To use this script, place it as a file called "illustrata.cs" in your "/assets/editor" folder. There should then appear a new menu item in the editor, and two options below it. To use them you select in the hierarchy the objects you wish to select from / apply material to, and one (or more) materials in the Project pane (Apply Material uses only one material). These two scripts work well in cooperation, which is what I did.

download file (Right click and choose "Save link as..")

 
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;
using System.Collections;
/**
 *  Set of editor tools found generally useful by illustrata
 *
 *  Features:
 *    - Select all objects that use one or a set of materials
 *    - Apply a material to all selected objects
 *
 *  @author Alexander Morland (alkemann)
 *  @license MIT
 *  @copyright illustrata.no
 */
public class illustrata : ScriptableObject {
 
	/**
	 *   Given an editor selection of gameobjects with renderer component and
	 *   at least one material, set editor selection to those gameobjects that
	 *   have one (of these) material(s) applied to it.
	 *
	 */
    [MenuItem ("illustrata/Select By Material")]
	static void DoSelect() {
		ArrayList mats = new ArrayList();
		int count = 0;
		foreach ( Object obj in Selection.objects ) {
			if (typeof(UnityEngine.Material) == obj.GetType()) {
				mats.Add(obj);
			} else {
				count++;
			}
		}
		UnityEngine.Object[] select = new UnityEngine.Object[count];
		count = 0;
		foreach ( GameObject go in Selection.gameObjects ) {
			foreach( Material mat in mats) {
				if (go.renderer.sharedMaterial.name == mat.name || go.renderer.sharedMaterial.name == mat.name+" (Instance)" )  {
					select[count++] = go;
				}
			}
		}
		Selection.objects = select;
	}
 
	/**
	  *  Given any number of gameobjects with renderer and one material as editor selection,
	  *  apply the selected material to all the selected objects.
	  */
    [MenuItem ("illustrata/Apply Material To Selected")]
	static void DoApply() {
		Material mat = null;
		foreach ( Object obj in Selection.objects ) {
			if (typeof(UnityEngine.Material) == obj.GetType()) {
				mat = (UnityEngine.Material) obj;
				continue;
			}
		}
		foreach ( GameObject go in Selection.gameObjects ) {
			go.renderer.sharedMaterial = mat;
		}
	}
}
 

So I went to the NewTek forums and posted a question on whether or not there is a solution for this, either hidden somewhere in LW or some sort of plugin. I got some suggestions on plugins to use and a script to try. They weren't exactly what I was after, but it gave me a starting point and idea of how to get this functionality working as I wanted it to.

I studied the suggested LScript (LightWave Script), got the grasps of what was going on, analyzing why it wasn't working, and after a couple of iterations came up with a solution that worked. This was in turn taken by someone else, new to the discussion, and improved to yet another level.

At this point the script was doing what I wanted in terms of scaling each "island" of selected polygons, but in a very try-and-see-what-happens kind of way, as there was no interactive feedback of the end result while changing the scale value. So I added an interactive update to it as well as the next step.

From this it was a couple of lines extra and we had "island-rotation" as well. The only problem here is that it happens on world-coordinate axis, so if your island of selected polygons were on differently slanted angles, it could mess them up. If they were aligned flat on the same plane, they were fine.

Now this LScript is in a stage of adding scaling around each polygon-selection's average normal (its local "up" axis) and if this works then... woohoo! Anyone with some 1337 LScript and/or 3D math knowledge is welcome to contribute.

I would not have found these solutions as fast if it was not for the community and the general attitude of sharing and contributing.

