[RELEASED] SECTR CORE: Sector Creation Kit

We're very excited to announce the release of SECTR CORE on the Unity Asset Store. SECTR CORE gives you all of the tools and code necessary to divide your scene into Sectors, connect them with Portals, and create dynamic, Sector aware game objects.

• New tools make it easy to divide your world into Sectors and connect them with portals.
• Fully supports static and dynamic objects.
• Includes animated Door component and other useful gameplay helpers.
• Powerful API with complete source code.
• Optimized for mobile.

SECTR Core is free on the asset store, so that you can get a sense of how the SECTR suite of tools and code works. If you want to know more, watch the intro video below, post a question here, check out the demos on sectr.co, or email info@makecodenow.com.

If you like SECTR CORE, be sure to check out our other SECTR modules:

• SECTR AUDIO: Immersive 3D Audio
• SECTR STREAM: Seamless Scene Streaming
• SECTR VIS: Dynamic Occlusion Culling.
• SECTR COMPLETE: Bundle of all modules.

[video=youtube_share;tVmpKuz4Vr4]http://youtu.be/tVmpKuz4Vr4

Thanks!

 

subscribed

 

Awesome! First post, too. Or, well, second post maybe

 

FYI that there is a GUI bug in a Sector creation helper dialog. This will be fixed in 1.0.1 but you can fix it yourself replacing Line 48 of SECTR_CoreMenu.cs with this:

Code (csharp):

1. if(sharedChildren.Count > 0  EditorUtility.DisplayDialog("Overlap Warning", "Some object in this Sector overlap other Sectors, which may cause unexpected behavior. Would you like to make them Members instead of children?", "Yes", "No"))

 

FYI that SECTR 1.0.2 is now live in the Unity asset store.

SECTR 1.0.2 Release Notes
CORE
* Documentation updates and fixes.
* Fixed bug in Portal bounds computation.
* Significantly optimized Sector and Member update.
* Improved Sector creation logic in complex scenes.

 

SECTR 1.0.3 is now live in the asset store. For folks interested in using SECTR for open world games, definitely check out the Beta Terrain GUI. It will auto create sectors and portals for your terrain, even split the terrain into multiple chunks for you. The GUI tool is in CORE, and STREAM is now aware of how to handle connected terrains. There's also a new Region Loader for easily streaming a volume around the player.

SECTR 1.0.3 Release Notes
CORE
* Beta Terrain Sectorization GUI. Ideal for setting up terrain-based open worlds.
* Additional optimizations in Member update.
* New Optimization chapter in CORE manual.


AUDIO
* Fixed a bug with max instances not properly limiting playback.
* Fixed leaking pool objects when reloading in editor.
* Fixed bug in application of fade out to HDR sources.
* Fixed Propagation Source attenuation beyond max range.
* Beta Audio System HUD.


VIS
* Fix for visibility traversal terminating early in complex scenes.
* Fixed bug with directional shadow caster bounds projection.
* Minor optimizations to portal and occluder early out logic.


STREAM
* Chunk properly handles unloads during loads and vice versa.
* Fixed duplication of extra components on Sector during export.
* Beta of new Region Loader. Ideal for open world streaming.
* Beta support for terrain grid streaming and stitching.
* Minor optimizations to Loader update logic.

 

Great stuff will probably buy the complete package very soon if you keep doing such good updates Just wondering about one thing. Does your terrain sectorization support just regular terrain or does it support worlds like planets and such that not is flat if you know what I mean.

 

Thanks! I'm definitely going to keep investing in SECTR, making it as awesome as I can. User feedback has been great so far, and I try to make sure I prioritize customer requests. The next major update will include Playmaker support, and some UI improvements like multi-selection in the Audio Window.

Regarding the new auto-sectorization tool, it currently only supports Unity Terrain, which is of course flat. The core Sector/Portal/Stream logic can handle arbitrary geometry, so you could write a script to sectorize your planets, but I don't have anything automagic that's built in. Also, I have several friends who worked on Spore, and so I have some appreciation for how deceptively simple making a game on a sphere can be Of course I'm always happy to discuss client needs here or through email at support@makecodenow.com.

