itch.io

Excellent, thanks!

Hi! I've tried doing a Clayxels stress test. I've multiplied the Clayxel container in clayxelsExampleScene around 144 times, and moved in to different positions in front of the camera. I then reduced to only a single directional light. The frames now drop to around 30 FPS (on my high end PC). Using half the number of Clayxels, I get around 55-something FPS. None of the Clayxel insides is moving.

I suppose there may also be the medium-high gameObject count which may add to the lag (I understand the transformd could optionally be converted to an internal, non-transform list to curb lag there). And/ or maybe it's something with the Clayxels itself causing the lag.

Ah gotcha! So this would be slow right: To have 1 constantly moving ClayObject each in 50 different Clayxel containers at the same time? And this would be fast: To have 50 different moving Clayxels, in which no ClayObject itself moves too? That's very cool, and opens up tons of use cases.

Oh great to know! Guess that makes realtime baking less important! I had the understanding there would be lag based on one of your tutorial videos, but now I think it just said it would get slow if there's too many ClayObjects in a single Clayxel perhaps... but maybe using many different Clayxels isn't slow? Will need to give it a try.

> Have you considered scaling up the resolution of the grid? 

I actually think they look terrific as is. I kind of even like the rough seams.

For mesh baking I was mostly thinking in terms of optimizing speed. Or maybe having say 500 Clayxels around (each with say 20 parts) is no speed issue? I didn't even try yet.

EXACTLY what I was thinking when playing with this... Clayxels would make a fantastic pinball visual!

This experiment uses controlled rigidbodies on a simple top-down view platform.

https://github.com/JPhilipp/LiquidClayxels

Sounds great. PLEASE also give runtime mesh simplification a try, it will be crucially important for 100s of the use cases for Clayxels in my head :)

Here's a tool I stumbled on which also supports runtime mesh simplification, maybe it can inspire you. I guess baking the colors is the super difficult extra part.

In Anyland we have a semi-baking approach. Basically when the user saves a Thing (which is made of Thing Parts), then it gets mesh-merged if possible, based on parts sharing the same color and texture and such. It was a necessity due to Unity's lag when using too many GameObjects, for starters. If we were to use Clayxels, then most likely -- for performance reasons, as there can be 1000s of things in the same area (even if only the closest N around you will show) -- we'd bake the mesh fixed when saving (thus clayObjects would not be allowed to be animated). Alternatively, to restrict to only N runtime clayObjects per area or so (but it's difficult, as people can also attach any Thing to their body :)).

It's also possible that Clayxels requires a fully fresh start as far as creating an editor environment goes.

I know you were trying to create a standalone editor, but I guess you kind of put that on halt for the moment? I guess any standalone editor can risk of basically recreating all that Unity already has. There needs to be added value to justify it.

Oh by the way, do you already know roughly when mesh simplifying might be released?

Yeah. Though even without runtime mobile support, it could still work as Create on PC - Explore (baked) on Mobile (once there's a mesh simplifier, but good ones exist on the Asset Store I guess).

As for Unity 2018, we understand it's a general problem that we haven't updated yet, so no worries there (Unity deprecated a network layer we're using, for starters, and the VR market is so small that it's hard to get any budget for a team).

Yeah I was playing with the thought, though I understand it's not compatible with Unity 2018 yet (?), another option would be to create a totally fresh tool (in either VR or for PC, and as far as mobile goes, I guess that's still to come and not yet compatible). Clayxels are so sweet for casual, intuitive shapes modeling!

Also shared to Reddit now: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/fac3mq/randomizing_clayxels/

(Anyland is our virtual reality sandbox universe where people create everything out of base meshes, so you can imagine I've been looking for ages for a soft-merging/ subtractive framework... we're still on Unity 2018, though...)