That's it for now, check out the forum thread and follow the continued development of this:
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100587

or click more for to also see the code:

@version 2.7
@warnings
@script modeler
 
groups;
groupCnt = 0;
 
scaleAmount = 100;
 
rotateXAmount = 0;
rotateYAmount = 0;
rotateZAmount = 0;
 
polygons {
	editbegin();
	polys = polygons;
	editend();
	return polys;
}
 
main
{
	init();
	interface();
}
 
init
{
	selmode(DIRECT);
	(polyCnt) = polycount();
	if(polyCnt<1) {
		info("No polygons selected");
		return;
	}
	extractPolyGrp();
 
	//createMorphMap();
	reselect();
}
 
interface
{
	reqbegin("Polygon Islands");
	reqsize(200, 150);
 
	amount_ctl = ctlminislider("Scale:",100,0,1000);
	ctlrefresh(amount_ctl, "updateScale");
 
	ctlsep();
 
	rotateXAmount_ctl = ctlminislider("Rotate X:",0,-360,360);
	ctlrefresh(rotateXAmount_ctl, "updateXRotate");
	rotateYAmount_ctl = ctlminislider("Rotate Y:",0,-360,360);
	ctlrefresh(rotateYAmount_ctl, "updateYRotate");
	rotateZAmount_ctl = ctlminislider("Rotate Z:",0,-360,360);
	ctlrefresh(rotateZAmount_ctl, "updateZRotate");
 
	if(reqpost())
	{
		selectBaseVmap();
		reselect();
		confirmChanges();
	}
	else
	{
		selectBaseVmap();
		reselect();
	}
	reqend();
}
 
confirmChanges
{
	process();
}
 
updateScale: value
{
	scaleAmount = value;
	process();
}
updateXRotate: value
{
	rotateXAmount = value;
	process();
}
updateYRotate: value
{
	rotateYAmount = value;
	process();
}
updateZRotate: value
{
	rotateZAmount = value;
	process();
}
 
extractPolyGrp
{
	undogroupbegin();
 
	selmode(USER);
 
	//hide non-island and disconnect islands for Select Connected to work.
	selhide(UNSELECTED);
	cut(); paste();
 
	// extract polygon groups
	(polyCnt) = polycount();
	while(polyCnt) {
		selmode(USER);
		selpolygon(SET,POLYNDX,1);
		selpolygon(SET,CONNECT);
		groups[++groupCnt] = polygons();
		selhide(SELECTED);
		selmode(GLOBAL);			//Bug workaround! USER selmode counts hidden polys. Hides to slow!?
									//Oddly, USER mode works when debugging.
		(polyCnt) = polycount();
	}
	// reconnect
	selunhide();
	mergepoints();
 
	// show selection again
	reselect();
 
	undogroupend();
}
 
createMorphMap
{
	selectBaseVmap();
	editbegin();
	morphTarget=VMap(VMMORPH,"_TempVMap",3);
	if(!morphTarget) error("Could not create the VMap");
	foreach(p,points)
	{
		values[1] = 0;
		values[2] = 0;
		values[3] = 0;
		morphTarget.setValue(p,values);
	}
	editend();
}
 
process
{
	createMorphMap();
	undogroupbegin();
	//process each group
	for(i=1;i<=groupCnt;i++) {
		selmode(USER);
		selpolygon(CLEAR);
		selpolygon(SET,POLYID,groups[i]);
		center = center(boundingbox());
 
		scale(scaleAmount/100,center);
 
		rotate(rotateXAmount,X,center);
		rotate(rotateYAmount,Y,center);
		rotate(rotateZAmount,Z,center);
	}
	reselect();
	undogroupend();
}
 
reselect
{
	//reselect
	selmode(USER);
	selpolygon(CLEAR);
	for(i=1;i<=groupCnt;i++)
	{
		selpolygon(SET,POLYID,groups[i]);
	}
}
 
selectBaseVmap
{
	new();
	close();
}

What is the value of creative efforts, often described as intellectual property? And by value I don't talk about monetary measures alone.

Envision this: You have an idea with a small technical scope and you share it with others. Later on, the exact same idea is presented and implemented as somebody else's new and brilliant idea, just before your own implementation of it is completed... Would you consider this to be ok, as it's just your own fault you didn't implement it fast enough after revealing it?

If an idea in itself has no value, and is up for grabs for anyone as soon as it has been verbally or textually expressed, then I don't think I will spend a lot of time sharing ideas in any open fora, or even closed ones for that matter. Game concepts and game mechanics will be under a lid and seal until the game is finished.

If I spend 90% of my time working out the gameplay and 10% of my time goes to producing graphics and code, then the time spent on gameplay is where the value of the game reside. If you spend 90% of your time on the graphics, and someone traces it to create "their own" version of it, would you accept it as decent behavior? What about re-record the in-game sounds and changing the pitch to create their own version of it?

