I've been company many of question people post and all the answers you guys give, followed several tutorials and since all the links on my google search are marked as “already visited” I’ve decided to put my pride aside and post a question for you.
This is my first post so i don’t know if im doing that right sorry if not, anyway the problems is this:
I’m working in a C# planetary exploration game on unity 5, I’ve already built a sphere out of an octagon following some tutorials mentioned here, and also could build the perlin textures and heightmaps with them as well, the problem comes on applying them to the sphere and produce the terrain on the mesh, I know I have to map the vertices and UVs of the sphere to do that, but the problem is that I really suck at the math thing and I couldn’t find any step by step to follow, I’ve heard about Tessellation shaders, LOD, voronoi noise, perlin noise, and got lost on the process. To simplify:
What I have:
I have the spherical mesh
I have the heightmaps
I’ve assigned them to a material along with the proper normal maps
what I think I; (since honestly, I don’t know if this is the correct path anymore) need assistance with:
the code to produce the spherical mesh deformation based on the heightmaps
How to use those Tessellation LOD based shaders and such to make a real size procedural planet
Ty very much for your attention and sorry if I was rude or asked for too much, but any kind of help you could provide will be of a tremendous help for me.
I don't really think I have the ability to give you code specific information but here are a few additions/suggestions for your checklist.
If you want to set up an LOD mesh and texture system, the only way I know how to do it is the barebones approach where you physically create lower poly versions of your mesh and texture, then in Unity, write a script where you have an array of distances, and once the player reaches a certain distance away or towards the object, switch to the mesh and that texture that are appropriate for that distance. I presume you could do the same by writing a shader that would do the same thing but the basic idea remains the same. Here's some pseudocode as an example (I don't know the Unity library too well):
int distances[] = {10,100,1000}
Mesh mesh[] = {hi_res_mesh, mid_res_mesh, low_res_mesh}
Texture texture[] = {hi_res_texture, mid_res_texture, low_res_texture}
void Update()
{
if(player.distance < distances[0])
{
gameobject.Mesh = mesh[0]
gameobject.Texture = texture[0]
else
{
for(int i = 1; i < distances.length(); i++)
{
if (player.distance <= distances[i] && player.distance >= distances[i-1]):
{
gameobject.Texture = texture[i]
gameobject.Mesh = mesh[i]
}
}
}
}
If you want real Tesselation based LOD stuff which is more difficult to code: here are some links:
https://developer.nvidia.com/content/opengl-sdk-simple-tessellation-shader
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SurfaceShaderTessellation.html
Essentially the same concept applies. But instead of physically changing the mesh and texture you are using, you change the mesh and texture procedurally using the same idea of having set distances where you change the resolution of the mesh and texture inside of your shader code.
As for your issue with spherical mesh deformation. You can do it in a 3d editing software like 3dsMax, Maya, or Blender by importing your mesh and applying a mesh deform modifier and use your texture as the deform texture and then alter the level of deformation to your liking. But if you want to do something more procedural in real time you are going to have to physically alter the verticies of your mesh using the vertex arrays and then retriangulating your mesh or something like that. Sorry I'm less helpful about this topic as I am less knowledgeable about it. Here are the links I could find related to your problem:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/274269/mesh-deformation.html
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/deform-ground-mesh-terrain-with-dynamically-modified-displacement-map.284612/
http://blog.almostlogical.com/2010/06/10/real-time-terrain-deformation-in-unity3d/
Anyways, good luck and please let me know if I have been unclear about something or you need more explanation.
Related
I'm trying to create a grid system for a 2D game. Not completely sure if I'll go with a hexagon-grid or isometric, but which shouldn't matter too much here. Basically, I'm trying to create a tower defense game where you deploy units instead of towers, and can move those as if you were playing a tactical game. The problem is that the tiles themselves are gonna be complex - there will be different types of terrain. Some units can only be deployed in X, and can't go through Y, that kind of thing. I also need the ability to add some logic to these tiles at will - who knows, maybe I want a special tile to give extra attack range to units above it, that kind of thing. The game must also "feel" like a grid - making things snap to the center of the tiles, as well as highlighting the tiles on hover and when moving/attacking.
