Unity Media Plugin

Unity Media Plugin allows you to upload various Unity Engine related files to your WordPress site. It also allows you to add a Unity Webplayer to your post.

Major features in Unity Media 1.0 are:

• Uploading of FBX files, .unitypackages and .unity3d files
• Inserting multiple webplayers into your posts

Download:

You can download my plugin here: Unity Media WP Plugin (31)

Quickstart:

1. Upload plugin zip to site
2. Activate plugin
3. You can now upload a .unity3d file
4. And place the following tag in a post to add a unity webplayer to it:

[UnityMedia src="<url of unity3d file>" width=550 height=344]

Let me know if you like this plugin or if you think it’s missing some important feature, your welcome to comment or donate so I can update it.

To do such a project requires a light amount of electronics experience, although you can probably do it without. If you know how to solder and you can tell the difference between positive and negative connections then bob’s your uncle.

Before I could get started on this project I needed a few more electrical components like resistors, more flashy leds and what not. I ended up searching the web for a decent place to order the components (which turned out to be Reichelt.de) and ordered the IR Sensor for the project from a local electronics shop in Utrecht because reichelt.de didn’t have it. Three days after ordering all the bits and pieces a package arrived and I could start.

I soldered the TCRT5000 sensor to a piece of soldering board because I didn’t want to break any of its terminals fiddling with cables and such, plus it made for a better connection. Added the resistors and two leads for power to that piece of soldering board and then connected it up to the arduino read out the value and.. awesome it worked straight away.

After some tweaking of values I got a sensible reading from the Arduino for each cycle on my kWh meter. That was step one actually getting an event outside of the kwh-meter. Now the question was what to do with that.

In the example project that inspired me (juerd’s project) juerd had an OpenWRT router capturing values and storing them into an rrd file. As I dont have any OpenWRT or linux server I thought why not use Munin to monitor my Arduino output.

To accomplish this I used my Ethernet shield as a webserver to serve values to a custom made munin plugin (which was easy to make). That saved me a problem because I already had munin running on a server of mine.

In using munin I have a polling time of 5 minutes which is more than enough to see the amount of power going out, but it would mean that if something used an excessive amount of power in a time period of less than 5 minutes then I could potentially miss it. To fix this I added a variable that gets reset after each web request and holds the highest value: maxwatt. That allows me to see when short bursts occur in my power usage. But overall the 5min poll time is just fine.

Yes it’s fairly low-tech at the moment but hey come on.. it’s an arduino project. Project code can be found here

A Quick update that this project is still working..
It needed a slight adjustment because my provider hands out dynamic IP addresses, and the arduino lost track of its self after a while.
So I had to change the order of execution in the loop and also added some dyndns updating..
Here’s the latest day graph:

What grown up stuff is there to be done? you may wonder?
[Tech Talk]
Well I noticed a few things on my site that needed fixing so i’ve tended to that, you’ll now notice that all unity webplayers on the site should be working much better. Plus i’ve updated the theme template to the newest version. Not to forget updating wordpress which was well over due.

In the near future I’m playing with the idea to switch hosting as this is getting to be a little over the top for something not generating much in return. If your reading this now your welcome to donate if you like what I do here, or if you have any tips for me please comment.

I may offer some nice stuff to the Unity Community via the Asset Store once I’ve figured out what that could/should be. If you have any requests or ideas for what an experienced Unity Developer should make and you’d be willing to pay a nice sum for it let me know.
[/Tech Talk]

Other than all of that technical stuff, I’m looking forward to the remainder of 2013 and what it has to bring, as well as watching my daughter grow and build her character. I do hope everyone enjoys 2013 in good health and free of negative stuff, so.. for now I wish you all a happy new year!

Pro Tip: Don’t let the bed bugs bite and steer clear of smelly diapers.

A long awaited function in Unity was a working post process build player script for standalone players on windows as it was already working on mac’s. As seen in the latest Release Notes and stated in the BuildPipeline a few things have changed.. Apparently the PostProscessBuildplayer script is not supported on windows, which is a bummer for windows users on the other hand it’s easily solved with a new and improved UnityEditor.Callbacks which is both usable on Windows and Mac, So here goes…

P.S. No this is not a custom build window script, it actually triggers from the existing Unity BuildWindow.

using System.IO;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;
using UnityEditor.Callbacks;

public static class PostBuildTrigger
{
    private static DirectoryInfo targetdir;
    private static string buildname;
    private static string buildDataDir;
    private static DirectoryInfo projectParent;

    // Name of folder in project directory containing files for build
    private static string srcName = "CopyToBuild";
    private static int filecount;
    private static int dircount;

    /// Processbuild Function
    [PostProcessBuild] // <- this is where the magic happens
    public static void OnPostProcessBuild(BuildTarget target, string path)
    {
        Debug.Log("Post Processing Build");

        // Get Required Paths
        projectParent = Directory.GetParent(Application.dataPath);
        buildname = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(path);
        targetdir = Directory.GetParent(path);
        char divider = Path.DirectorySeparatorChar;
        string dataMarker = "_Data"; // Specifically for Windows Standalone build
        buildDataDir = targetdir.FullName + divider + buildname + dataMarker + divider;

        // Do Certain actions on your files (Copy, remove or email them to NASA your decision)
        filecount = 0;
        dircount = 0;
        CopyAll(new DirectoryInfo(projectParent.ToString() + divider + srcName), new DirectoryInfo(buildDataDir));

