This is a test for inserting the Unity web player to blog posts:
If all went well you should be able to the view with LMB drag and zoom with the mouse wheel or RMB drag.
The scene uses my latest project, a model viewer plugin for the Unity editor.
UPDATE: The plugin is now available in the asset store.
I’m taking a break from the Unreal Engine to spend some time with Unity3d. I started working on a realtime model viewer for this blog but got sidetracked and made a dynamic grid editor extension first, available in the asset store.
I yet to mess with the game engine part of Unity but the editor itself is excellent. I’ve been using UnrealEd for 13 years so it’s pretty much muscle memory by now but when compared to Unity, it just doesn’t hold up. The Unreal Engine still has one of the best node based material editor in the industry, something Unity sorely lacks, but otherwise it’s not even contest.
My favorite editor features so far:
So I’m very excited to explore this new toy further.
Phew, I’ve finally finished the object I was working on the last two weeks.
It’s a crane for transferring containers in ports:
It’s roughly 14500 polygons, with instanced bogeys and stair units. It has a 2K diffuse and a 2K normal map.
The machine is 58 meters (190 feet) tall and 104 meters (341 feet) long.
The cab can move back and forth on the boom and carries the spreader which can descend and grab a container.
The spreader itself is around 3 tons (6000 pounds) and can carry cargo up to 26 tons (52000 pounds).
The whole crane weighs around 1200 tons (huge number of pounds).
The past week I took a break from GViz and worked on a paid side project using Unity.
I heard good things about it and indeed it’s a very nicely done software package. Two days after downloading it I already knew everything I’m going to need in this project: project management, asset import, lightmapping/realtime shadows, animation are all very intuitive. It is true what they say: “It just works”.
The shader authoring is text based which is a real pain but fortunately there is an unofficial node based shader editor. I haven’t had the chance to use it extensively but looks well done.
So far it seems to me that Unity is a very adept engine, especially considering its price. The whole architecture is modern and well designed, the Unreal engine could really use a few features from it. (Editor scripting for example…)
The next engine I’d like to work with is Unigine after which I could finally move to engines starting with the letter V.
