Category Archives: 3D

Anything related to 3-D rendering, modeling or animation.

Unity – How to make things see where they’re going

August 26, 2015 admin 1 Comment

While developing a game, I wanted to enable the autonomous characters to see where they’re going – that is, to tell them what they’re about to stumble into, without using colliders. The answer was to cast a Ray, angled slightly downward, in front of the character, so it can see if it’s about to walk into a tree, or off a cliff, before it happens. Continue reading Unity – How to make things see where they’re going →

3D, Animation, Games, Unity, Videos

Unity – Animation Blend Trees

August 10, 2015 admin

How to create infinitely varied animation with your Unity characters.

A very powerful feature in the Unity Editor is the Blend Tree. This is an extension to an Animation Controller, which allows you to ‘blend’ the joint movements of multiple animations and control the ratio of blending with one or more parameters.

Continue reading Unity – Animation Blend Trees →

3D, Animation, Games, Tutorials, Unity

Getting started with UnitySteer

July 31, 2015 admin

UPDATE: The last 2 major releases of Unity adversely affected how UnitySteer steering behaviours play with non-kinematic RigidBody components. If you’re having trouble combining your physics with steering forces, see this enhancement I added, which may or may not become a pull request at some point (although I think the UnitySteer project is not actively maintained any more).

There are several AI steering libraries available for Unity, but I settled on UnitySteer due its similarity to OpenSteer for C++. Continue reading Getting started with UnitySteer →

3D, C#, Unity

Unity project structure – reminds me of Flash Pro

July 7, 2015 admin

The more I play with Unity, the more it feels like the workflow of Flash Pro, whereby you attach scripts to instances of actors on the stage.

I’m not talking about the ‘pure code’ approach that all ActionScripters have become used to now; but the decentralised collection of independent scripts associated with timeline movieclip instances (behaviours, if you will).

So far, I’m liking it though. Unity (and its scripting IDE MonoDevelop) feels like all the best bits of Virtools, Flash Pro, FlashBuilder, Blender, Poser and 3D Studio MAX. I’m hoping that in future versions, Unity Editor and MonoDevelop will be more tightly integrated, or even combined. And, just maybe, replace JavaScript with a TypeScript option – although I like C# anyway.

For those who have played with any of the above and want a good tutorial to get stuck right into games development with Unity, this (intermediate level) tutorial is great.

SPIKYTHING