Architecture AI Pathing Project: Selecting Spawn and Target Positions from Objects in the Model

November 23, 2020

Spawning and Pathing System

Architecture AI Project

Updated Spawning System to Use Objects within Model as List of Options

We wanted to update the spawning system so that instead of being arbitrary points, both the spawn location and target location were tied to objects that could be found throughout the entire model. The system is already creating a list of all the objects within the model for applying colliders and various other components, so that could be accessed for this purpose as well. This list of objects was then put into a UI dropdown for selecting both the spawn position and the target position. The transform of the selected object was then used for that respective part of the pathing.

Highlighting the Spawn and Target Locations

I wanted to highlight both the spawn and target objects to make it more apparent where the agents would be aiming to path. The first implementation I went with for now changes the material of the object. The spawn object becomes an orange color, and the target object becomes a green color. This however is not very clear with many objects, because some such as windows and doors are within the walls, which are hard to see from the angle we are using currently. I will be exploring better options such as spawning an extra object or UI element around the area to make it more apparent.

Example Images Showing a Few Paths with Varied Spawn and Target Positions

Next Step

We want to determine how we want to narrow down the list of options to select as spawn and target locations since we generally will not need access to every single object. We have to decide how flexible the options need to be, as the more rigid it will be the more we can automate it and narrow the options down to a select few.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Online Multiplayer Networking Solution Tutorial Using Unity and Mirror - Tutorial by: Jason Weimann

February 2, 2021 Networking Online Multiplayer Unity & Mirror Title: Let's build a 4-Player Networked Game LIVE - Online Shooter (with Mirror & Unity) By: Jason Weimann Youtube - Tutorial Description: Intro to using Mirror for networking online multiplayer play in Unity development. Introduction This tutorial has Jason Weimann implementing online network play into a basic Unity twin-stick shooting game. They use Mirror, which is a Unity asset used for simplifying the online network synchronization process. This is a live implementation where they work through many errors transferring a game from simply working locally to working with a host/client relationship. Mirror Mirror - Home Page Mirror is "a high level Networking API for Unity, supporting different low level Transports" (from Mirror themselves). It is a clean solution for implementing a quick and simple online networking option for Unity projects. The core components breakd
Read more

Exporting FBX from Houdini with Color

April 17, 2019 Exporting From Houdini FBX and Color Information Exporting the Model Using my balloon Houdini example from class, I was able to export the geometry using the Educational version (the Apprentice version does not allow exporting FBX, but you could export an OBJ for my purposes possibly). This was very straight forward, as you can just use File -> Export -> FBX in Houdini. Since I was doing this for a class to use in a Snapchat filter (using LensStudio), I wanted to reduce the poly count a lot. I opened the FBX in Maya and used a basic Reduce to reduce the poly count a lot before exporting that for use in LensStudio. While this was good enough to export the geometry, I could not get any of the color information to come with it. I originally exported out an OBJ and had the same issue, so I exported FBX in hopes it would keep the color information somehow, but this was not the case. Exporting the Color Information My first thought to get the color
Read more

Houdini Assignment - Fuse and Group

Image
April 8, 2019 Houdini Assignment Fuse and Group I worked on a Houdini class assignment to make a basic model and decided to try and create the bulb on the back of a Bulbasaur, a Pokemon that is half plant and half dinosaur. I figured I could use a lot of the basics we learned in class to get me pretty far, while also needing to cover a few new things to get it exactly how I wanted it. In class, we created a basic hot air balloon. This consisted of tracing a curve over a background reference image of a hot air balloon, creating a section of the balloon from this original curve, then replicating that section as many times as needed to fully encompass the full balloon. These were a lot of principles I used for creating my bulb. The biggest hurdle I needed to overcome was that that top of each of my sections would all need to connect at a single point, so I would need some additional nodes after simply creating a "left" and "right" variation of my addit
Read more