I am not saying people shouldn't make another tower defense game (we at illustrata just made one), or not make another physics stacking game, but there is a difference between making a similar game in a category of several variations, and recreating one specific game with only microscopic changes and reduced polish.

If you are a cloner from Kamino insisting on identically cloning other game concepts, at least have the decency to clone something that has already been released and not something you have come across being in development for the same target platform and audience you are aiming for.

Then again, this might only be me being overly sensitive to injustice and what i consider to be rude behavior.

</rant>

Implementing this new sitemap was a piece of cake since SlickMap required ULs with special DOM Ids and our CMS already used MenuHelper for site navigation.

To enable both XML and the new HTML sitemap we simply changed our '/sitemap.xml' route and added one line:

 
Router::connect('/sitemap', array('admin' => null,'controller'=>'sitemaps','action'=>'index','plugin'=>null));
Router::parseExtensions();
 

To create a SlickMap compatible sitemap we used MenuHelper to create two menus with the DOM Ids "utilityNav" and "primaryNav" inside a DIV with the class "sitemap". The element of the "primaryNav" menu that contains our homepage had to be given the DOM Id "home" which was easily done using MenuHelper:

 
$menu->add('root', array('introducing illustrata', '/', array('title' => 'Home')),array('li' => array('id'=>'home')));
 

Full views/sitemaps/index.ctp :

 
<?php  $this->layout = 'blank'; ?>
<div class="sitemap">
 
<?php
	$html->css('slickmap', null, array(), false);
	$menu->add('utility', array('Blog', '/blog', array('title' => 'Layers of information. illustrata team blog.')));
	$menu->add('utility', array('Sitemap', '/sitemap'));
	echo $menu->generate('utility', array('id' => 'utilityNav'));
 
	$menu->add('root', array('introducing illustrata', '/', array('title' => 'Home')),array('li' => array('id'=>'home')));
 
	foreach ($data as $main) {
		if (!empty($main['SubMenu'])) {
			$node = $html->link($main['Page']['page_title'], '/'.$main['Page']['path'],
				array('title' => $main['Page']['meta_description']));
			foreach ($main['SubPage'] as $sub) {
				$menu->add('sub'.$main['Page']['id'], array($sub['page_title'],
					'/pages/'.$sub['path'], array('title' => $sub['meta_description'])));
			}
			$node .= $menu->generate('sub'.$main['Page']['id']);
			$menu->addElement('root',$node);
		} else {
			$menu->add('root', array($main['Page']['page_title'], '/'.$main['Page']['path'],
				array('title' => $main['Page']['meta_description'])));
 
		}
	}
	echo $menu->generate('root', array('id' => 'primaryNav'));
?>
</div>
 

Thanks to ajaxian for bringing this excellent CSS sitemap solution to our attention!

First and foremost, there was played a lot of ForkMaster!

Gwoo and Felix playing ForkMaster

We also found a great place called Zaim Lounge Default

It had tubes, juice, beer and food. It also did have a bad case of extremely rude waitresses, but four of five isnt bad.

Default, the place to be

Andreas, Eskil, Dirk, Yando, Graham, Daniel, Garrett, Felix, Gary, Neil, Mariano, Cindy, Marius, Nate (and several others) inside Default

Thanks goes from both us at CakeFest and to the lucky restaurant to the kind person that supplied the unsecured wifi called "default".

We went to an awesome bar/club/restaurant called either Diamond Lounge, White Trash or Both. Images from this place has been cencored, but if you know where to look, they are on a tube somewhere

It wasnt all giggles though, some serious talks where held

Gwoo, Neil, Felix and Joël

If you are wondering what they talked about, the videos are promised to be published soon, but appearently there has been some technical difficulties. Until then, Graham Weldon was better at taking notes than me:

• Gwoo's opening keynote
• Jperras demystifying webservices
• Felix gives you a recipty for success
• Neil Crookes gave a master class on Baking

Other wrap ups:

• kevin.vanzonneveld.net
• A mind map of CakeFest by @timk_

And you can already download slides and code snippets from

• cakephp.org/downloads

Another way of getting a little insight into our crazy week, is taking a look at

• the twitter hashtag #CakeFest

About my own presentation..

