Vectrosity - Fast and Easy Line Drawing

If I read the docs correctly, I believe it has to be a 2D vector line if you want it to have a collider.

 

I apologise for not being so clear with my question...The collisions actually work. The question is how can I attach a script to my line so it will receive trigger events? Still thanks for you effort

 

3D lines are fine. The colliders are always 2D though. You can add a component to VectorLine.rectTransform.gameObject.

--Eric

 

Wow. It worked! Thanks Eric

 

Vectrosity is on sale for a limited time!

--Eric

 

does onmouseover not work with the colliders generated with collider = true and trigger = true? I'm not seeing an example of this, and I haven't been able to get it working correctly yet.

 

I'd recommend using VectorLine.Selected. But you can add a script to the generated GameObject at runtime with OnMouseOver and it should work, keeping in mind that the colliders are 2D only. VectorLine.Selected works for all lines in all cases.

--Eric

 

This is exactly what I'm trying to do and it doesn't seem to work. Here's the line generation code:

Code (csharp):

1. //main3.js
2. import System.IO;
3. import System.String;
4. import Vectrosity;
5.  
6. private var curveLine : VectorLine;
7.  
8.  
9. function Start () {
10.     makeCurve();
11. }
12.  
13. function Update () {
14.     curveLine.Draw();
15. }
16.  
17. function makeCurve() {
18.  
19.     var lineMaterial : Material = Resources.Load("curveMat") as Material;
20.     var linePoints = [ Vector2(20, 30), Vector2(100, 50), Vector2(200, 80), Vector2(300, 20), Vector2(400, 50), Vector2(500, 60), Vector2(600, 10)];
21.  
22.     curveLine = VectorLine("curve", linePoints, lineMaterial, 6.0, LineType.Continuous, Joins.Fill);
23.     curveLine.collider = true;
24.     curveLine.trigger = true;
25.  
26.     var curveLineObject : GameObject = GameObject.Find("curve");
27.     curveLineObject.AddComponent("tooltip");
28. }
29.  

tooltip is a script which is added to the generated VectorLine GameObject and looks like this:

Code (csharp):

1. //tooltip.js
2. function OnMouseOver () {
3.  
4.     Debug.Log("RollingOver...")
5.  
6. }
7.  

...the mouseover event never fires... or rather, I get nothing in the Debug.Log and so assume it's not firing.

screenshots of the object directly after creation:

 

OnMouseOver doesn't seem to work with edge colliders. You can use a discrete line, which generates a polygon collider, or you can use VectorLine.Selected instead.

--Eric

 

Ok. Then if I wanted to be able to continue to add a script to the generated GameObject at runtime and use VectorLine.Selected, how would I go about referencing the VectorLine that the script is attached to? I'm a little lost (no surprise there!!) on how to reference a specific vectorline that was not created within that script. i.e.

Code (JavaScript):

1. //tooltip.js
2. import Vectrosity;
3.  
4. var extraThickness = 2;
5. private var line : VectorLine;
6. private var wasSelected = false;
7. private var index = 0;
8.  
9. //SOMEWHERE IN HERE ASSIGN THE VECTORLINE THAT THE
10. //SCRIPT IS ATTACHED TO to THE var line FROM ABOVE
11.  
12. function Update () {
13.     if (line.Selected (Input.mousePosition, extraThickness, index)) {
14.            Debug.Log("Event Firing...")
15.     }
16. }
17.  

 

Make the line variable public (or use properties), and do GetComponent (Tooltip).line = new VectorLine...

--Eric

 

Hi, loving Vectrosity 4. Is there any way to make the VectorLines cast shadows? I saw some ooold posts on Unity Answers citing the following, but it doesn't work, and I find no reference in the current documentation.

1. myLine.vectorObject.renderer.castShadows = true;

I have a directional light in the scene with "hard shadows" and the quality settings are such that shadows from normal GameObjects ARE rendering.

 

Hi, Vectrosity 4 lines can't cast shadows, since they use the Unity 4.6 UI canvas system, which doesn't have shadows. You can use Vectrosity 3 (which uses meshes) if you need shadows.

--Eric

 

Thanks for the fast response, Eric.
What are the performance trade-offs between 3 and 4?

And just out of curiosity, in v4, does each line segment occupy its own individual canvas container? I've noticed with "thick" multi-segment lines moving through 3d space, that the segments seem to be on planes that "rotate" on a per-segment basis... actually a beautiful effect.

 

4 is generally somewhat faster; typically 10-30% depending on what you're doing. Although since it doesn't use the Mesh class, there's no MeshTopology.Lines, so 1-pixel-thick lines are slower. All VectorLines use one canvas normally; I imagine a separate object for every line segment would not perform well.

--Eric

 

I've been using VectorLine.Selected as the trigger to show/hide some pertinent info about a line, and I've come across an annoying anomaly. The text activated by the trigger flashes on/off as the mouseposition moves.

 

VectorLine.Selected itself always just returns true or false if the point is within the line area, so I'd have to guess there's something in your code logic which is causing that.