Okay, this leads me to a pretty obvious route: I can create prefabs for the different types of tiles I need, add all the proprieties and logic as script components and create a grid class that instantiates each tile in the world. This works great, cause this way I have full control over everything - I can do whatever I want with the tiles, and I can also create a 2d matrix for their positions as I instantiate them. This way I can call tile[3, 6] for example, which sounds like a huge deal for pathing, highlighting and such. I can also link whatever gameobject is on top of it to the tile itself, so I could call something like tile[6, 2].ObjectOnTop.~WhateverInfoINeedFromIt, which also sounds super handy for overall logic.
But the shortcomings are also terrible - how do I even design and deploy different levels designs? The only way I can think of it is to figure out a way to do it all by hand, export that info somehow to a json file, and have the grid class that instantiates everything select which tile will be instantiated where based on the json info. I not only have no idea how to actually implement that, but I also think it would be an absurd amount of work for something that is supposed to be natural. I'm also not sure if a gameobject for each tile is a good idea in terms of performance. The biggest problem? It's easy to create such a grid if it's a simple squared tiles grid - but when we start talking about hexagons and isometric grids... it's not nearly as easy, honestly. The complex shapes make it so difficult to work with this kind of thing. For example, how do I even convert the mouse position into the equivalent tile? It's super easy for squares... not so much for the rest. It also kind of sucks that the grid is only really deployed when the game runs (is this generally considered a bad thing that I should avoid, btw?).
But don't worry, cause I've found the solution: tilemaps! Of course! It fixes all the problems I have, right? Supposedly yes, but it also removes all the power I had from having prefabs. Now I can't have any logic with tiles... They can't store any properties... so I'm doomed, I guess. I've read a bit on ways to overcome this (prefab brushes, custom classes inherenting from Tile, making a tilemap for each tile type), but they are honestly extremely niche and just don't feel right.
It's so weird, a generic grid system like this was supposed to be so simple and common. But I can barely find any information at all. It's like I'm missing this pretty obvious tool that no one seems to mention cause it's that obvious. So here I am, struggling to start a project cause I can't even figure out how to implement the basic structure of the game. Everything I see online leads me to tilemaps - but they only work for very basic stuff, from what I understood. I won't work for this kind of game, I think. I have no idea what to do at this point - there must be an optimal way to solve everything, the one that is likely used for all the devs that work on this kind of game. And honestly, there are a ton of them.
So, please, shed me some light. And thanks a lot in advance!
(Here's someone that posted an extremely similar question: Per Tilemap Tile Data Storage & Retrieval)
I have the exact same problem. The best i found is this: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzDRvYVwl53uhO8yhqxcyjDImRjO9W722
It is playlist by CodeMonkey where he creates grid by script but also adding generics, which allow you to have that logic that you want and adding visual tiles. The only problem is that while I want squares while you want different shapes. I don't know how to do that, maybe you can adjust the grid(more likely tilemap it uses to display visuals) or maybe you should just let go of different shapes, i don't know.
Hope i helped at least little. I seen this post and it is very sad that noone replied to you. Hope you can achieve what you want and that it will be succes. Good luck and mainly have fun : )
convert mouse position to tile position can be done different ways, simplest would be to raycast the mouse and see if it hits a tile
probably easiest to make a 2dimensional array of tiles of class 'Tile', even if its hex break it down into a 2d array and offset , setup the tiles dynamically in code
for pathing and such djikstra algorithm is pretty useful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
May be it can help
grid = new gridSpace[roomWidth + 3, (roomWidth / 2) + 2];
int xStep = 4; # 2:1 isometry type
for (int x = 0; x < roomWidth - 1; x += xStep) #xStep depends by type of isometry
{
int minX = x;
int maxX = x + 2;
int localX = x;
for (int y = roomWidth / 2; y > -1; y--)
{
grid[localX, y] = gridSpace.empty;
if (localX == minX)
{
localX = maxX;
}
else
{
localX = minX;
}
}
}
Hello I am creating a procedurally generated cave generation script and I have gotten down all the perlin noise garbage out of the way and am trying to transform the vertices into a mesh . I understand that I need to declare the faces for it and need some form of marching cubes algorithm. For me to know which direction to render the face in I need my script to be aware of all the vertices around it by searching through the vertices. Is there any way my script can efficiently search through a vector3 array to find if a vector3 is in there and if so what place in the array is the Vector3 in?
If you're using a triangulation lookup table based implementation of marching cubes, you could store a normal vector alongside the face in the same table entry. A video by Sebastian Lague mentions using such a table. I'm not exactly sure where he downloaded it from, but he includes it in his repo which is MIT licensed. Video, Table (EDIT: The order of a triangle's vertices alone may be sufficient to define its direction, and you may not need an explicit normal vector)
Also heads up: Old Perlin noise tends to be visibly grid aligned. Most times I see it used, appear to be because a library provided it or because it was mentioned in a tutorial, and not because it was actually the best choice for the application. Simplex-type noises generally produce less grid-aligned results. It's straightforward to import external noise into Unity. It looks like you might need to anyway, if your implementation depends on 3D noise. Here are the noises from my repo that use an open implementation for 3D, a tailored gradient table, and rotated evaluators that are good for terrain. There are a lot of other options out there too, though they may not have these aspects in particular. Note that the range is [-1,1] not [0,1] so if your current noise is [0, 1], you might need to do noise(...) * 0.5 + 0.5 to correct that. Choose the 2F version if you have a lot of octaves, or the 2S version if you have one octave or are doing ridged noise.
I have a planet mesh that I am generating procedurally (based on a random seed). The generator creates tectonic plates and moves them creating the land masses, mountains and water depressions you see below; ~2500 points in a planet. The textured surface is just a shader.
Each vertex will have information associated with it, and I need to know which vertex they are pointing at to relay this information.
I am looking for a way identify which vertex they are pointing at. The current solution is to generate a cube at each vertex, then use a collider/Ray to identify it. The two white cubes in the picture above are for testing.
What I want to know is if there is a better way to identify the vertex without generating cubes?
if you're doing such awesome and advanced work, surely you know about this
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/RaycastHit-triangleIndex.html
when working with mesh, it's totally commonplace to need the nearest vertex.
note that very simply, you just find the nearest one, ie look over them all for the nearest.
(it's incredibly fast to do this, you only have a tiny number of verts so there's no way performance will even be measurable.)
{Consider that, of course, you could break the object in to say 8 pieces - but that's just something you have to do anyway in many cases, for example a race track, so it can occlude properly.}
I have been searching the web for quite some time about this but I couldn't find anything that's concrete enough to help me out. I know XNA is going to die, but there is still use for it (in my heart, before I port it later to SharpDX)
I'm making a 3D FPS shooter in XNA 4.0 and I am having serious issues on setting up my collision detection.
First of all, I am making models in blender and I have a high polygon and low polygon version of the model. I would like to use the low polygon model with collision detection but I'm baffled as to how to do it. I want to use JigLibX but I'm not sure how to set my project up in order to do so.
In a nutshell: I want to accomplish this one simple goal:
Make a complicated map in blender, and have boundingboxes be made from it and then use a quadtree to split it up. Then my main character and his gun can run around it shooting stuff!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I don't understand exactly what your concrete question is, but I assume you want to know how to implement collision detection efficiently in principal:
for characters: use (several) bounding-boxes and bounding spheres (like a sphere for the head, and 9 boxes for torso, legs and arms.
for terrain: use data from height-map for Y (up/down) collision detection and bounding-boxes/spheres for objects on terrain (like trees, walls, bushes, ...)
for particles - like gunfire: use points, small bounding spheres or - even better because framerateindependant - raytraycing.
In almost no case you want to do collision detection on a polygon-basis as you suggested in your post (quote "low poly modell for collision detection").
I hope that put you in the right direction.
cheers
I'm going to make a game similar to AudioSurf for iOS, and implement in it "generate of route to certain parameters".
I used the example of Extrude Mesh from Unity Procedural Example and this answer on question - link
But in iOS there is considerable lag in the extrusion of the object, and if the whole route extrude early in the game - it takes a lot of time, it also has a display problem of the track, consists of a large number of polygons...
Can you advise me how to display the generated route or what is the best way to generate route?
You can tremendously increase the performance in procedural mesh generation by-
- Instead of generating new meshes, you can edit the vertices and triangles arrays of the mesh i.e use fixed size triangle and vertex array-
create a class "RoadMesh" and add functions to it like- UpdateRoadMesh(Vector3 playerPosition)
this function will calculate and set the values of vertices and triangles at the far end on the road depending on the current position of the player,
While updating the array values when you reach the end on the vertices and triangles array start using the beginning indexes as the player would already have crossed those points . as no new mesh is created and the vertices are also edited once every few frames it will have tremendous performance..