Importing Image Sequence W/Alpha-Animated Billboard Texture?

I've noticed that the search function for this forum always comes up with no results. Is this a known problem?

Anyway, I couldn't find anything by searching, so can anyone say whether it is possible to import a sequence of .png images with transparency for use as an animated billboard texture which always faces the camera? If so, how is this done?

Thanks,

Greg Smith

 

Perhaps a big red banner at the top of the forums should be put up saying "No search!!!". It would make more sense than saying it 73 times.
Yes, the forum search is down, but you wouldn't have found any of the previous threads saying so, due to lack of search

I'll leave the specifics of the answer to someone else with the manual in front of them, but yes - it is possible.

 

Unity can import QuickTime movies as animated textures. Once that is done, you need to make a small script to play the movie.

The easiest way to get billboarded stuff in your scene is to make a particle system. Create a particle system, remove any Particle Animators that it may come with, set Particle Emitter's properties as follows:

One Shot -> Enabled (makes the particles be static, rather than spawned every second
Min Max Emission -> 1 (you only want one)
Min Max Energy -> 1000000 (you want it to stick around)

Then create a material with a Particle shader (I assume you want Particles->Alpha Blended), assign your quicktime file as the texture.

the script you need to attach is in the Script Reference under FileTexture.

 

Nicholas:

So, animated textures are possible, just not with an alpha channel, since Quicktime doesn't support that, correct? No .png sequence support.

Greg Smith

 

Quicktime supports alpha. The recommended CODEC for it is Animation with depth set to Millions Of Colors+ (the + seems to be the alpha)

I believe you can create a quicktime file from multiple PNGs using the full version of quicktime player some bitchy cut paste. Otherwise, Final Cut or After Effects are your friends.

 

The QuickTime Player (in pro mode) has an Open Image Sequence command on its File menu. I just tried that and was able to automatically import a bunch of PNG sprites with alpha in one go, and it worked fine in Unity. Incidentally, the result of importing a PNG sequence is a QuickTime movie where all the frames are PNG compressed, so you don't lose any quality this way.

For reference, you need to name your files YourFileName_0000.png, YourFileName_0001.png or something similar to get it to load them all correctly.

The script Nicholas mentions worked perfectly.

 

I haven't used it myself, but there is a script called LookAtCameraYonly in the Unity wiki:
http://unify.bluegillweb.com/scriptwiki/index.php/Main_Page

A possible alternative for billboarding...

 

I've been wondering about animated textures as well. Can anyone show me an example script for having a QuickTime texture play?

 

http://otee.dk/Documentation/ScriptReference/FileTexture.html

(script at bottom of page)

-Jeremy

 

For some reason I can't get Quicktime to export a movie that has alpha. I originally thought it was a shader question, so I started a new post, but it came back closer to this subject.

I've posted my sample files on the other link if anyone can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=14756#14756

Thanks!

 

Oh man--because I didn't know it existed!! That's the exact format it was already in before, and I spent forever changing it into a Quicktime thing. I haven't found the documentation about the format for the sub-images or how to control the playback speed and such, but that will definitely be much smoother.

I'll give you an update as soon as I figure out how to do it.

 

[EDIT]
Hey, I figured it out. Just had to read a bit higher up in the documentation, then the only thing that threw me off was lifespan. I initially had my lifespan set super high so the torch would last forever, but the "Cycles" are directly tied to lifespan--as in Cycles per lifespan, so it was cycling, but it was just going so slowly that it didn't look like it was doing anything.

I'd vote for using "-1" for infinite lifespan and cycles. I'd also vote for a "lock to lifespan" checkbox. Or better yet, just a "loop forever" option?

Great features and documentation guys!

 

Joachim,

Using a particle has two limitations for what I'm trying to do.

1. I only want the flame to rotate to face the camera on one axis. The base of the flame needs to always be rooted in the torch, and burn "up". As it is, if you got close to the torch and looked up, the flame would be nearly horizontal.

2. I need to be able to scale the torch. The flame image is a tall image, but the particle will only remain square (since it's not moving I can't use the velocity scale options).

It seems it would be much simpler to just use my own flame polygon and then access the texture animation paramters somehow and script it to point at the camera the way I need it to. Can you tell me how to access the texture animation features on something other than a particle?

Thanks!

 

Sweet! Here she is--I've also got it in .psd format if you need it.

Hmmm. The image isn't showing up corectly in my browser. Let me know if it isn't posting correctly.

[edit] It's not very big, but it doesn't seem to like it for some reason--I'll try emailing it to you.

 

Joachim,

Already put it in the game--works great! Yes, please attach the image in the wiki with our compliments .

Thanks!

 

Very nice flame!

 

Since there's very little or no info on this important topic, I'll paste this link here so everyone in need has an easy shortcut to it:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/2263/movie-texture-blending

It worked amazing for me, by all means check it out!

 

This thread is over four years old, from back in the Unity 1.x days, and quite outdated. (No more Quicktime movies, etc.)

--Eric