 

Okay great thats exactly what I was looking for. Not looking for som automagic just some way do sectorize planets. Busy with a other game right now but as soon as I am finished with it I will buy your asset and probably disturb you a little bit with a email

 

Hello MakeCodeNow.

I'm currently working on Blinding Dark (you can check it in my signature) and at this point I'm using Unity PRO's occlusion culling. I have some questions that I need to clarify regarding your product:

1. Is your OC better than the built in OC? (uses less resources and at least just as precise?)
2. As you can see, I use a lot of rooms and corridors so as far as I can see, the tool would be very useful, but my problem is that the levels are big and take a good hit on the GPU and CPU, even with the OC on. Any ideas by how much can I improve the FPS by using your OC and level streaming?
3. How easy is to setup a level to use the tool? My levels are pretty large and with lots of small props.

Br,
Primus

 

Hi, Primus. I just watched the video for Binding Dark. It looks awesome! Congrats on all the hard work!!

1) I don't think it would be fair to Umbra to say that SECTR VIS is categorically better. It's more accurate to say that they focus on different things. When it works, Umbra is almost certainly faster in raw occlusion speed. Umbra requires a baking step, which takes time and can have problems, but of course it's always faster if you can pre-compute data. SECTR VIS is completely dynamic, which means that it's very flexible, and can work with streaming and dynamic/procedural games (which Umbra does not). I also tried to design SECTR VIS to be very easy to understand and control, its kind of the opposite of Umbra, which is a complete black box.

2) Level Streaming is kind of the ultimate OC, because you simply don't have anything loaded at all for distant parts of the game. SECTR VIS and STREAM will work together, so you can use STREAM for adding and removing big chunks, and then use VIS for culling whatever is left. The nice thing is that STREAMING also saves memory and decreases load times.

3) I've tried to make it very easy to create Sectors and Portals. Sectors are really just a root transform w/ a Sector component on it. There's built in tools for creating Portals, or you can use any convex, planar Mesh resource from Maya/Max/Blender/etc. I've tried to design everything so that you can do iterative refinements, getting things working first in big chunks, and then adding more fine grained control as you need it. SECTR CORE is free and includes all of the tools for creating Sectors and Portals, so you can try it yourself and see what you think. Or, you can email support@makecodenow.com and reference this thread for an eval of COMPLETE.

The only setup thing that you will have to be a bit more careful about is inter-object references and streaming. Objects that are streamed cannot directly reference objects in different streaming chunks. If you need that kind of reference, it's best to just move those objects out of the Sectors and let them be "global" objects. It's usually fine and easy to do, but just FYI.

 

Thank you for the detailed response. One more question and I'm done, I promise

How does your system works with many point lights? I have in each room a number of point lights. If I add them to the respective sector, the light will be completly disabled until I pass the portal? Can I achieve the same thing (disabling the point lights not in my view) by only using your OC?

Br

 

No worries. Ask as many questions as you like

SECTR VIS will cull point lights just fine, including shadow casting ones. Each light will take a bit of CPU to cull (if it's in a visible Sector), and shadow casting lights take more than non-shadow casting lights. If you have baked only lights, SECTR VIS will ignore them. SECTR VIS also includes some tools for optimizing culling by grouping objects and having them cull as a set rather than individually.

Hope that helps!

 

Is it a good idea to use SECTR VIS with Unity OC or it is overkill and the gains are too little compared to the resources needed?

 

I think it would be overkill, probably slower than running either one individually.

 

Ok, so bottom line.
If I want to cull lots of point lights in the scene, It's enough to use the SECTR VIS, create the sectors (each room / hallway), the portals and then just drop the script that handles the occluding?
Do I also have to pay attention that triggers and other sensitive objects are not included in the secotr? Or this is only for the SECTR stream?

Thanks!

 

Yes, that's correct. I think you understand it very well.