I will do a writeup on it on this blog in the next few days.

I hope to see you at the next CakeFest, I know I won't miss it for all the Club-Mate in Germany

• Verifiable
• Track-n-Graph
• iCharts
• Widgenie
• Timetric
• Trendrr

Of more interest to me personally are the great toolkits emerging for interactive visualization on the web. Robert again mentions flare (and prefuse), but I'd like to mention a couple of others:

• Protovis is a visualization toolkit for JavaScript using SVG.
• The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web.
• Processing.js is an open programming language for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions for the web without using Flash or Java applets.

These are all great toolkits that showcase what is possible in the browser, and it is up to us, the developers, to make great tools from them that delivers added value for the business user, as argued by Enrico Bertini and Christopher Collins recently.

This Helper is largely modelled on FlashHelper, that in a similar fashion takes advantage of the swfobject mentioned above.

To use this helper, you need the code below and the unityobject.js that you can grab at unifycommunity.com or as part of the post process build package from unity3d.com. Then simply put your .unity3d files in /app/webroot/unity and use it like this:

$unity->init();
echo $unity->render('game',array('width'=>'100%','height'=>'100%'));

or

echo $unity->init(array('width'=>'1000px','height'=>'600px','domId'=>'unityDiv'),true);
echo $html->div(null,null,array('id'=>'unityDiv', 'style'='border: 2px solid black;'));
echo $unity->render('game.unity3d');

Download plain text (Updated 12th august 2009)

<?php
/**
* A helper for embedding unity into your site using javascript.
* This helper is a wrapper for the javascript UnityObject vendor
*
* Install
*
* - Save this file to /app/views/helpers/unity.php
* - Download the unityobject.js file and
* - place the js file in /app/webroot/js/unityobject.js
* - Add 'Unity' to helpers array either in AppController or just relevant controller
*
* Usage example 1:
*   $unity->init();
*   echo $unity->render('game',array('width'=>'100%','height'=>'100%'));
*
* Usage example 2:
*   echo $javascript->link('unityobject');
*   echo $unity->render('game',array('width'=>'400px','height'=>'400px'));
*
* Usage example 3:
*   echo $unity->init(array('width'=>'1000px','height'=>'600px','domId'=>'unityDiv'),true);
*   echo $html->div(null,null,array('id'=>'unityDiv', 'style'='border: 2px solid black;'));
*   echo $unity->render('game.unity3d');
*
* Usage example 4:
*   $unity->init(array('width'=>'100%','height'=>'100%'));
*   echo $unity->render('game');
*   echo $unity->render('control', array('domId'=>'controllerDiv'));
*
*
* @link http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnityObject
* @copyright illustrata.no
* @license MIT
* @author Ronny Vindenes
* @author Alexander Morland aka alkemann
* @version 1.3.1
* @modified 12 aug. 2009 by alkemann
*/
class UnityHelper extends AppHelper {
  // other helpers used within this helper
  public $helpers = array('Html','Javascript');
 
  /**
   * Location of unity3d files relative to webroot.
   * Default 'unity3d' gives /app/webroot/unity/;
   * @var string
   */
  public $unity_folder = 'unity';
 
  /**
   * Default options for the render method
   * @var array
   * @access private
   */
  private $options = array('width'=>640,'height'=>480,'param'=>array());
 
  /**
   * Optional initializing for setting default parameters, includes theunity library.
   *
   * @example echo $unity->init(array(),true);
   * @example $unity->init(array('width'=>200,'height'=>100);
   * @example $unity->init();
   * @return mixed String if $inline = true, true/false depending on success of addint to view
   */
  public function init($options = array(), $inline = false) {
    if (!empty($options)) {
      $this->options = am($this->options, $options);
    }
    if ($inline) {
      return $this->Javascript->link('unityobject');
    } else {
      $view = ClassRegistry::getObject('view');
      if (is_object($view)) {
        $view->addScript($this->Javascript->link('unityobject'));
        return true;
      } else {
        return false;
      }
    }
  }
 
