Update to MegaShapes, build meshes from your splines.

While working on the next release version of MegaFiers I have been adding a few new features to the included (and soon to be independant) MegaShapes system, so on top of a complete Bezier spline system with path following components as used in the MegaFier path deforms you can now turn your shapes into meshes. More info can be found on the MegaFiers Blog Page or Click the image below (on the blog page click the image for larger version)

Demo of Lofter (Click Image for demo)


Pottery Demo (Click Image for demo)

 

Very nice... Looking forward

 

Perfect, that is just what I need, MegaFiers has to be the best money I have spent you just keep adding more and more to it.

 

WOW ! Great...

6R

 

Another quick grab, programmers really shouldn't be allowed to mess with graphics but working on a much nicer test at the moment. Bigger version can be seen by clicking on the image on the blog http://www.west-racing.com/mf/?page_id=114

 

Added a little video of early testing of MegaShapes Pro more info can be found at my blog

[video=youtube;bEGYl1Ec3q0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEGYl1Ec3q0

 

Astounding!

 

What are your thoughts on using this for 2D platformer style landscapes. Something similar to you scene above with the clouds and trees, but side-view only.

Would this be over-kill? I ask because I'm always looking for an easy way to draw out large landscapes within Unity. RageSpline does an ok job, but a more full-featured set of editing tools would be nice.

-Jeff

 

Hi Jeff
Yes it certainly could be used for that, the system will be extended like MegaFiers was with new layers and methods so if it is lacking a certain feature at launch just email me with what is needed and I will add it in.
Chris

 

Meshes from splines, start / end objects... That looks familiar Always love your art work, looks great!

 

Any news on ship date or cost....
Regardless I'm in

Your assets and support are Top Notch!


Now ship!

 

A quick video showing some of the features of the basic version of MegaShapes that is included with MegaFiers. More info can be found on the website http://www.west-racing.com/mf

[video=youtube;kjnyijhilCo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjnyijhilCo

 

Chirs two Questions:
Can the edge of the shape be softened...or rounded.
Also can you start with just a spline, and build really organic shapes.
I am wanting to use this for a sidescroller to make tunnels...would shapes work for this.

Can the animation play at run-time

I was hoping to use something like this but development is dead and not iOS friendly.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/99072-E2D-free-2D-terrain-editor-and-generator

 

I think for what you want to do the new MehaShapes lofting system is much better suited as that will allow you define any cross section etc to build the mesh from, I hope to do some preview videos on that just as soon as Tony can get me some textures and models to use.

You can just work with a spline in the simple version I just used a shape to get a more interesting object quicker, you can also import shapes from 3ds max if you have the MegaFiers exporter or create your own splines from script.

 

Yep, that is exactly what I'm looking for as well hence my similar question a few posts up. I really hope Mega-Shapes fits the bill once it's released.

 

This looks great, I have fews questions for mega shapes.

Can you make halls in the middle of the shape? like windows ?
can you freese UVs so that it stretches when I move CVs around?
When is it going to be available?

Thank you,

Arthur.

PS Is this thread still supported by the developer?

 

Any update on MegaShape's progress?

 

I'm also looking for this.

 

Still working away on this, hope to have a new video or two very soon to show some of the features and how the system works. Things got a little delayed due to support work and adding new features to MegaFiers and doing the new tutorial series for that. All of that will soon be out of the way and it will be full steam ahead getting Shapes out the door.
Chris

 

Great news Chris, a for sure buy!

 

Just an update to say we are very close to releasing the vastly improved MegaShapes system to the Asset Store, the videos below give any idea of some of the features, with many more to be added.

Simple Loft
[video=youtube;ZPl0gNazGMA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPl0gNazGMA
Simple Loft Clone
[video=youtube;gTkkntr9h98]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTkkntr9h98
Simple Clone
[video=youtube;U-J0taTL1O4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-J0taTL1O4
Complex Loft
[video=youtube;J_deBNIQ01Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_deBNIQ01Y
Rule Based Complex Clone
[video=youtube;gGOvFFOlqKU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGOvFFOlqKU

 

droolz...

any news on launch date? Us technical animators can't wait for this one!

