Unity 3D goes free

[bridd]

Unity 3D has gone free! (link)

I think this will be a potentially useful tool to visualists, I'm definitely going to be checking this one out

[elbows]

Oh thats big This is rather good news, the free Unity is not ideally suited to VJing in certain respects but should still find some good uses for realtime stuff.

I'll have to refamiliarise myself with it and the max-bridge (cant remember if this works with the free version), as I was going to buy Unity Pro a while ago but could not afford it.

[elbows]

Here is a link to info about the unity-max bridge. Works with puredata too apparently, though when I tried it many months ago I only used a demo of max/msp.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=19567

[elbows]

Here is ther page that details the differences between the versions:

http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses

Render-to-texture effects, full screen post-processing effects, realtime shadows, video playback & streaming seem to be the main features missing from the free version that would be rather useful to VJs, though the lack of plugin support in the free one may also prove to be a dealbreaker for some.

[bridd]

The big thing for me, would simply be getting data in in a usable manner - so I'm looking for some sort of OSC type bridge I guess. I must admit I'm a bit phobic of PD or max though as I prefer more traditional programming environments.

I'm *hoping* that having ".NET Based Scripting With C#, JavaScript, and Boo", "Access to Web Data through WWW Functions" and ".NET Socket Support" some sort of OSC styled link up can be made.

From that I can send FFT's from Processing, to update things etc.

The fact this plays nice with Blender is also a very good thing for me. I'm thinking Blender for asset creation, and then Unity for presentation.

We'll see. At the very least it's "another toy!" and the contribution to the indie games scene should be very fun indeed

[elbows]

Well to date Ive seen a few different methods for getting stuff like OSC to work with Unity. The unity-max bridge is the one I tried because it had a clear example and seem the most well-rounded, but there are a few other scripts out there which do similar work, albeit people are often relying on max to do some of the work. Also bear in mind that for quite a lot of people it is easier to manipulate & tweak your control data in an environment like max/msp than via scripts inside Unity which are a bit more hardcore.

I would hope that the free version will cause more people to look at this stuff and I would anticipate that there will be more options available in future, though its no cert. There isnt any indication of native midi or OSC support within unity to date, which is a shame, but one clever person could make this a non-issue.

[elbows]

OK someone made a wiimote thing for unity and it uses OSC. I have successfully used it with other osc devices without needing to do too much hacking.

Here is the thread about it.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.p...er=asc&start=0

I believe it should work with the free version of unity although I am currently using trial of the pro version.

Once Ive got my head around unity a bit more I will post some details about my use of the OSC scripts.

[elbows]

Hoorah the OSC patch works really well and Ive been able to get a lemur multiball controlling the positions of different lightsources in unity, its very responsive with a good framerate, I am happy.

[gavspav]

Can you give us any tips on what you did to the OSC scripts?

I tried it with a wiimote and a Nunchuk - the wiimote worked but the Nunchuk didn't.

Osculator is sending out the Nunchuk values so it seems like it must be simple to get the values into the game engine - only a case of entering the riight addresses?

But I couldn't immediately see how.

[elbows]

My modification of the scripts was to make it work with a Jazzmutant Lemur, I only tried it with a wii remote briefly, and Im not sure all the buttons were working, so there could be some flaws with the scripts.

The script called wiimotereceiver is setting the ports and making a connection, and towards the end of the script it is checking that the osc messages start with /wii/1/ (or another controller number) and is putting the rest of the osc message into an object.

The script called Wiimote is reading the later part of the osc message, eg accel/pry and is putting the float values from these osc messages into variables that can then be used elsewhere in unity scripts.

The script wiimotetest is calling the functions in the other scripts to make a connection and read and process the osc messages, and is then sending the results to the GUI and in some cases moving an object (not sure which wii controller is set to do this, maybe a balance board)

Im not exactly an expert in the c# that these are written in and I wasnt trying to get all of the wii's controllers working, so I cant point you to exactly what is wrong. It seems like it is reading the osc ok so perhaps its something simple like a flaw with the 'else if' logic when converting the osc values into variables or displaying those variables later. I will probably get my wii controller out again and see if I can nail the issue.