--Eric

 

Further investigation reveals that VectorLine.Selected index is returning -1 when the text disappears, even though the point is within the line area. I must admit that the points which make up each line are some 6000 in number (in this example). Trying to show many points across a display which has significantly less number of pixels (1600 in this case - that would be 6000 points in 1600 pixels) would cause many of the segments to "stack" up on each other, I would think... but they should still return a valid yes/no. How does the interior logic of vectrosity deal with this?

 

You can look at the source code for Selected in the VectorLine.cs script, but index can only be -1 if Selected returns false. If you have a reproducible case of Selected returning false when it shouldn't, I can take a look at it.

--Eric

 

Hey,

I want Vectrosity to make a 'dotted' line for me. I looked at the documentation, specifically in the uniform-scaled textures part of it. I've followed all the instructions, but my line is still being drawn as a whole line, and not a segment with dots. I'm not sure if this is a problem with Vectrosity, or the way that I am handling material and texture.

Is there any way I can accomplish this?

 

Looks like you'd need to use a material with a transparent shader, as shown in the demo scenes that have dotted lines (such as Path, etc.).

--Eric

 

Hey Eric,

Whenever I take one of my textures and apply it to a material, and then use a transparent shader I lose the texture and it becomes transparent. Why does this happen? (I understand this is not a Vectrosity question). I'm clearly missing something here (sorry I'm a beginner).

A solution that seemed to work for me now is simply to take the material from the demo project of Path, and change it to the color I wanted to use (this looks good enough for me).

Thank you for your responsiveness and help.

 

Maybe it's to do with the alpha channel of your texture? Or the color you're using has the alpha set to 0?

--Eric

 

I'm using the latest Vectrosity and I cannot figure out how to stop Vectrosity drawing over the top of the app UI. I need it to render above the 3D scene but below the UI. What do I have to do?

 

Change the sorting order of the Vectrosity canvas to be below the others, or change the others to be on top of the Vectrosity canvas.

--Eric

 

I can't get the latest Vectrosity to render to any other layer besides UI. This is a problem because the lines are being drawn over the top of the UI which looks awful. I want the vectors to be drawn over the 3D objects and underneath the UI.

I've tried the following. Attempting to render anywhere besides the UI results in nothing being drawn unless render mode is "screen space overlay" which is not what I want.

Code (csharp):

1. VectorLine.SetCanvasCamera(camVector);
2. VectorLine.canvas.gameObject.layer = LayerMask.NameToLayer("Vector");

The camera mask is set to the Vector layer. Anything else I put on the vector layer is visible when the camera is active.

What else is needed to force Vectrosity to render on a layer other than UI?

 

Don't use layers, just set the sorting order for the canvas. You can't sort anything with layers unless you're using multiple cameras and appropriate layermasks.

--Eric

 

I'm using NGUI. It hasn't got a canvas. I setup multiple cameras with layer masks but it doesn't work.

Edit:
Wow. I spent all day on this.

The problem is the plane distance value. The default value resulted in Vectrosity not working if there was a value in the camera field of the Vectrosity canvas. It worked fine when the camera was null.

Documentation would have helped. While I did find documents, they contain nothing about plane distance. I tried searching and the only information I came up with was from the upgrade guide, but it doesn't mention plane distance.

 

Hi Eric,

I'm just updating my project to Vectrosity 4 (thank you for the new version), and was wondering about the persistence of canvases when changing scenes.

All lines I'm drawing using VectorManager behave as with Vectrosity 3, but the ones I'm drawing with Draw3DAuto() aren't destroyed when the scene changes. Is there an easy way to clear the canvas3D on scene change? I'd rather not have to find and destroy every VectorLine manually.

I've tried this:

functionAwake() {
Destroy(VectorLine.canvas3D);
}

but if I do this, the VectorCanvas3D object doesn't have a Canvas component if I draw the lines later and the lines remain invisible until I add one.

Sorry if I'm missing this information somewhere.

Thanks, georg.

 

Well, plane distance is a Unity thing, not specific to Vectrosity. The Unity docs for UI also apply to Vectrosity; the idea of Vectrosity 4 is that it uses the standard UI now and therefore the same info applies to both. http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Canvas.html

I'd recommend adding the lines to a List, then using Destroy with that List. I'm thinking it might be better to change the behavior for Draw3DAuto in the future.

--Eric

 

Great tool, but I'm completely failing on one thing: How on earth do I prevent it from persisting between scenes? My lines are all permanently drawn to the camera and if the scene is re-loaded it creates a new instance of it.

Many thanks.

 

Right now you'd have to destroy the lines before loading a new scene. Sorry about that; it's a holdover from Vectrosity 3 for reasons that no doubt made sense at the time.

--Eric

 

Thanks - I got it working, but I also had to do a Destroy() on the VectorCanvas gameObject as that persists as well. Is there another method you have for destroying the canvas? I couldn't find anything in the docs.

