[RELEASED] ProBuilder 2.0 : Seamless, Intuitive Level Design in Unity. Finally LIVE!

So, they are merged meshes, but technically not connected other than the top and bottom points.

What would I be connecting to? The road face doesn't have points at this section. http://i.imgur.com/nI8inSu.jpg

I ended up just recreated the whole thing (because I wanted it to work a bit differently anyway) with 3 faces for the road. So hopefully this way works.

http://i.imgur.com/xrSzZSP.png

 

Here's a quick youtube video showing how I would create that kind of geometry. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Ooh, thank you so much for that video, karl_

That was exactly what I needed to see. Legend

 

Just curious, do you know what's happening here with the UV? The faces keep changing size when moving.

You'll have to watch in 720p to see the lines I think, sorry

 

That's just some messy rounding in the line rendering - the actual UVs should remain constant. I've got a ticket open to address those visual errors.

 

i really liked the tool, but to be honest i was very dissapointed with the uv control, they are very average.
even simple task like building simple platforms, uv causes headatch in keeping uv constant.

 

Are you making use of the automatic UVs or doing them by hand? What would you like to see implemented to help you manage texture unwrapping?

 

am trying to model platforms that all look similar but have different sizes but keep same looks..
so i create parts of the platform, corners, middle parts , etc all measured with the sizes i need with uv aligned in each part.

but the issue comes when i try to merge these parts together uv start show some offsets from it's original place, this screenshot to illustrate part of the issue, sometimes arch / cylinder texture in it's faces gets rotated like 90 degrees for no reason!


what i think probuilder should do, is that it should keep and preserve uv faces intact when merging multiple different parts, and only it should auto uv on the parts am editing or making changes to geometry.. extruding etc etc


moreover, on uv window, sometimes it's really hard to control uv faces.. like rotating.. i keep fighting the rotating scroll bar just to make it stop at 90 degrees..
Sometimes i use stretch to expand faces to fill whole texture,, then i press tile so i apply tiling on that exact same size i made.. but probuilder minimize faces to apply "tiling" with the default size it programmed to set not the one i wanted. there should be a checkbox to disable the auto resize to stop auto re-sizing when i switch to tile or any option.

 

Sounds like the issues are all related to the Auto UVs methods- thanks for the heads-up on those, I'll take a look!

However, have you tried using the new Manual UVs option instead? We really hope everyone will move over to using that method, as the Auto UVs can only be so smart...never as smart as a real human in control

Thanks again for the input, looking into these now! Also, if you have time to post bugs like this to the official support forum at "www.procore3d.com/forum", that really helps us track and fix 'em more easily. Either way, thanks!

 

thanks for following up, regarding my prev post, i do things "manually" not through Auto, the moment i start merging objects together, the UVs breaks at some faces! you can see how things changed in uv window after merging..

[Update]
OK... after further inspection, it seems that when merging two faces... the manual faces were fighting against auto faces.. so now i paid extra attention to make sure only auto+auto faces are the ones going to connect to avoid such problem, and it seems everything goes fine so far

btw, you guys including shortcuts in uv window that i was unaware of.. pressing ctrl + face orders face side by side.. it was nice touch to be honest! saved me most of my issues ill go check rest of shortcuts!

 

Hey again!

Thanks for the update, if you can narrow down exactly what is causiing the issue and how to reproduce it step-by-step even, that would be a HUGE help saves us lots of search-time that we can then put into fixin' time. Thanks Mangax!

Glad you found the shortcuts, yep, there are a ton of handy modifiers and keyboard methods. Lost of them are customize-able too, via "Edit > Preferences > ProBuilder" !

 

Hey there! I'm documenting my progress on building a house with ProBuilder from start to finish.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFVgXxuAKugRnCCPSNkFmpUzDF-9-oaTQ

I'm sure I'm probably not doing some things correctly or efficiently so if you see something in there, please let me know

It's just a bit of progress to show people following my game. I've got a few more parts to upload yet

 

Thanks for sharing, ShinfoK! Looking good, I did notice a couple items that might help:

1) It looked like several times with the floors, it might have been easier to just add more loops, then extrude from the newly created edges (ie, through doorways and to connect rooms)

2) When extruding an edge, if you click and drag on just one arrow, it will extrude cleaning in that one direction, instead of going all over (saw that once or twice, maybe was on accident)

3) I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like, when you extruded inward to make the door cut out, you might have only extruded on one axis? While this looks clean from the outside, it actually leaves zero-area faces on the non-scaled axis, which can cause trouble later on when trying to edit.

Keep it up, thanks again!

 

Somehow, since switching to Unity 5 and redownloading / -importing the newest version of Probuilder, a lot of functionality seems to be missing / not working, as well as the main Probuilder Window looking quite different.