  /**
   * Returns the scripts and noscripts html for embedding a unity file
   *
   * @param string $unityFile Name of unity file to render (optional extension)
   * @param array $options
   * @return string HTML to be echoed
   */
  public function render($unityFile, $options = array()) {
    $options = am ($this->options, $options);
    if (!isset($options['domId'])) {
      $options['domId'] = uniqid('unity');
    }
    $objectDomId = $options['domId'].'Object';
    $embedDomId = $options['domId'].'Embed';
    if (substr($unityFile,-8) !== '.unity3d') {
      $unityFile .= '.unity3d';
    }
 
    $html = '';
 
    $unityLocation = $this->webroot.$this->unity_folder.'/'.$unityFile;
    $unityParams = '';
    $noscriptParams = '';
 
    foreach ($options['param'] as $key => $value) {
      $unityParams .= 'tUnityObject.addParam("'.$key.'","'.$value.'");';
      $noscriptParams .= $this->Html->tag('param', null, array('name'=>$key, 'value'=>$value))."\n";
    }
 
    $html .= $this->Javascript->codeBlock('var tUnityObject = new UnityObject("'.$unityLocation.'","'.
    $options['domId'].'","'.$options['width'].'","'.$options['height'].'");'.$unityParams.'tUnityObject.write();');
 
    $html .= $this->Html->tag('noscript',
      $this->Html->tag('object',
        $this->Html->tag('param',null, array('name' => 'src','value' => $unityLocation))."\n"
        .$noscriptParams
        .$this->Html->tag('embed',null, array(
          'id' => $embedDomId,
          'src' => $unityLocation,
          'width' => $options['width'],
          'height' => $options['height'],
          'type' => 'application/vnd.unity',
          'pluginspage' => 'http://www.unity3d.com/unity-web-player-2.x'
        ))."\n"
        .$this->Html->tag('noembed',
            'This content requires the Unity Web Player, please click the button
            below to visit the Unity Web Player download page.'.
            $this->Html->tag('br').$this->Html->tag('br').
            $this->Html->link($this->Html->image('http://webplayer.unity3d.com/installation/getunity.png'),
            'http://www.unity3d.com/unity-web-player-1.x', array(), null, false)
          )."\n",
          array(
            'id' => $objectDomId,
            'classid' => 'clsid:444785F1-DE89-4295-863A-D46C3A781394',
            'width' => $options['width'],
            'height' => $options['height'],
            'codebase' => 'http://webplayer.unity3d.com/download_webplayer-2.x/UnityWebPlayer.cab#version=2,0,0,0'
          )
        )
    );
 
    return $html;
  }
}
?>

My talk will be late on Sunday. Hopefully three and a half day has not worn people completely down. My talk will not be especially technical in any case. The talk's title is "Test & API-driven Behavior Development" and I will evangelize unit testing and proper api design. Look at the schedule for a longer description.

I hope to see you there.

I'd like to add the paper Compositing Digital Images by T.Porter & T.Duff, that completely revitalized X.Org and graphics on *NIX through XRender (indirectly via Plan 9) and Cairo some 20+ years after it was published, to the list of essential reading.

The major contenders at the time were: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Zend, and (re-)writing our own in house framework.

Before looking closer at any of the possible solutions, I wrote a set of requirements based on what I thought was most important for a growing company with programmers of very different skill levels and experience.

Requirements:

Goals:

• Reduce chore of writing boilerplate code
• Enable us to spend more time on architecture, user workflow/interaction design and business logic
• Real prototyping - as in prototypes you throw away when you are ready to build the real product
• Let every developer regardless of skill level do interesting work
• Make it easy to create reusable code
• Reduce developer burn out by having a common standard so developers could switch between different projects easily

Users:

The developers at the company had very diverse backgrounds, from software engineering to bedroom web hacking. Up until this point most of the projects had been done either by a single developer or as a team of two, and management had expressed interest in increasing team sizes for projects and implement a "revolving" team in order to reduce burn out.

Application:

The main application of the framework was for developing a large integrated web app based on smaller modular apps. It would also be used for developing small one-off custom apps and sites.

