the width of the finger and then a Line renderer comes in as a "ring" for the finger. And i was wondering how can make it a real ring by adding a 3D model
As a mesh for such a "ring" would be called a "torus". Someone apparently made a neat script to generate those: https://www.devcoons.com/how-to-make-a-ring-using-torus-method-in-unity-3d/
Keep in mind that generating meshes is not super fast. So try to generate one at game start and scale in case you neeed it with different dimensions.
EDIT: This could be also interesting and more flexible: https://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/TubeRenderer
Related
I am building a (2D) plotting application using Unity.
The data is generated (and updated in real time) from an outside library. I am using a LineRenderer to display the data.
This is working really well, but now I am trying to also add points/circles at the positions of the LineRenderer.
Because the LineRenderer contains a lot of points (which are also updated every frame), instantiating/pooling GameObjects at the LineRenderer positions is of course extremly laggy.
What would be a good solution to my problem?
Right now I am thinking there are two possibilities:
Pass the LineRenderer data as a 2D array to a vertex shader every frame
Draw a texture every frame that contains the positions of the LineRenderer
Is one of the two approaches superior in terms of performance? Also, is there another approach that I am not aware of?
Thank you very much!
I'm creating my game with dynamicly generated terrain. It is very simple idea. There are always three parts of terrain: segment on which stands a player and two next to it. When the player is moving(always forward) to the next segment new one is generated and the last one is cut off. It works wit flat planes, but i don't know how to do it with more complex terrain. Should I just make it have the same edge from both sides(for creating assets I'm using blender)? Or is there any other option? Please note that I'm starting to make games with unity.
It depends on what you would like your terrain to look like. If you want to create the terrain pieces in something external, like Blender, then yes all those pieces will have to fit together seamlessly. But that is a lot of work as you will have to create a lot of pieces that fit together for the landscape to remain interesting.
I would suggest that you rather generate the terrain dynamically in Unity. You can create your own mesh using code. You start by creating an object (in code), and then generating vertex and triangle arrays to assign to the object, for it to have a visible and sensible mesh. You first create vertices at specific positions and then add triangles that consist of 3 vertices at a time. If you want a smooth look instead of a low poly look, you will reuse some vertices for the next triangle, which is a little trickier.
Once you have created your block's mesh, you can begin to change your code to specify how the height of the vertices could be changed, to give you interesting terrain. As long as the first vertices on your new block are at the same height (say y position) as the last vertices on your current block (assuming they have the same x and z positions), they will line up. That said, you could make it even simpler by not using separate blocks, but by rather updating your object mesh to add new vertices and triangles, so that you are creating a terrain that is just one part that changes, rather than have separate blocks.
There are many ways to create interesting terrain. One of the most often used functions to generate semi-random and interesting terrain, is Perlin Noise. Another is his more recent Simplex noise. Like most random generator functions, it has a seed value, which you can keep track of so that you can create interesting terrain AND get your block edges to line up, should you still want to use separate blocks rather than a single mesh which dynamically expands.
I am sure there are many tutorials online about noise functions for procedural landscape generation. Amit Patel's tutorials are good visual and interactive explanations, here is one of his tutorials about noise-based landscapes. Take a look at his other great tutorials as well. There will be many tutorials on dynamic mesh generation as well, just do a google search -- a quick look tells me that CatLikeCoding's Procedural Grid tutorial will probably be all you need.
This question is (mostly) game engine independent but I have been unable to find a good answer.
I'm creating a turn-based tile game in 3D space using Unity. The levels will have slopes, occasional non-planar geometry, depressions, tunnels, stairs etc. Each level is static/handcrafted so tiles should never move. I need a good way to keep track of tile-specific variables for static levels and i'd like to verify if my approaches make sense.
My ideas are:
Create 2 Meshes - 1 is the complex game world, the second is a reference mesh overlay that will have minimal geometry; it will not be rendered and will only be used for the tiles. I would then Overlay the two and use the 2nd mesh as a grid reference.
Hard-code the tiles for each level. While tedious it will work as a brute force approach. I would, however, like to avoid this since it's not very easy to deal with visually.
Workaround approach - Convert the 3d to 2D textures and only use 1 mesh.