For example the Material Window no only lets me assign a material, but not scale and translate it.

Is that expected? Is Probuilder Unity 5 tested or not?


Thanks for any help

Gian-Reto

 

Hi Gian- first and most importantly, yes ProBuilder is totally Unity 5 ready

As for the differences you are seeing- sounds like you've been using a really old version of ProBuilder up till now! The interface and functionally of ProBuilder got a major overhaul around v2.3, which we released a few months back. We added a ton of new features and made the UI much more useable, simple, and powerful. Also, the major difference, we added fully manual UVs! You can still use the old "Auto UVs" (what you are looking for in the material panel, now in the "UV Editor" panel), but we highly, highly recommend using the Manual UVs.

We also created a complete set of new video tutorials, and of course the docs are fully updated. Definitely check those videos out at: www.procore3d.com/videos

Let me know if I can help with anything else, though I'm off to sleep for now, back in 8 hours or so

 

Okay, I found it thanks to your hints... I was just confused by the new UI... one thing though, can I somehow insert numeric values somewhere? Sometimes, using Gizmos is just not accurate enough.

 

Hi- there is the "QuickOffset" option, yes. Just select a PB object, then look for "QuickOffset" in the Inspector. Type a value and hit "Apply"

 

Hi,

Updated to latest version and seeing some minor problems and one very big one .

The decals tool window tab is no longer visible so I can dock it. In fact part of the entire top row is obscured by the main window. .

Still getting the same problem as last time I posted with the duplicate documents only this time it is worse. Before deleting the files worked fine this time it is causing further script errors where I have to comment out the lines referencing the "about files"

One very serious one that has occurred in my main project has completely damaged to project file and leaves it no longer recoverable. After importing the new version (deleted the old version first) I opened to windows for each procore utility in order to dock them together as normally do. Upon opening the progroups window Unity freezes. Once I needed to end task the second time Unity reset and threw up the bug window. Whatever method I try to open the file afterwards Unity refuses to open it. I have used backups to restore to earlier versions and managed to replicate the error twice now.

I created a new project and tried to replicate the problem. It didn't crash the system this time but it wont allow me to reopen the file.

Basically everything worked fine until I opened the progroups window after the update.

Thanks

edit - using unity 5 and probuilder complete off asset store updated 31/03/2015

 

Sorry for all the trouble you're running into!

You should be able to right click inside the window and set it to 'Dockable', does that work?

Which patch version of Unity are you running? Where all the packages imported after having been downloaded from the Asset Store post-Unity 5 compatibility update?

I just submitted updates to the Asset Store with a fix for this issue.

To get your project open again, find the Assets/ProCore/ProGroups folder and delete it. Then open Unity again.

 

Hi Karl.

Thanks for the quick response.

I just went on the asset store to import probuilder into my project again and it had changed from 1.0.16 to 1.0.17. I updated and everything appears to be working great. Non of the problems listed seem to have appeared.

Re the decals window I didn't know about the right click and select dockable. This worked a treat. I can't see any such option on the quickedit asset but that has never had one I am aware of.

Thanks again.

 

Sorry Karl,

Spoke too soon.

Seeing an error - Null reference exception Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

For some reason it won't let me copy the full error but the debug points to ProGroups_Windows.cs and highlights line saying:

if(groupContainer.sceneGroups !=null)


under the section

EditorGUILayout.EndHorizontal();
if(groupContainer.sceneGroups !=null)
{
scrollPos =EditorGUILayout.BeginScrollView(scrollPos);
EditorGUILayout.BeginVertical();

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the report @docsavage, I'm working on a more thorough bug-fix patch for ProGroups today and will have that available ASAP.

 

I have bought ProBuilder 2 recently and especially liked the ability of UV editing directly in Unity.
But I would like to have(in UV-Editor Window):
1. the ability to show the texture-tile repeating over the whole UV-texture window(could be turned on), or at least covering the whole UV-island i´m working on.
2. ability to rotate the chosen parts(or island) by a fixed degree of 90, or rotating with gizmo by fixed steps.
3. fields for entering values for transforming in x and y direction(perhaps also angle). It would be handy, if the UV-islands remember their values in the session.

Thanks for making this tool

 

Great, glad it's helping!

This is planned, low priority at the moment but something we agree would be very useful.

Already works! Just hold "CTRL" while rotating

I'll leave those last two for Karl to answer...

 

1) Yeah you're completely right. That would be much more time saving, as I'm going to have to add in the loops now anyway to connect it all properly.

2) Yeah, if you're talking about what I think you are, I forgot to add the loops in first.

3) I'm not entirely sure what you mean here.

Thank you for the comments, I'll be sure to rethink how I work

 

i am in doubt of something, perhaps i did something wrong, i have probuilder objects that dont react they are missing theyr scripts, but i already re installed the latest version, and even if the pro builder objects are visible they cant be activated. Any solution that makes sense

 

Hmm, hard to explain, and you may already be aware of it. The easiest way to show it is to break it, ha. Just grab a face, and hold shift while scaling on just one axis. Then, grab the other axis on the same plane, and scale inward, without holding shift. You'll see suddenly invisible faces become visible.

You probably already know this, just making sure!

 

Hi Paul- could you describe your exact upgrade path? Sounds like something went wrong during the upgrade, leading to those missing references. Don't worry, we'll be happy to help! Feel free to email us directly (see the address in the docs), and we'll be able to reply much more quickly

 

Yeap, most likely i upgraded on top of a previous version and things got a bit messed up. Basicly i have one scene where i constructed the meshes, and when i copy paste them to another scene they came out with an empty mesh. And i cant edit the first scene either. But if i create a new scene everything is working fine. Any sugestions

 

This is a very long thread and sorry if this asked before, can we manipulate models in probuilder, which are imported as fbx, modeled in another program (3dmax)?

 

Yeah you can. Its in the documentation:
http://www.protoolsforunity3d.com/docs/probuilder/#SpecialMenuItems

 

Ok, yep, sounds like the upgrade wasn't completed somehow. Do your broken PBOs now show 2 "Missing Script Reference" items in the inspector?

We are working full-speed on making the "ProBuilderize" feature fully-functional and tested, no longer semi-experimental, so that "broken" PBOs, or even entire scenes, can be repaired quickly. That will probably be the necessary fix. Coming soon!

As Mimminito mentioned, yep, "ProBuilderize" is what you want, and ProBuilder has it

 

New

Hello!

Firstly, thank you for your excellent products. I've only had them a very short time, but I am already enjoying them immensely.

One challenging that I'm having is that I'm reconstructing real-world objects whose dimensions don't translate well into metric. Using ProGrids set to inches solves part of the issue, but the other part is that ProBuilder has no option to create objects and list their sizes in feet / inches.

One simple example is that I wish to create a standard wall stud, which is 97.5 inches tall -- a number not too cumbersome in inches. Unfortunately, this translates to 2.4765 meters. It is cumbersome having to convert this to meters in order to create the object in ProBuilder. Additionally, I've come across other metric translations that are 8 or 9 decimal places long, so I begin to lose precision when creating objects in this manner.

Is there an option or an easy fix to allow ProBuilder to create objects in Feet / Inches and to list said dimension as such in the inspector under Object Size (read only) and Quick Offset? If so, I would be immensely grateful!

- S. Darkwell

 

Hi Arismeir! Thanks for the kind words, appreciated

About those inches- there isn't a solution for this right now (that I'm aware of), but we certainly could add this in (a simple "Units" switch, like ProGrids has). We are super busy with high-priority items at the moment unfortunately- this would make a great user- addition, if we can't get to it soon enough!

 

Hello.
Recently I had to change pivot. Wrote a small script that changes pivot of the coordinate.
I would like to see something like that in the next version.
Sorry for my English

Path: Tools/ProBuilder/Others/SetPivot Window
Throws a folder Editor

 

Im pretty sure there already is a Set Pivot command that comes with ProBuilder?

 

I found that only one function to set the pivot to the selected face

 

Ok, well here is the documentation if it helps. Explains what their SetPivot can do.
http://www.protoolsforunity3d.com/docs/probuilder/

 

But it can not do what I need

 

@yahodahan: Thank you for the response. Understood!

Also, I'm not certain whether or not it's on your list -- but there appears to be an issue with creating prefabs out of ProBuilder objects. Modified objects revert back to their prefabricated versions after entering and exiting playmode.

- S.

 

Yup, Unity 5 made some changes to prefabs that I'm still trying to figure out. This is one of them (prefabs also revert on save, but only if it's the first modification).

 

Hello..

I've been having a lot of fun with this. I've been using the vertex painting feature and it works a lot better than all 4 other vertex painting Unity plugins. But I would like to know if there is a way to bake the painted vertex info to mesh (obj or asset) I've tried but no luck.

If not then do you think that is something you could add to pro builder 2?

Kind Regards
TechiTech

 

I'd like to plonk down a request here for cylindrical UV mapping in addition to the planar and box projection options.