 

I bought the SECTR_VIS and I have problems with it.
In my scene, I create some sectors and add the portals between them.
If I quit the scene and try to enter it again, Unity crashes. After that it's impossible to enter Unity again as long as the scene with sectors is the one loaded. Luckly I created a backup for the scene.

I use Unity 4.3.3f1 with Dx11 enabled.

Any ideas?

 

Can you email support@makecodenow.com? We can work this out more quickly over email. When you email, please include the latest crash log from Unity. Thanks!

 

Sent, with more details since I did more testing.

 

Is it possible to combine it with asset bundles, which is downloaded when a sector using the asset is activated?
EDIT: This in combination with the SECTR STREAM functionality.

 

Good question! If you're talking about basically doing smart streaming in the web-client, then SECTR STREAM should already work for you. It uses sub-scenes + LoadLevelAdditive, not asset bundles, but as long as the webplayer is setup as a streaming webplayer, then SECTR STREAM should "just work". That said, I've only tested this path a bit. Were you to license SECTR, of course I'd be happy to work through any issues with you here or through support@makecodenow.com.

If you wanted to use asset bundles for a different reason, you could definitely do that with the source that's included. The Chunk component in SECTR STREAM has callbacks for Sector load and unload, and you could hook into those. You could also build something custom on top of SECTR CORE if you were really so inclined.

If there are other use cases you have in mind, I'd like to hear more about them. In general, I avoid using AssetBundles because Unity doesn't load them very efficiently (i.e. load entire bundle into memory, then allocate new resources, creating a 2x memory spike), but I'm always interested in hearing about how people want to use SECTR.

 

SECTR VIS looks like a very interesting solution that might suit my needs! It seems to handle lights and shadows quite well and that's a relief, Umbra hasn't really been great when it comes to lights so far...

It's a little expensive and I want to know a bit more before I make the jump though. I read the whole thread which answered quite a few questions already but I have a couple more

How does it work with dynamic objects? If I pick up an object and drop it in another room, will it be culled when the sector I dropped it in gets culled?
Primus88 seems to have had a few issues with stability, is that something that you guys have fixed?
I can imagine that the system is well suited for indoors but how does it work on more open spaces like terrains? Do you split the terrains in sectors too?

Thanks in advance!

 

Hey! Happy to answer your questions.

First off, if price is an issue and you only want the visibility culling, you can buy VIS ala-carte for $50 instead of the full suite for $100. If you email support@makecodenow.com and tell me a bit about your game/app, I can set you up with an eval copy, too.

Dynamic objects are fully supported. If you have an object that can go from Sector to Sector, you just add a SECTR Member component to it. The Member component "publishes" that object to the SECTR system, for use in things like culling. It's also useful if you want to base your own game logic on questions like "which room is this object in right now".

I've addressed every stability issue that I'm currently aware of and have several clients using SECTR VIS in big games without issue. If you run into any issues, just let me know. Customer support is top priority and I'll email code patches ahead of releases when necessary.

Speaking of releases, SECTR 1.0.4 is about to come out. The major addition is (beta) PlayMaker support and more improvements to the (beta) Terrain Sectorization tool. There are also a goodly number of bugfixes.

SECTR works great indoors and outdoors, though as you suggest the techniques are different. SECTR comes with a tool (Window->SECTR->Terrain) that can auto-create Sectors for Terrains for you. It can just make Sectors, or split the terrain for you (in case you want to stream or cull the heightfield in chunks). For occlusion culling in open spaces, VIS includes Occluders, which are sort of like anti-portals in that they will block out all objects behind them.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks for answering, that sounds really interesting indeed.
I'll send you a mail!

 

@MakeCodeNow, are these forums the place to ask SECTR questions? The forums on your site are rather neglected. Until I searched here I worried that you'd had some seriously bad life event or something. Glad to see support!

