I'm using the Stripping Level to optimize the mobile app size.
But when I turn ON the Stripping Level (Strip Assemblies / Strip Bytecode / Use micro mscorelib), I got nothing to show the terrain in my Android app.
I checked the official documentation but there's no explanation about the Stripping Level that affect the terrain show.
Any idea please?
Generally using the Unity terrain on mobile is a big no no, since it uses a lot of resources. they have done some modifications since last i checked when it wasn't supported at all.
Personally i would export the terrain to multiple 3D objects so occlusion culling will help with the performance.
which in turn will be supported by all devices/platforms.
Rendering terrain is quite expensive, so terrain engine is not very practical on lower-end mobile devices.
according to: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Terrains.html ( at the end )
i guess the develops figured when stripping to mobile you want it lightweight and fast which mobile terrain is not. they might change it, but a good practice would be to not use the terrain engine on mobile.
Related
I'm using EasyAR Sense for Unity to develop an app that tracks a target image.
I'm using https://www.easyar.com/targetcode.html to test my target images, but I have not yet understood the markers requirements. Are the colors of image important? Or is it based on the recognition of outlines and edges?
Also, are there any suggested guidelines and how do they apply to random images? (just to clarify, i'm not interested in using markers but digitally drawn pictures).
EDIT: We found out that the ways in which Vuforia and EasyAR recognize theyirtargets are pretty far apart from each other. An image that would rate fairly low on Vuforia will score high on EasyAR's site and vice-versa.
As far as we know now, yes, Vuforia bases its recognition methods on high contrasts and sharp edges.
That said, Vuforia as a solution is not feasible for our purposes, as it doesn't support front facing camera. We had to look for alternate solutions and stumbled across EasyAR which seems powerful, but with a really slim documentation on the programming side, and an inexistent design guideline documentation.
As we understand chaotic patterns will be recognized the best from EasyAR's engine but it doesn't state how much chaos defines "a rich texture".
But we are in dire need of simplicity in the images we're using in the application since it's targeted towards kids with understanding disorders, and a messy approach to the images may be counterproductive.
In my experience with EasyAR and Vuforia (they detect 2D images similarly) the more complex is the image is better for recognition, for example:
Contrast between delimited color areas are detected very good.
Lines with sharp edges are detected better.
Enter vuforia and try their system of stars when checking a target, that usually says to me what images will work great on EasyAR.
GOOD DETECTION
BAD DETECTION
In my experience with EasyAR and Vuforia, color is important and Uniform images aren't suitable for targets.
Furthermore, In Vuforia:
developer panel >> Target manager >> your database >> your target >> rating,
you can see your target's rating:
I have good experience with the iPhone development tools and making apps with window based applications and stuff. I am now trying to make an awesome 3D game, which is an area I have never tried out.
I am very interested in learning about the development of "INFINITY BLADE" and I am very curious to know how it was developed and how they were able to develop it with so much detail.
I had already looked at links like iPhone 3D Engines, but it seems outdated.
Where is a good place to start for learning HIGH Performance 3D games for iPhone / iPad ?
Could you share any tips on the development life cycle for the 3D Games ??
Tools used for making high quality 3D images for the creative side of iPhone Development ? And resources on the creative side ?
Could you share the game development life cycle for a particular app , or perhaps your comments on the development of Infinity Blade ?
This isn't a full answer, but I decided to post it anyways.
Infinity blade was written using unreal engine 3, which recently (or not so recently) got an export to iPhone option. Unreal engine is the same engine used for games such as gears of war. I'm assuming that the actual difficulty of getting high quality graphics to run well on the iPhone was handled by unreal engine. As for making the graphics, I'm sure they hired a (bunch of) 3D artists. You can get the UDK for unreal off of their website, which allows you to start learning with it. The only caveat is the cost of the engine when you actually want to release a game.
I've never actually used it so I can't give too much information on it, but you could try looking at cocos2d's lesser known sibling, cocos3d. That would probably be the most cost effective way to learn how to do some 3d game programming in obj-c.
http://brenwill.com/cocos3d/
But if you're looking to bang a game out quickly and learn a good amount about game development, Unity3D might be the best option. They have a few really good hands on tutorials.
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/
I might be wrong, but I think Unity might require the use of C# under mono, in which case I'm not sure if that would be something you're looking for.
I have a couple ideas for some 3D games/apps and need to know which 3D engine to go with. I like the high-level approach of Unity and UDK. I have done some 2D games using cocos2d before, but I'm entirely new to the 3D world, which is why i think Unity or UDK are a good choice. I know about the differences in licensing, and i am more concerned with the learning curve instead of the licensing cost.
Plans:
A 3D "side scroller" that goes forwards (up) instead of to the side. Third person space ship. This would primarily be for learning. Tilt to steer, tap to jump. Very simple graphics, vertex coloring would be enough.
A 2.5D "side scroller" like the above one but with a car. This game would generate the levels randomly out of a couple prefab blocks of a certain length that fit together seamlessly.
A 3D augmented reality display for pilots with a terrain mesh loaded from DEM data. Accelerometer and GPS access required.
Other important points:
Must be able to tie in to In-App purchases.
The more community content like tutorials and forums the better.
Ability to add third party libraries like Flurry Analytics is a big plus! But i guess this isn't possible?