"Project" a plane down onto the level and record height/slope to minimize complexity. Also not ideal.
Create individual tile objects for each tile manually (non-rendered). Easiest solution i could think of.
Now for the Unity3D specific question:
Does unity allow selecting and assigning individual Verts/Triangles/Squares of a mesh and adding componenets, scripts, or variables to those selections; for example, selecting 1 square in the 10x10 unity plane and telling unity the square of that plane now has a new boolean attached to it? This question mostly refers to idea #1 above, where i would use a reference mesh for positional and variable information that were directly assigned to the mesh. I have a feeling that if i do choose to have a reference mesh, i'd need to have the tiles be individual objects, snap them in place using the reference, then attach relevant scripts to those tiles.
I have found a ton of excellent resources (like http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html) on tile generation (mostly procedural), i'm a bit stuck on the basics due to being new to unity and im not looking for procedural design.
As I understand it, the standard projection model places an imaginary grid in front of the camera, and for each triangle in the scene, determines which 3 pixels its 3 corners project onto. The color is determined for each of these points, and the fragment shader fills in the rest using interpolation.
My question is this: is it possible to gain control over this projection model? For example, create my own custom distorted uv-grid? Or even just supply my own algorithm:
xyPixelPos_for_Vector3( Vector3 v ) {...}
I'm working in Unity3D, so I think that limits me to cG or openGL.
I did once write a GLES2 shader, but I don't remember ever performing any kind of "ray hits quad" type test to resolve the pixel position of a particular 3D point in space.
I'm going to assume that you want to render 3d images based upon 3d primitives that are defined by vertices. This is not the only way to render images with OpenGL but it is the most common. The technique that you describe sounds much more like Ray-Tracing.
How OpenGL Typically Works:
I wouldn't say that OpenGL creates an imaginary grid. Instead, what it does is take the positions of each of your vertices, and converts them into a different space using linear algebra (Matrices).
If you want to start playing around with this, it would be best to do some reading on Matrices, to understand what the graphics card is doing.
You can easily start warping the positions of Vertices by making a vertex shader. However, there is some setup involved. See the Lighthouse tutorials (http://www.lighthouse3d.com/tutorials/glsl-tutorial/hello-world-in-glsl/) to get started with that! You will also want to read their tutorials on lighting (http://www.lighthouse3d.com/tutorials/glsl-tutorial/lighting/), to create a fully functioning vertex shader which includes a lighting model.
Thankfully, once the shader is set up, you can distort your entire scene to your hearts content. Just remember to do your distortions in the right 'space'. World coordinates are much different than eye coordinates!
I'm rendering particles in a 2D game. Each particle is a quad (2 triangles). How can I make the drawing the fastest possible? All the particles has the same texture, I'm only changing it's positions.
Now I'm using a call to glVertexPointer and glDrawArrays for each particle. So I'm sending 4 vertices each time to the GPU.
Is there any other approach that could be faster?
I'm using OpenGL ES 1.1 (iPhone)
Thanks!
Every draw call you make (glDrawArrays) is expensive. Doing this once per particle is DEFINITELY way too often. All your particles can be drawn with a single draw call; just set up a big array of all the triangle verts and another big array with the texture coords, and call glVertexPointer/glDrawArrays once-- that's the power of glVertexPointer: arbitrary geometry of the same type in one call. :)
For what you're doing, you should also look into point sprites (GL_POINTS), which also function as tiny textured quads. They're 2D only, so you can't map your texture into the Z axis, but if your particles are just 2D quads of the same texture over and over, point sprites will likely do exactly what you want.
There's a way to do that all in one draw routine. I THINK it's by adding an extra vertex after each quad, which is the same as the previous vertex, but I could be wrong.
EDIT: After looking into it a bit, it looks like you need two in between; essentially one after, and one before. It does add up to quite a few extra vertexes, but I know from experience that it makes a HUGE positive difference on the iPhone to do it all in one draw operation (we were drawing text from a texture, so essentially the same thing).
EDIT2: Also note, I'm referring to using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP - if you were using GL_TRIANGLES instead, you wouldn't need the extra vertices... except, then you'd be doing the same amount extra anyway, due to repeating 2 for each second triangle.