 

It is very close now, I am just in the process of running through every param and seeing if I can break anything and that everything works as expected so all going well 2 or 3 more days for beta release on the store.

 

awesome. waiting patiently. on the edge of my seat...

 

I have just submitted MegaShapes to the Asset store for review so hopefully it will be available very soon.
http://www.west-racing.com/mf/?page_id=2208

 

Great news! waiting for the final release...

 

Extremely impressive, you're a true inspiration and very important to the Unity community! Great work, don't ever stop.

 

Congratulations! I was looking forward to megashapes.

Did you - or may be anyone else - already do some tests on mobile devices where the mesh deforms at runtime using megashapes?

 

Not heard of anyone testing on mobile devices yet. Will post if/when someone shows me what they are doing with the system.

 

Did do a quick test on an Android tablet

 

Hello Spooky,

Mega shapes is really impressive, and i would be interrested, just had some questions :
1 - Is it possible to add holes in the shape ?
2 - Is it possible to draw bezier splines directly inside unity with megaShapes ?

 

@alewinn - Support for holes in shapes is something I will be working on, I do have a triangulator almost ready to go to handle that. You can create and edit your bezier splines inside Unity with MegaShapes, you just start with one of the basic helper shapes and add and remove points and drag the knots and handles around to make your shapes, or you can generate the splines via scripting, I have been adding more functionality to the spline system to allow for easier manipulation and control of splines from code.

 

Hi @SpookyCat, I'm creating a game for iOS with Zuma-style gameplay.

MegaShapes looks quite suitable for creating the track. Just wanted to get your thoughts on how easy you think the following will be to do with MegaShapes:

1. Create a track for balls to roll on.
2. Roll a chain of balls smoothly along the track, with sub-chains sometimes rolling faster to close up gaps (balls can be removed when matched, creating gaps, and also inserted in the middle of the track at run-time). The rolling will be done kinematically, not with dynamic physics.

Lofting looks like a good fit for #1.
I'm guessing MegaSpline.Interpolate will be good for #2 but not sure how smooth it will be, especially with a chain of balls rolling?

Thanks.

EDIT: Actually, Walk Loft Helper seems like it could be used for #2 if I can adjust the Alpha value at run-time.

 

Sorry for the delay in replying, just got back from the excellent Unite conference. It should be very easy to create tracks for balls to roll along, just use the simple loft layer with a suitable cross section, more layer types are coming for shapes so if you have any requests just let me know, you can also turn splines into tubes now without any lofts, it is just a new mesh type option instead of just filling in a shape.

The example you gave above would be a little trickier to do at the moment due to the fact it has a filled in surface and the current triangulator does not do holes in meshes, again this is being worked on.
Chris

 

Another new video this time showing the new meshing options in MegaShapes. The meshing options in MegaShapes have been extended to include two new methods of tube and box. This allows you to turn splines into tubes or lines as well as extruded boxes very easily. Ends can be capped if the full length of the spline is not used and the extrudes can have multiple strands to build rope type meshes. These new meshing options can also be found in the version of MegaShapes that is included in the MegaFiers system.

 

Brilliant update!

I purchased MegaShapes last week, but have yet to try it out, beyond fiddling with the demo scene.
I have two ideas for games that can use your tool, but I'm having a hard time deciding between the two.

One idea requires a hole, or indent at a specified location.
Kinda like the new video above in the number '6'. The center hole of the 6 I would like pushed down a bit (or raised) while keeping the remainder of the '6' lofted. Not quite a boolean cut, but that would also do in my case.

For the other idea, I'm thinking of a dynamic endless path, and would like a new feature to join two splines together, each with their own cut section spline.
For example, say you have a trough shaped loft, and you want to blend it into a flat loft.
MegaShapes would then interpolate the vertices between the two.
For this to work, I would assume both cut sections would require the same quantity of nodes / points.

Last question, can lofts be sloped by different amounts at different locations?
For example, a race track that would have its corners banked.
I would prefer this to be a manual setting for more interesting uses.
(ie: each spline position would require its own 'normal' / up vector, or something).

Keep up the great work, and frequent updates!