Environment:

The production environment was a Debian based LAMP setup, partially maintained by the hosting company.
The development environment used was based on XAMPP with ZendStudio as the IDE and Subversion for SCM.

Our own custom framework

We had a simple PHP5 based framework, written by a single developer with little time for testing and "designed" with little regard for actual use by others. It mixed and matched business logic with presentation and was as far  from DRY as you could get.

Pros:

• Can be tailored exactly to our needs

Cons:

• No existing documentation
• Full burden of maintenance
• Must spend significant amount of time on developing the framework before we can really focus on the apps
• No real in-house expertise in developing scalable php frameworks

CakePHP

CakePHP is a wholly Ruby on Rails inspired framework, designed around agile principles like DRY and Convention Over Configuration.

Pros:

• Solid MVC architecture
• Sound app foundation
• Bake (Automatic code generation)

Cons:

• Poor documentation at the time.
  (The documentation after the 1.2 release has improved so much it is now among the very best out there)
• Most example code was in the CakePHP 1.1 style at the time.
  (The release of the CookBook and publishing of 1.2 based articles on The Bakery has changed that completely)
• Rigid structure
• Limited utility code at the time
  (The current CakePHP 1.2 core behaviors and utility libraries cover most of the things we were missing)

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is small and lightweight, bordering more on the side of library then framework. It aims to provide fast functions with as little configuration and overhead as possible and to generally stay as much out of your way as possible.

Pros:

• Light weight and fast
• Easy to learn for php spagetti coders
• Very flexible
• Optional MVC

Cons:

• Very little utility code (at the time)

Symfony

Originating as a fork of Mojavi3, Symfony has taken inspiration form Ruby on Rails for many features and integrated other existing PHP open source projects for some of it's features. It has a clean design and follows agile principles like DRY and KISS.

Pros:

• Solid MVC
• Decent documentation
• Good range of built-in utility code

Cons:

• Unsual coding style in views (<?php ?> for every line or php statement)
• Very rigid app stucture (at the time)

Zend Framework

Zend framework is an enterprise oriented framework designed "with simplicity in mind. To provide a lightweight, loosely-coupled component library simplified to provide 4/5s of the functionality everyone needs and that lets you customize the other 20% to meet your specific business needs."

Pros:

• Documentation (sometimes a little too good - e.g. documented features had not yet been implemented)
• Lots of esoteric/enterprisey utility code
• Very flexible
• Highly visible and well known commercially
• Optional MVC

Cons:

• Feels and acts more like a library of functions than an integrated framework
• No real app foundation - you get to decide what constitutes an app
• No help with boilerplate code

Conclusion:

As soon as I had written a small test app in CakePHP and read the code for some of the larger open source apps based on it, it became clear to me that CakePHP would best meet the most critical of our needs. In particular its "convention over configuration" philosophy and console baking functionality would help us make our programs conform to a common standard regardless of individual developer preferences and habits.

Before adopting CakePHP as our framework, the management wanted input from the rest of the developers on which framework they thought was best: CakePHP or Zend Framework.

The result was 5 votes for Zend vs 2 votes for CakePHP. After some discussion, taking into account the arguments for and against the two options, the decision was made - CakePHP would become our standard.

After a fairly long in house training period, including feedback and assistance from the core CakePHP team, we managed to develop some nice apps and publish these articles on the Bakery:

• FlashChartHelper - version 3
• Revision Behavior - Revision control made easy
• MenuHelper
• Timeline helper
• Dummy Data plugin - fill your app with random data that makes sense
• Multirecord helper/behavior
• Chartable Behavior
• OrderedBehavior (2.1)
• LogableBehavior
• FlashHelper - a wrapper for the SwfObject js class

Since then most of the frameworks have matured and improved and some new have arrived on the scene, but I still feel CakePHP was the right choice in our situation. For those who are looking to try CakePHP, I would like to give this advice: Leave your preconceptions and old ways behind and approach CakePHP with an open mind. The initial learning curve can be steep, but once you internalize the conventions of CakePHP, you may find yourself wondering how you ever got anything done before!