 

Hi there,

Can SECTR CORE be used for simple pathfinding? Can I draw sectors that work with Unity's 2D tools for a game with a side-on view? I might be way off track, or even asking something glaringly obvious. Is it possible to use the sectors and portals to define rooms and doorways for the AI to navigate? I'm currently struggling with implementing pathfinding, and if this would make it easier that would of huge interest to me as I'm quite new to programming.

 

Hi, dbrian. Thanks for the heads up. Email notifications broke on my main forums and I didn't realize anyone had posted (initial traffic there was slow so I didn't check it regularly after people seemed to be coming here for info). Anyway, totally my bad. I try to respond to all questions quickly, but not in this case.

In the future, you can ask any questions here, the make code now forums, or using support@makecodenow.com

 

Hi, Valente. SECTR does all of it's match in 3D. With a bit of cleverness you can make it work for a totally 2D game. In general, you would want to draw things so that they have a bit of Z thickness and otherwise everything should be fine.

SECTR can be used for high level pathfinding. In fact, SECTR CORE includes a library called SECTR_Graph.cs that implements A* Pathfinding through the Sectors and Portals. However, this is really meant for high level pathfinding. It'll tell you which Sectors to go through to get from one part of the level to the other, but how do avoid obstacles within a given room. In the future, I may release SECTR AI which will have more detailed AI solutions that combine well with Sectors and Portals.

 

Just a quick heads up that SECTR 1.0.4 is now live on the asset store. Major new item is Beta PlayMaker support and more open-world/terrain improvements.

SECTR 1.0.4 Release Notes
CORE
* Beta PlayMaker Support.
* Fix a Unity warning when a Portal is created through the drawing interface.
* Beta Terrain GUI groups new objects when splitting terrain into pieces.
* Beta Terrain GUI can include static and/or dynamic objects during sectorization.

 

Fantastic! I'll be putting in my order soon. Your solution looks exceptional. I figured it was some oversight as soon as I saw your attentiveness to the Unity forums.

 

Awesome! I hope you like it

Please post more questions here or email support@makecodenow.com

 

SECTR 1.0.5 is out and fixes two critical issues, one of which is a workaround for a Unity bug that can cause save game corruption. Everyone should get this fix ASAP.

SECTR 1.0.5 Release notes
CORE
* Workaround for critical serialization bug that could cause scene file corruption when creating portals in projects with mixed/binary serialization.

 

SECTR 1.0.6 is out. Fixes some issues with multi-selection and terrain portals.

SECTR 1.0.6 Release Notes
CORE
* Fix some issues with multi-selection and custom inspectors.
* Properly orient portals created by Terrain window.

 

SECTR STREAM works with Open world city map as well ?. If yes i am going spend money on this.

 

Yes it does. I'm working on demos of that for SECTR 1.1.0, but all the tools and code are already there. You can make Sectors and Portals yourself (out of, say, city blocks) or if you are building on Unity Terrain, you can use the Terrain tool to auto-create Sectors and Portals for you.

 

I'm happy to announce that SECTR COMPLETE is part of the May Madness sale for 50% off on the Unity Asset Store! We've reduced the price of the individual SECTR modules (AUDIO, STREAM, VIS) to match.

There's also a new version of SECTR to celebrate this sale. 1.0.7 is likely to be the last update before 1.1.0, which will be the same code but with additional demos showing off the new features that have come online since 1.0.0.

SECTR 1.0.7 Release Notes
CORE
* Added optional PortalDetermined mode to Member. When set to true, Sector membership will only change when the object passes through a Portal (instead of whenever it enters a Sector Bounds). Ideal for games with very complex/concave scenes.

 

Well i made the purchase and playing with it for a while. Looks promising so far.
One quick question, I will be having all my scenes as separate asset bundles. does this support "BuildStreamedSceneAssetBundle" with SECTR Stream ?
I am assuming If i add the main scene and all other scene chunks it should work. Please confirm. Thanks.

 

Yes, that should work just fine. The only caveat is that SECTR won't download or load that asset bundle for you ahead of time, you'll need to do that yourself, but once downloaded it should be fine. Lmk if you have any issues and I'll help resolve them.