[Edit] Is it wrong to feel guilty purchasing this asset? The variety of games I could create (in record time) using this is crazy! But most of the credit would belong to you. ha.

 

Oops sorry I missed your post.
I am currently adding hole support to the triangulation options so when that is working I can investigate adding the ability to indent holes instead of just removing them. Also I will be adding more features to the Spline API such as appending spline. A lot of people are asking for infinite type spline support with lofts moving along a section etc so I will be looking into adding support for that.

The complex loft does allow each cross section to have its own rotation, translation and scaling so you can do banked corners using that or there is a twist curve for the length of the loft so you have full control over the banking at any point. I have new layers planned as well to make some tasks easier, as well as vertex color support so with suitable shaders textures can be blended.
Chris

 

Hi spookycat,

How is the system performing on mobile? Could you give us some numbers?

Thanks in advance.

 

@hexdump - Just put the tutorial scene on a Google Nexus 7. The spline the loft is using is animated so the object is being updated every frame, the loft object has two layers on it one to produce the grass via a simple loft and one to add a fence onto that surface, the system is making a new mesh of 7000 vertices every frame and it is taking 34ms, that includes 8ms of Unity updating the mesh and recalculating the normals and bounds box etc.

I will be adding multithreading soon to allow each layer to use a separate thread if available, and with some more code optimizations and the new Unity 4.0 dynamic mesh enhancements we should be able to reduce the time by a fair bit.

 

what if two paths cross each other, could the fence do cross roads?

 

Currently the system will just cross the meshes, if you have such a case the intersection could always be disguised by a tree or other such object. The rule based cloning level could also be used to position a specific mesh object at an intersection point as well.

Doing a nice join between meshes is not an easy thing to do, it is not impossible especially after I have my boolean system ready to go but it is not a feature I have on my todo list just yet.

 

Cool, man,

Please look at http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/152557-Meet-new-easy-thread-queue-asset!

I'n notes that you are planning do multi-threading to process mesh.

you could try multi-threading http://u3d.as/content/orange-tree/thread-queue for your needs.

btw that is a part of http://u3d.as/content/orange-tree/sqlite-kit which actualy already has asynchronous sqlite database processing.
maybe you will need to store you data?

good luck!

 

Thanks for the link, but I already have my own complete multi threading system I developed for MegaFiers that works very nicely. Thanks for the other link as well could be handy.

 

Are these lofts editable during run-time ??

 

Yes you can change any param in the system at runtime and see the changes, you can change the cross sections or the path, animate either the path shape or cross sections, change the detail settings, uv settings etc etc and see it update as you play. If you animate a loft or a layer then any other layer that depends on that say a fence layer will automatically update as well.

 

The reply above says you can change params at runtime and see the results. Does this apply equally outside the editor and for mobile? Are there operations that won't work / or are too slow on mobile even though there is an API for it?

For example, could I change a spline for a track I am driving on in realtime or be morphing the shape of a loft along the spline while objects are interacting (with the physics engine) with it on IOS or Android?

Thanks.

 

Yes you can change any param at any time on any device, you can either animate them via the Unity animation system or control them from script. You can have lofts update on mobile devices but performance as ever will depend on how many vertices you have in the loft. For example in the video of the android demo above the boxes moving over the loft is a dynamic mesh created every frame. Updating colliders though is a slow operation on any system so that would take some thought, for our games using the system we run the game in a 2d world and map the objects to the lofts so colliders dont need updating if a road goes up and down etc.

 

Do you guys have any plan to add more spline type supports( other than B spline)? and do you have ETA on rope system?

Thanks,

 

It is on the list of things to do, which spline types would you want and why?

 

Hey SpookyCat,

We've been using MegaShapes and it's been really great so far.

We are trying to create a track with evenly sized segments with each segment's material color set randomly at run-time in a script.


I thought about using a clone spline layer and setting the main filler rule with a cube but it wasn't clear if it is possible to set the material color for each cube or if the cubes would overlap each other.

Ideally, I would like to use a rectangle spline as the cross section and perhaps specify the material color for each range of alpha values but it doesn't look like I could do that with any of the layers and rules.

Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks.