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Set a background to the area out of camera limits (Viewport Rect) in Unity3D

I am talking about the Camera settings in Unity3D.
I'm trying to figure out if I can change (at least) the background color of the gray area in the screenshot. The limits of the camera are changed programmatically. The motivation lies in the fact that the playing area has to change dynamically based on whether a child or an adult is playing. The screen is huge around more than 83 inches. When rescaling the playing area, the area that is not drawn is gray and a bit ugly, I would like to know if you can define at least the color, or better still if possible with an image.
The screenshot you see is the screen capture in fullscreen mode, so it includes all the pixels.
After this brief explanation in words and images, let's go to the specifics of the technical details. This is how I resize the room design area:
public static void SetViewportCalibration()
{
var camera = Camera.main;
camera.pixelRect = new Rect(MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY);
}
Is it possible to set the color of that gray area outside the new Rect(MinX, MinY, MaxX, MaxY)?

There's two ways off the top of my head to accomplish this. Both ways use two Cameras.
The first way. Create a second Camera. The second Camera should have Depth LESS than the dynamic camera. This second, "Background" camera can then display anything you'd like, for example, a separate Skybox, a separate UI, other scene content, etc. etc.
The second way. Your dynamic camera is actually not resized dynamically. Instead, render your camera to a Target Texture. Use this texture in a material, and assign the material to a Quad mesh (most appropriate). This mesh can then be used in your scene like any other 3D object, which means not only can you position it, but scale it and even rotate it. The new camera that you added can have it's own Skybox, UI etc. etc.
I would opt for the second way. Partly personal preference, but also because it sounds like it might suit your situation better and be easier to implement. You can also implement many more effects for extra "wow".

Try to create another camera with no objects in its view and the following settings:
Clear Flags: Solid Color,
Background: Pick a color,
ViewPort Rect: X = 0, y = 0, w = 1, h = 1,
Depth: A smaller value than the other camera (Set the depth of this camera to 0 and the depth of the other camera to 1)
This camera will work as background of your screen.
I hope that I understood the question :)

c# XNA 4.0 Camera zoom and sprite resizing

Inside my project, I have a sprite being draw of a box. I have the camera zoom out when clicking a key. When I zoom out, I want my box to scale it's dimensions so it stays consistent even though the camera has zoomed out and "shrunk" it.
I have tried multiplying the object's dimensions by 10% which seems to be the viewpoint's adjustment when zooming out, but that doesn't seem to work. Now this may sound dumb, but would scaling the sprite in the draw function also change the sprite's dimensions?
Let's say the box is 64x64 pixels. I zoom out 10% and scale the sprite. Does the sprite still have the boundaries as 64x64 or is the up-scaling also changing it's dimensions?

Scaling using SpriteBatch.Draw()s scale argument will just draw the sprite smaller/bigger, i.e. a 64x64 one will appear as 7x7 pixels (the outer pixels being alpha blended if enabled). However there are no size properties on the sprite, if you have your own rectangle, position variables for the sprite SpriteBatch.Draw() of course will not change those.
An alternative is draw the sprite in 3D space then everything is scaled when you move your camera, so the sprite will appear smaller though it will still be a 64x64 sprite.
How to draw a sprite in 3D space? Here is a good tutorial http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/Csharp/Series2/Point_sprites.php. (You will need to take time to learn about using 3D viewports, camera's etc, see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb197901.aspx)/

To change sprite dimensions you need to change Rectangle parameter for SpriteBatch.Draw. To calculate zoom on rectange:
Rectangle scaledRect = new Rectangle(originalRectangle.X, originalRectangle.Y, (int)(originalRectangle.Width*zoom), (int)(originalRectangle.Height*zoom)); // where zoom default is 1.0f
When drawing use:
spriteBatch.Draw(Texture, scaledRect, Color.White);
Now I'm sorry to assume it, but without knowing why you doing what you doing - I think you doing something wrong.
You should use camera transformation to zoom out/in. It is done like that:
var transform = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-Position.X, -Position.Y, 0))* // camera position
Matrix.CreateRotationZ(_rotation)* // camera rotation, default 0
Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(Zoom, Zoom, 1))* // Zoom default 1
Matrix.CreateTranslation(
new Vector3(
Device.Viewport.Width*0.5f,
Device.Viewport.Height*0.5f, 0)); // Device from DeviceManager, center camera to given position
SpriteBatch.Begin( // SpriteBatch variable
SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, // Sprite sort mode - not related
BlendState.NonPremultiplied, // BelndState - not related
null,
null,
null,
null,
transformation); // set camera tranformation
It will change how sprites are displayed inside sprite batch, however - now you also must account for different mouse coordinates (if you using mouse input). To do that you must transform mouse position to transformed world matrix:
// mouse position, your tranformation matrix
public Vector2 ViewToWorld(Vector2 pos, Matrix transform)
{
return Vector2.Transform(pos, Matrix.Invert(transform));
}
I used the code without direct access to test it, so if something will not work - feel free to ask.
This is not answer to your question directly, if you could provide reason why you want re-size sprite when zooming instead of zooming camera - maybe I could better answer your question, also you should fallow markmnl link to understand world transformations and why you seem to need it in this situation.

Resizing a Texture2D without Draw

As the title states, I'm trying to resize a Texture2D before even considering SpriteBatch.Draw(). The reason I'm doing this is I'm trying to fill an arbitrary polygon, laid out with vertices defined by Vector2Ds, with an arbitrary Texture2D.
What I'm thinking of is creating the rectangle that fits the polygon, scaling the Texture2D to that rectangle, and then making the pixels that are outside of the polygon transparent via Texture2D's GetData<>() and SetData<>().
I've gotten to the point of finding the rectangle that fits the polygon, but is there a way to resize the Texture2D, or am I going about it the completely wrong way? Thanks!

You're going about it the wrong way. Setting texture data is expensive. (And there's probably some issues with filtering, too.)
What you want to do is set the texture coordinates (the "UV coordinates") of the vertices you are drawing. This will cause a specific location of your texture to appear at that vertex of your polygon. The texture that would then fall outside your polygon is simply never drawn (it is "clipped" by the polygon edges).
Texture coordinates are specified in the range 0.0 to 1.0 (on the U and V axies - horizontally and vertically) from the top left to the bottom right of your texture.
If you are drawing using vertex buffers, XNA includes some built-in vertex structures like VertexPositionTexture and VertexPositionColorTexture that allow you to specify a TextureCoordinate value.
If you are using your own vertex structure, use VertexElementUsage.TextureCoordinate when specifying a VertexElement. If you are creating your own shader, the value will be exposed in TEXCOORD0 (for usage index 0).
If you are just drawing rectangles with SpriteBatch, then specify a sourceRectangle when you call Draw.

Sounds like you should be using the overloads on the Draw method (I realise you are for some reason not wanting to do this, but it's like this for a good reason):
public void Draw (
Texture2D texture,
Vector2 position,
Nullable<Rectangle> sourceRectangle,
Color color,
float rotation,
Vector2 origin,
Vector2 scale,
SpriteEffects effects,
float layerDepth
)
The sourceRectangle, scale parameter, and origin should be enough. Don't modify the texture in memory, it's relatively expensive to do this (especially doing it every frame!)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb196420(v=xnagamestudio.31).aspx
Can you explain why you don't want to scale in Draw()?

Cut holes in a Texture2D

I want to know how to remove part of a Texture from a Texture2D.
I have a simple game in which I want to blow up a planet piece by piece, when a bullet hits it "digs" into the planet.
The physics are already working but I am stuck on how to cut the texture properly.
I need to create a function that takes a Texture2D a position and a radius as input and returns the new Texture2D.
Here is an example of the Texture2D before and after what I want to accomplish.
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6749/redplanet512examplesmal.png
Also note that i drew a thin brown border around the crater hole. If this is possible it would be a great bonus.

After doing alot of googling on the subject it seems the best and fastest way to achieve the effect i want is to use pixel shaders.
More specifically a shader method called 'Alpha mapping'. Alpha mapping is done by using the original texture and another greyscale texture that defines what parts are visible or not.
The idea of the shader is to go through each pixel in the original texture and check how black each pixel in the greyscale image is at the same coordinate. The blacker the pixel in the greyscale picture is the higher the alpha value (more visible) the pixel in the original texture becomes. Since all this is done on the GPU it is lightning fast and leaves the CPU ready to do the actual logic for the game.
For my example I will create a black image to use as my greyscale image and then draw white circles on this corresponding to the parts i want to remove.
I've found a MSDN examples with working source code for XNA 4 that does this (the cat example):
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/sprite_effects
EDIT:
I got this to work quite nicely. Created a small tutorial with source code here: http://syntaxwarriors.com/2012/xna-alpha-mapping-with-pixel-shaders/

A good way of doing this is to render a "hole texture" using alphablend on top of your planet texture. Think of it like drawing an invisibility circle over your original texture.
Take a look at this thread for a few nice links worms-style-destructible-terrain.
To achieve your brown edges I'd guess you'd need to take a similar approach. First render the hole to your terrain with say radius 10px. Then you render another circle from the same origin point but with a slightly larger radius, say 12px. You'd then need to set this circle to a blendmode that results in a brown color.

look at my class here:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/328894/XNA-Sprite-Class-with-useful-methods
1.Simply create an object of Sprite class for your planet
Sprite PlanetSprite = new Sprite(PlanetTexture2D , new Vector2(//yourPlanet.X, //yourPlanet.Y));
2.when the bullet hits the planet, make a circle texure2d by the center of collision point using "GetCollisionPoint(Sprite b)" method
-you can have a Circle.png with transparent corners
-or you can create a Circle using math(which is better if you want to have bullet power)
3.then create an Sprite object of your circle
4.now use the "GetCollisionArea(Sprite b)" to get the overlapped area
5.now use the "ChangeBatchPixelColor(List pixels, Color color)" where pixels is the overlapped area and color is Color.FromNonPremultiplied(0, 0, 0, 0)
-note you don't need to draw your circle at all, after using it you can destroy it, or leave it for further use

How to scale texture2d in XNA with window resizing

I'm developing an UI for a project for school, and I've tried similar methods to scaling my texture as listed here, but here is the issue:
Our project is developed at 1440 x 900, so I've made my own images that fit that screen resolution. When we have to demo our project in class, the projector can only render up to 1024 x 768, thus, many things on the screen goes missing. I have added window resizing capabilities, and I'm doing my scaling like this. I have my own class called "button" which has a texture 2d, and a Vector2 position contruscted by Button(Texture2d img, float width, float height).
My idea is to set the position of the image to a scalable % of the window width and height, so I'm attempting to set the position of the img to a number between 0-1 and then multiply by the window width and height to keep everything scaled properly.
(this code is not the proper syntax, i'm just trying to convey the point)
Button button = new Button(texture, .01, .01 );
int height = graphicsdevice.viewport.height * button.position.Y;
int width = graphicsdevice.viewport.width * button.position.X;
Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(0,0,width, height);
sprite.being()
sprite.draw (button.img, rect, color.white);
sprite.end
it doesn't end up scaling anything when i go to draw it and resize the window by dragging the mouse around. if i hard code in a different bufferheight and bufferwidth to begin with, the image stays around the same size regardless of resolution, except that the smaller the resolution is, the more pixelated the image looks.
what is the best way to design my program to allow for dynamic texture2d scaling?

As Hannesh said, if you run it in fullscreen you won't have these problems. However, you also have a fundamental problem with the way you are doing this. Instead of using the position of the sprite, which will not change at all during window resize, you must use the size of the sprite. I often do this using a property called Scale in my Sprite class. So instead of clamping the position of the sprite between 0 and 1, you should be clamping the Size property of the sprite between 0 and 1. Then as you rescale the window it will rescale the sprites.
In my opinion, a better way to do this is to have a default resolution, in your case 1440 x 900. Then, if the window is rescaled, just multiply all sprites' scaling factors by the ratio of the new screensize to the old screensize. This takes only 1 multiplication per resize, instead of a multiplication per update (which is what your method will do, because you have to convert from the clamped 0-1 value to the real scale every update).
Also, the effects you noticed during manual rescale of the sprites is normal. Rescaling images to arbitrary sizes causes artifacts in the rendered image because the graphics device doesn't know what to do at most sizes. A good way to get around this is by using filler art during the development process and then create the final art in the correct resolution(s). Obviously this doesn't apply in your situation because you are resizing a window to arbitrary size, but in games you will usually only be able to switch to certain fixed resolutions.