Watch those model names...

This is NOT what you want to see when you start working in Unity 3D on Friday, with a meeting scheduled later on.  My scene view looked like this:

Broken textures...

We've been implementing a new naming structure for all of our files, and at some point I broke Unity.  At least you'll never be wondering if everything is connected properly.

Truthfully, most days I long for a programmer. While I can get myself in trouble with coding, I usually don't have much luck in starting from scratch.  And there are things that I do routinely in Unity that I know could be made into scripts.  One day....

Much better.

With a little elbow grease, I got it looking as it should again.  I can't wait to have some time to add Ambient Occlusion into the diffuse maps for these models.  Maybe do a little light mapping....

Unity 2.6 Free to a Good Home

Well if you were ever on the fence about buying Unity3D... you no longer have to be! Happily announced at the UNITE09 conference this past week, the version formerly known as UnityIndie... is now FREE! Yes, that's right, free. Now known just as Unity, (the "indie") was dropped, it has all the features that UnityIndie had. For no money. The game engine that has "made people millionaires" is opening its doors to the students, hobbiests, and other less fortunate folk who couldn't afford this awesome program before.

Used by EA to develop their new Tiger Woods online golfing game, now able to build to the Wii system, and one of the most popular iPhone development kits... Unity is just a whole barrel-full of awesome. Check it out.


And while we are all very excited about the "freeness" of Unity, don't discount UnityPro either. This newest release, Unity 2.6, has some fantastic upgrades. Including a new Profiler to see exactly where your bottlenecks are, and an Animation editor that lets you graphically see and edit your characters. Or anything you feel like animating, really. But don't take my word for it. They have all of their new features laid out on their website, of course. But really, have I mentioned Free yet?

UNITE Conference

So, I've been fairly remiss in not talking about this wonderful program known as Unity3D. A 'step up' from Papervision3D in that in actually handles 3D meshes rather than a Flash mock-up of 3D, Unity3D is a comparatively inexpensive game engine used by both indie designers and larger companies. The editor runs on both the Mac (OSX) and Windows platforms, thankfully. It also outputs games for multiple platforms - a Windows exe, a Mac program or widget, Wii game, iPhone application (actually a separate Unity3D engine designed specifically for iPhone development), and web-based browser games that run off of a plugin (supported by both Mac and Windows).

I've personally done a small amount of work in Unity3D (and hopefully will get more done... but work has me extremely busy so we'll see). If you know JavaScript, beginning to program within Unity seems to be fairly simple. It also accepts Boo, and C#. The JavaScript is slightly different than the JavaScript used on the web - I liken it to the difference between American English and British English. There are also tutorials by Ethical Games for the change over between Flash and Unity3D. In any case... it's a great program to work, at least in my personal experience.



There is also a conference coming up, in San Fransisco, called the UNITE 09 Conference. Being in San Fran this year, and since I recently moved out to the West Coast, I am super excited about it. I plan on catching at least a couple of days, if not the whole conference. As I said... busy with work, unfortunately. The Agenda looks great - everything from an intro to Unity3D, to Unity for Flash Developers, to a Post Mortem look at some games, shader analysis... I'm very excited, to say the least. More once the conference actually starts!

Papervision3D

Well, I've spent the last two days having an intense training seminar in Papervision3D (taught by a coding genius, John Lindquist), eight hours a day. It was a great experience, and I think I learned more than I actually know, if that makes any sense. My personal level of action script is not up to snuff, so to speak. I have this great ocean in front of me that is action script... and I'm having a hard time getting to the island that is papervision. Or maybe I just want to go to the beach. Warmth would be nice this time of year.

In any case, I found that the files that he provided were worth the price of admission alone. Well... nearly. Although I was told to use Adobe Director (i.e. Shockwave) when I spoke to the instructor about my heart project, I'm not sure that what I want can't be done in Papervision3D.
(EDIT: later, a few things were discussed and other options within Pv3D were mentioned.)
However, is it necessary? How hard should I push for the Flash component? That is unknown. Unity3D is another highly possible choice for my development. In any case, this class was great in general. I can't wait to get some time to actually output some content.

Object (or trackball) rotation is highly doable, and I think that some masking to show inner anatomy while rotating is also a possibility. I can think of many things that would benefit from being shown from all sides with an interactive component. All of these things are very positive marks in the "why use pv3D" column. There are a few things to be considered, although the flash vs. unity3D could be debated until the end of time.

Flash in general renders everything through code. This cuts down on the graphics card interface, which can be a good thing for a lower end user. However... this cuts down on the graphics card interaction, making high polygon models very difficult to render out. Unity3D talks directly to OpenGL and Direct3D (or something similar), allowing you to use much higher polygonal models. The down side to this is that if you don't have a graphics card that supports it, you can't see the app. There are many more pros and cons, but in general Flash was not originally designed for 3D. That being said, it is a great way to introduce interactivity with a high level of penetration into the market. And the whole "not originally" blah blah is not nearly as relevant as it used to be.

Man, I think that I still need a couple of days (weeks) to truly process the wonders that are Papervision3D. So I leave you with an awesome little link by one of the masters, Den Ivanov.