Also, one more question. Is there support for scaling at different screen resolutions? Right now I'm using iPhone 5/5S as the native resolution, but if I view my dotted curve on say a 6 or 6 Plus, the "dots" don't scale up with the rest of the objects rendered by the camera (I'm using an orthographic camera with 2D Toolkit that has auto-scaling depending on device resolution).

Thanks again.

 

No, the canvas is just a normal canvas.

Since Vectrosity uses pixel widths, I'd recommend using the screen size to calculate the line width. e.g., if you had a screen with a width of 1000 pixels and you used that as the baseline, and the app was running on a screen with a width of 2000 pixels, the ratio would be 2.0, which you'd use to multiply the line width.

--Eric

 

Got it sorted out now, thanks for the quick reply!

 

@Eric5h5

Thanks for the tool. After watching this project for quite some time, I finally purchased it, and I'm happy to see that it works with the new GUI system.

I don't know if this is on your radar or not, but the lines don't seem to obey the new masking system.

Any chance that will be implemented at some point?

 

I was afraid you would say that : ) Thanks anyway!
g.

 

That looks like the old Atari coin-op game Lunar Lander.

 

I'd like it to be implemented, but that depends on Unity making that work with CanvasRenderer.SetVertices. (Which is somewhat buggy; there are some other things that don't work such as SetActive.) Unfortunately there's nothing I can do on my end.

--Eric

 

Hi. I'm trying to draw a 2D-ish curve, using code identical to the MakeSpline script from the Vectrosity4 Demos. I managed to get the curve to appear on the Scene View, but it doesn't show up in the Game View. Am using the Unity 4.6 UI.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

The MakeSpline demo and code appears fine in the game view, so if it's actually identical, it would work. If you made some changes, it would be useful to know what they are.

--Eric

 

Hi Eric,

Basically i'm trying to draw a graph on an interface that's made up purely from the Unity UI system, without any cameras. Currently, using the MakeSpline script, i am only able to see the spline in the Game view when i use a camera. So i'll like to ask, whether it's possible to just view the spline through a Unity UI canvas(2D) instead of through a camera(3D). And if so, how do i do it?

Thanks

 

You need a camera to provide the background; otherwise it's undefined (might be black on some systems, might be filled with random garbage, etc.). Regardless, Vectrosity uses the canvas system and doesn't rely on a camera being present when using Draw. Draw3D requires a camera to orient the lines to.

--Eric

 

Hi Eric - I'm getting ugly mesh artifacts with smoothWidth (Vectrosity 4.0.4, Unity 4.6.1f1).

I've attached the following script to an empty GameObject in a new scene:

Code (CSharp):

1. public class LineTest : MonoBehaviour
2. {
3.     public Material lineMaterial;
4.  
5.     public void Start()
6.     {
7.         Vector2[] linePoints = { new Vector2(400, 300), new Vector2(600, 300), new Vector2(800, 300), new Vector2(1000, 300) };
8.         VectorLine line = new VectorLine("Test", linePoints, lineMaterial, 0f, LineType.Continuous);
9.  
10.         float[] lineWidths = { 4f, 16f, 32f };
11.         line.SetWidths(lineWidths);
12.         line.smoothWidth = true;
13.  
14.         line.Draw();
15.     }
16. }

The result looks like this:


If I remove 'line.smoothWidth = true' then the line renders correctly (albeit step-wise):

Any idea what's going wrong?

 

Sorry, that's a bug. So I released 4.0.5:

Fixes:
• SetCamera3D works properly even if the canvas hasn't been set up yet.
• VectorLine.smoothWidth works properly.

Also I think I forgot to mention 4.0.4 here, which has:

Changes:
• VectorLine.Selected can use an additional extraLength parameter, which is similar to extraWidth except it adds the specified distance to the beginning and end of each line segment for the purposes of checking the line.

Fixes:
• Lines that use a drawTransform where some of the axes are scaled to 0 no longer cause a "Screen position out of view frustum" error when the scene view is active.

--Eric

 

Thanks for the swift response! I'll check it out when it hits the asset store.

 

Hi Eric,

In a game I am making there are two main 'views' the first view is a planetarium of sorts, Vectrosity draws the lines set to 1px in this view fine:



The game can then switch to a second mode in which the lines shown below are also set to 1px, yet you can see they appear thicker and distorted. I'm using Vectrosity with the 4.6 UGUI integration, but the same occurs if I switch to a previous version of Vectrosity. I can switch between the two modes and the issue is consistent.

Do you have any ideas?

Note that the grid is not created with Vectrosity.



Thanks in advance!

 

Sounds like you're using two different cameras? If so, use SetCamera3D with the appropriate camera and re-draw the lines, so they will be oriented correctly.

--Eric

 

Tut, yep that was it - sorry for being stupid and thanks for coming back to me on the weekend.

Cheers dude, peace.

 

Hello Eric5h5, how are you doing?

I want to buy your asset, but I need to know if it is possible, for example, create a triangle using 3 lines and change the color inside the triangle, not only the color of the lines. Do you get it?

Thank you.