 

Thanks. I am working on one sandbox racing game. With huge outdoor city map. So far looks like umbra is doing better job culling my scene over VIS. I see less spikes in profiler when using unity occlusion. Can i improve performance by not culling each child of sector?

 

That's not too surprising. Umbra is really designed for big open spaces like that, plus it has very low level access to the machine. It's hard for VIS to really compete head-to-head (but of course Umbra and streaming don't play well with one another). You're right that you can save a lot of CPU if you don't cull individual children. You can do that with Sectors by adding a Culler component and unchecking Cull Children Individually. You can use that technique to group cull any set of objects, not just the children of Sectors.

 

SECTR 1.0.9 is out! Major improvements include better terrain sectorization (including Terrain Composer support) and lots of bug fixes.

SECTR 1.0.9 Release Notes
CORE
* Terrain window supports automatic Sectorization of Terrain Composer created terrain grids.
* Fix crash splitting terrains with trees in the Terrain window.
* Sectors no longer include Particle Systems in their bounds computation as they are too dynamic to be reliable. Also fixes issues where sometimes Sector would expand to include the origin due to a particle returning an invalid Bounds.
* Custom inspector class updated to more perfectly match behavior of default inspector, including support serializable, private, non-hide-in-inspector variables.
* Updated documentation with more information about advanced bounds logic and the new portal determined membership mode.

 

SECTR 1.0.10 is out. Includes bug fixes and some new Terrain window documentation.

SECTR 1.0.10 Release Notes
CORE
* Added documentation about working with Terrain Window to CORE Manual.
* Fix bug where missing null check in Member could cause crashes on some platforms (like iOS).
* Fix bug where results from Portal’s viewport Sector selection/swap GUI would be erased in play mode when performed on a Portal in a Prefab when the user pressed Play.

 

SECTR 1.0.11 is out, including fixes for seams between terrains split in the Terrain Window.

SECTR 1.0.11 Release Notes
CORE
* Sectors created by the Terrain window are now parented above the Terrain rather than being added to the same object. Fixes issues with certain 3rd party scripts expecting to be on the same object as the terrain.
* Fixed seams appearing between terrains when using the split feature of the Terrain Window.
* Guard against null lights in the baked only lights table.
* Fixed PlayMaker integration compile issues in Unity 4.5.

 

I'm trying to set up Sectors in a scene. I select all the buildings in an area, and then go Component->SECTR->Core->Sector. That adds the SECTR_Sector script to each object that I've selected, but it does not regroup all of those objects under a single parent. It's supposed to, isn't it?

And then if I select another group of buildings, it does the same thing....so I don't see how buildings are identified a part of a particular sector. Am I doing something wrong?

thanks
Dave

 

Hi, Dave. I think you have the right idea, but I suspect the specifics of your selection are throwing off the Sector creation logic. People have very different scene setups, and I try to make the Sector create logic as smart as possible, but without being so "automagic" that it breaks any workflows.

The key thing for the auto-grouping is that all of your selected objects need to have a common parent. That can be nothing or a single object but if your objects don't have a common parent, then it will make several Sectors.

I think in your case if you're just a bit more careful with the selection, then it'll work fine. However, you can also create a new empty yourself, parent the buildings under, it and then add a Sector component and that will work well, too.

 

Thanks, it does work fine if I set up each sector manually (which is fine with me). So next question: What is the recommended workflow when exporting sectors, during development? I want to retain my main scene so I can keep working on it as a whole. Should I just duplicate the scene, do the export and publish to test, then trash all those scenes and switch back to my duplicate? Or is there a simpler procedure?

thanks

 

SECTR STREAM has a UI that will allow you to export Sectors to individual files. That same UI will allow you to re-import them after export, which is a lossless process. That should work great for your needs, without the need for any manual file duplication. A number of larger client teams use this tool/workflow to allow many people to work on the same level at once.

 

Ah, great! I knew there had to be a better way. I just didn't (and still don't) see that in the manual.

 

It's referenced in the workflow section but I'll try to make that more clear.