Thanks! Yes I did, here: https://twitter.com/AnylandNews/status/1233016732819886080

This project randomizes your clayxels, for inspiration, model creation and fun. You can specify how much variance you want, or lock certain clayObjects/ properties from randomizing. Hope you enjoy! Github: https://github.com/JPhilipp/ClayxelsRandomizer

Uninstalled the PostProcessing package, reinstalled, set up everything again, and now it works. (Googling it, looks like other people had this issue too.) Thanks!

(I'm also getting some PostProcessing errors from Unity, so that might be the issue.)

Thanks, I tried that but it didn't work, guess I must be doing something else wrong with my setup. I'll keep investigating.

Cool!

Here's a shape I found needing quite a bit already, an extruded triangle of sorts (alternatively, a custom cube where I can lower one side):

I tried to add a global post processing layer & volume, using bloom and vignette, but can't see any results. Is this something related to Clayxels or setup or am I just doing it wrong? Thanks!

Hi! Which new solid types, if any, are planned for the future?

The current ones are already amazing, though.

.... or are they two very different object concepts?

Thanks!

Noiceee.

Godspeed!

Is there a process like in PS4 Dreams where one could basically infinitely add & remove from a mesh, like in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27LZivpffQ&feature=youtu.be&t=1477

I guess one can currently do this by adding more and more ClayObjects, like subtractors, but in the Dreams video it almost looks like they're basically mini-freezing to a mesh all the time, then letting you continue, yet when we freeze with Clayxels they don't react to new Clayobjects anymore?

Maybe a different way to ask the question is, can ClayObjects react with normal, existing meshes of any kind.

Thanks for this great tool!

Thanks! Oh, and just realized, my above code would accidentally override the mirrorX option (for which I guess there could also be a nice API setter). In the meantime, I'm adding:

const float mirrorXOption = 2f;
clayObject.attrs = new Vector4(roundness, 0f, 0f, mirrorXOption);

It might be nice if clayObject.round = someFloat; would be directly accessible for cubes (e.g. a special setter, including error handling), though perhaps there's a design reason it's not, I mean I understand different solidTypes treat this differently/ don't have a round value.

Either way, I'm currently using this as workaround, which is also perfectly fine (just took me a minute longer to figure out):

float roundness = someFloat;
clayObject.attrs = new Vector4(roundness, 0f, 0f, 0f);

Thanks again for this great framework!

Great examples, thanks for sharing!

Nice, thanks!

I'm curious, I bet there is a good reason, but why does one have to hit P before being able to select a clayxel, and could this be changed?

Great!

Love Clayxels so much! It's what I've been looking for in regards to modeling and couldn't find anywhere else yet. So excited about the future of this.

Is the Clayxels display compatible for display in Virtual Reality? (I found in the past that some shaders etc. won't display well on the stereo screen approach of VR headsets.) Thanks!

Currently playing around with the terrific Clayxels. Out of curiosity as far as possible integration into some of my older projects go, what's the oldest Unity version one could use with Clayxels? (Realtime editing, not using the baked meshes.) E.g. would Unity 2018.1.0f2 work? I see the instructions mention Unity 2019, so maybe that's the required one.

Totally loving Clayxels.

Would it be possible in the future to add a mesh simplifier/ vertex count reducer? For instance, say we blend two cubes softly, the soft part should remain as is, but the larger flat areas on each cube are currently creating many tris, but could probably be reduced a lot. (If that matters to GPU speed to begin with; I'm no expert on that.)

But perhaps it's not crucial to have this as something Clayxel-native, as many third-party packages offer mesh reduction algos, and maybe they could be added individually by devs post-baking. Yet having it all in one is also very powerful and helpful.

Please excuse if there's already such an option, I'm a Clayxel newcomer!

Given a set of Clayxels, does runtime mesh generation -- that is, not live preview but live generation -- work on mobile? Let's say if I had map data from user generated content, and I wanted to only display the map by baking the meshes on load (but all editing of it happens on PC, but there was never any PC mesh baking upload process). Thanks!