        Debug.Log("Copied: " + filecount + " file" +((filecount!=1)?"s":"")+ ", " + dircount + " folder" +((dircount!=1)?"s":""));
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Recursive Copy Directory Method
    /// </summary>
    public static void CopyAll(DirectoryInfo source, DirectoryInfo target)
    {
        // Check if the target directory exists, if not, create it.
        if (Directory.Exists(target.FullName) == false)
        {
            dircount++;
            Directory.CreateDirectory(target.FullName);
        }

        // Copy each file into it’s new directory.
        foreach (FileInfo fi in source.GetFiles())
        {
            filecount++;
            fi.CopyTo(Path.Combine(target.ToString(), fi.Name), true);
        }

        // Copy each subdirectory using recursion.
        foreach (DirectoryInfo diSourceSubDir in source.GetDirectories())
        {
            dircount++;
            DirectoryInfo nextTargetSubDir = target.CreateSubdirectory(diSourceSubDir.Name);
            CopyAll(diSourceSubDir, nextTargetSubDir);
        }
    }
}

Your options say you want to add another method that runs before your current one then you can add a priority to the attribute like this:

[PostProcessBuild(0)] // <- this is where the magic happens
public static void OnPostProcessBuildFirst(BuildTarget target, string path)
{
    Debug.Log("I get Executed First");
}

NB: -10 is a higher priority than 100, the default priority is 1

You can use the method to do all kinds of things on your computer after a build is complete just a couple ideas:

• After a large build send an email with a link to the file saying the build is complete.
• Play a sound notifiying you build is complete
• Run a test on your build
• And lots more…

Anyway now you have the tools go make

Simple script:

using UnityEditor;
using UnityEditorInternal;
public class EnableMacros : Editor {
    [MenuItem ("Window/Macros")]
    static void Init () {
		MacroWindow win = (MacroWindow)EditorWindow.CreateInstance<MacroWindow>();
		win.Show();
    }
}

How to use:
Place this script in an Editor directory in your Assets and then:
Go to Window->Macros and tadaa.. you have a new editor window that can record all your editor actions and execute new ones.
May this help you on your endeavors of making cool new stuff for unity

Setting up a Webcam Texture in Unity

Now as you may have seen in the Script Reference (the only place to actually find something about a WebcamTexture) there is no Object like a RenderTexture for a WebCamTexture which makes it a tad more harder to work with (read: not as easy to drag and drop in to materials).

Quickest way to get this working is to drop the following script on an object. (please support me by clicking an ad)

Checkout this script in action Webcam Example

Keep in mind that this in not the best way for multiple objects unless they all have the same material with the script on one object.
You can only have one WebCamTexture per webcam!

By the way.. Once 3.5 goes fully public I’ll put up a working example to give you a starting point, and so you can see yourself (if you have a camera connected of course) so keep an eye on my site

Once you’ve got the camera running it’s possible to do all kinds of things.. I Look forward to the future of Webcams in Unity all over the internets.

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Issues: Cannot use web cam, since the user has not authorized this!

In your attempt at getting the webcam running you may have come across the following error: (I did at least)

Cannot use web cam, since the user has not authorized this!
UnityEngine.WebCamTexture:Play()

You can squash this little one by changing your build platform to Standalone Mac/PC. Go to Build Settings -> Select “PC and Mac Standalone” then click that little button at the bottom left “Switch Platform”, this, I think is something new.

The whole reason for this is because you probably have the Web player platform setup by default. This requires the user to first give permission to use their webcam because of privacy reasons. If you want to do this then you need to request the users permission by using the following piece of code:

IEnumerator Start()
{
yield return Application.RequestUserAuthorization(UserAuthorization.WebCam);
if(Application.HasUserAuthorization(UserAuthorization.WebCam)) Debug.Log("Authorized");
}

Same goes for UserAuthorization.Microphone. When you use a standalone platform the authorization is no longer needed.

Issues: The type or namespace name `WebCamTexture’ could not be found.

Thanks to solehome for commenting on this one. The public beta 3.5 seems to have an error when using WebCamTextures in Flash builds.
If you choose to build on a flash platform the following errors occurs:

error CS0246: The type or namespace name `WebCamTexture’ could not be found.

Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?
Error building Player because scripts had compiler errors
Solution to this problem... euhm dont build flash?

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Built on the basis of OpenFrameworks (being one of the frameworks to handle video for windows & mac at the same time) and also allowing for alot more fun.
I successfully built this library as a plugin into Unity. In doing this I can now capture pixels from the camera and transfer them to a texture in a scene. I even added in some face recognition to the whole shebang…
It works quite well with a slight delay of a few milliseconds, but who really cares about that. BTW oF is doing some really cool stuff

So what happens when you’ve almost finished a functioning Video Grabber (except for a couple of problems when stopping the plugin) you find out that Unity is going to implement it themselves.. of course.. Unity wouldn’t be Unity if they didn’t.. you need video we’ll put it right in there, how about some audio as well then.. whut? you want AI pathfinding… sure no problem. While we’re at it we’ll mix in a little UI update and some extra goodies… What can we expect in version 4.0? A “Generate AAA Game Concept” button™ all ready and waiting?

One thing’s for sure.. I’ve temporarily stopped working on my Video plugin with high expectations of Unity 3.5 coming..
[insert plea to beta group owner for a membership here with a cherry on top]

If your interested in looking at what I’ve currently got for video grabbing add a comment below make sure to add your email address in the proper field (which will stay private) i’ll add you to the private repo and we maybe could start an open source project for the community.