 

Hey guys,

I'm 80% sure this is the product I'm looking for. I contacted the supported and was assured this type of terrain is possible. http://th05.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/243/4/d/3_by_prusakov-d6khb94.jpg is possible. Being familiar with Blender, I think it is possible to use proBuilder to create this. My biggest concerns is the level size due to my game having 100 levels or more. The game will be for mobiles devices, and will be a isometric RTS game like Warcraft III, Age of Empire, etc... So my questions are (some of the questions will be dumb this is my first game and first time using Unity).

1). How is the level saved? If the file being saved is not optimal for mobile, is it possible to save the levels as code, and use that code to generate the terrain on the "Loading Screen" (I will be using the same prefab and texture. In total it will be only 15 different textures). I would like to keep the file size small.

2). My camera is locked to an isometric view, so I won't be needing the faces that is not in view, does proBuilder delete the faces automatically or should I do this myself to save memory?

3). In my game I want the player to build their own "castle", like "Minecraft". In a "Build screen" the player can use prefab cube to make their own custom "castle", and that "castle" can be use in the game mission. Would this be possible with proBuilder?

4). Would it be possible to attach scripts to the prefab? I want to allow or not allow certain prefabs on the "castle" cube (like a archer), or tell the user a certain prefab takes up to 4 "castle" cube (Like a cannon or watch tower).

5). Is there occlusion culling?

6). Is this optimize for mobile devices

7). For the terrain I want to achieve, should I consider using your other products or is the proBuilder good enough?

Thanks

 

So it would modify the texture to include the vertex colors? I'm not sure that would work well with ProBuilder, since often the UVs ProBuilder makes will overlap one another. Unless you mean something else by baking the texture?

Oh, yeah. That would be good. I've been meaning to do spherical unwrap for a while now, may as well get cylindrical as well.

For sure - just as a heads up, there's not a soft selection option in ProBuilder at the moment, so sculpting those mountains could be a little tedious compared to Blender or Max.

Nothing is saved in built products except for the mesh. That is, it's exactly like any other imported model once the game is built. The latest update even welds vertices automatically for you, further optimizing the mesh by reducing the vertex count to the absolute minimum required (expect to get this update to the store early this week).

You would do this yourself.

PB comes with source (downloadable through the "User Toolbox" on our site), so sure. All the geometry editing and creation code is runtime compatible, and you could check out the Editor-side code to see how to work with it.

A ProBuilder model is just like any other gameObject - in the Editor the gameObject will have 2 components attached (pb_Object and pb_Entity) that are used to construct the mesh. Then at compile time, those are stipped using a post-process script.

ProBuilder meshes behave like any other mesh in your scene; they'll respect whatever static flags you set (so, yes).

There's no additional overhead from using a ProBuilder built mesh vs. an imported model. The only thing I can think of that may not be mobile friendly is if you want to instantiate lots of the same mesh. ProBuilder by default would make those all instances instead of references, which I'm just guessing Unity would do for you with an asset model. However, you could easily get around that by just saving the mesh as an asset (which ProBuilder can do out of the box). So no real disadvantage there either.

Depending on what you're looking for, ProGrids may be helpful. I don't think any of our other tools would come in handy when sculpting terrain off-hand though.

 

"Nothing is saved in built products except for the mesh. That is, it's exactly like any other imported model once the game is built. The latest update even welds vertices automatically for you, further optimizing the mesh by reducing the vertex count to the absolute minimum required (expect to get this update to the store early this week)"


Having a large level file is my biggest concern. I'm sorry I'm still new to Unity, and not quite sure if saving it as a mesh is the only option?

1). So would saving it as a mesh and saving it as a code to generate the terrain the same thing? And would it be almost the same size? For example, I build the terrain shown in the link, and I want to save it as as a data structure. So when the player click on the mission, the code will generate the terrain.

 

My message got cut off.

I guessed what I'm trying to say is, if I use the same prefabs and texture for most of my levels I don't want Unity to save multiples instances of the prefabs and textures for each level. Instead I want to save just one instance of the prefab and texture and use code to generate the terrain using the prefab and texture.

 

So, a heightmap? This isn't built in to ProBuilder, but would be fairly easy to write.

What sort of size limitations are you working with? And how large of terrains are you interested in building? ProBuilder isn't a voxel solution, if that's what you're getting at.

Yup, Unity will only store one instance of a prefab and instantiate from that.

 

^
So what I'm planning to do is use one prefab, a quad, and use that to create the terrain similar to http://th05.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/243/4/d/3_by_prusakov-d6khb94.jpg. By changing the scale,rotate,and transforms. And I want to store that data so the level can be generated at runtime.

The game will be use for mobile, and I want to have as many levels as I can.So that is why I'm worry about size. I will be allocating 200mb for the map. The level size will be 4x the terrains in "Clash of Clan".

 

I should had said I will use multiple instances of one prefab to create the terrain, not just one instance