Which engine would you recommend for these projects, and why? Preferably, i'd like to pick one and stick with it.
You’re going to have a way, way better time developing with Unity. UDK’s got a fantastic, incredibly capable engine, but its tools don’t have the ease-of-use of Unity’s, its developer documentation leaves a lot to be desired, and the community hasn’t been using it for long enough for there to be much help to be found there. Some quick Googling suggests you can write your own Objective-C plug-ins for Unity games, so in-app purchases and third-party libraries are definitely a possibility. I think Unity’s your best bet.
What about cryengine? it free for non commercial use and also provides mono c#.
Check it out CryEngine
I've recently been constructing a pixel shader to apply shading to the player-character in a Flash game I'm currently coding for. As it turns out, however, Actionscript 3 is... Not handling this gracefully, and the framerate hit is pretty huge.
What I would like to do is write something in C++ that can then use OpenGL buffers to store the pixels I want to tweak, tweak them in a hardware accelerated fashion, and then pass it back to the Flash file.
Is there any way of getting AS3 to pass bitmap data to a local shader plugin .exe, and then accept returned data back, or should I just give up and rewrite the entire damn thing in Unity or something?
Failing this, is there any way of forcing the GPU to do the number crunching in AS3? I know OpenGL can't be used with AS3, but DirectDraw, perhaps?
I'm aware this entire enterprise is a) ridiculous overkill and b) probably doomed, but it's currently all that's preventing me from having to work on my reflective essay for the project. (University coursework)
You can't interact with any local program. Since Flash Player 10, there is some silly hardware acceleration support, but mostly for video and not for 3D. The best AS3 (Flash Player 10+) can provide is the native support for working with triangles in 3D (method drawTriangles()). For example Flash 3D engine "Away3D Lite" uses this feature.
Have you tried looking at Alchemy?
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy/
It is a way of compiling C++ code into the swf bytecode.
I'm looking for an intro into designing and making a custom and dynamic UI on mobile specific platforms. As I understand Nokia(Qt), Android, and iOS all use OpenGL ES (2.0?). I haven't looked into Windows phone 7 yet so not sure what that uses. So I think OpenGL would be a pretty good place to start. While OpenGL is mostly about 3D, I'm also open to 2d ways of creating dynamic UI.
I've never really been big on designing interfaces or coming up with cool concepts but now I have an idea for a mobile app that really needs a good looking user-interface. It's sort of a half app, half game type of thing. It really targets people in the gaming community who I think are used to a bit more polish and advanced UI. I could still probably get away with a simple UI(simple not being a bad thing) but I think I at least should learn some design techniques for future reference.
Of course I realise that excessive eye candy which hurts usability, like bloated graphics that slow down the mobile, are of no use at all. I'm trying to make a sleek UI that while looking good allows the user to interact well with the app effectively.
Any suggestions, resources, experience you can share would be most helpful.
EDIT: While I'm looking for ways to use 3D graphics, I'm more concerned with how to come up with a sleek UI in a mobile. I come from a mostly web developer background, with some experience in Photoshop(CSS is the furthest I've gone in designing). I have never really had to design a dynamic interface that reacted to touch and moved all around the screen with some laws of physics attached. There are lots of such effects, such as the carousal effect, which gives the user an enhanced experience. I have no idea how to incorporate these effects into a mobile device. For example, one of the things I need this app to do is take a glassy circular object(a button) that moves around, then turn it into a sort of convex glass lens so it's sort of zooming in on the image underneath to make it look like its actually a magnifying glass. I looked around and this effect is created by a "grid warp" or a "mesh warp". Suffice it to say I have no idea how to do it.
This will help you not only with Windows Phone 7. WP7 uses DirectX 9, but not directly, you must pick XNA or Silverlight(no other options). Also these blog posts I find quite usefull.
For game, game related app I would stick to one design, and as you said start with OpenGL.
I have been searching since yesterday and thought I'd add some links for anyone interested.
Although I'm dividing them up by the platform the articles refer to, with some elbow grease the ideas should be cross-platform compatible.
Qt
Carousal animation in Qt
Shadow effect Qt
Qt Kinetic Scrolling describes kinetic scrolling algorithm in Qt(self descriptive really)
Qt OpenGL Nehe tutorials converted to the Qt environment
Iphone
OpenGL from the ground up - expansive list
Flow Cover tutorial.
Android
Android 3d Tutorial
Another Android OpenGL tutorial
Yet another Android OpenGl ES tutorial, seems people have gone open-source mad.
Custom UI on Android
One finger zoom tutorial at Sony Ericsson Developer World
3D list at Sony Ericsson Developer World
OpenGl/ES
OpenGl tutorials at NeHe, there are tons, I read through the first one (on light) and it was really informative.
TheRedBook intro to OpenGl
Books
Books list at Design4Mobile, these do not cover the technical side rather covers the things to keep in mind when designing mobiles, I think the O'Rielly one should be pretty good.
Inspiration
10 beautifully designed Iphone Apps - for a touch of inspiration
All rounder
Mobile TutsPlus sort of a gathering of tutorials for android and iPhone
That's I found in the last four or five hours, as I find more I'll add it on. I've also made this a community Wiki so others can correct any mistakes I've made here, or to add anything they feel relevant.