Auto Fence Builder [Released]

Community Showcases
1

Hey Guys

Auto Fence Builder has just been released on the asset store:

It’s a tool for both designing fences, and for laying networks of them across your ground/terrain.

Its main goal was to see if it was possible to reduce this fiddly time-consuming task down to a few simple clicks, e.g. to put a perimeter fence around a terrain of any size can be done in four clicks, with the fence adapting to the contours of the ground.

The design inspector lets you choose from presets; build a new one from component parts; or even randomize the whole process to get a new Frankenstein fence. After laying the fence it remains fully editable, both in terms of appearance and in moving/reshaping the layout.

We’ve included a long pdf manual, but hope it isn’t really necessary as it’s just a matter of shift-clicking in your scene view to build fences.

It’s an initial release, so hopefully people will find it a useful time-saver, but also see potential for other features.
We’re just a two-man team, so would love to get feedback in case we’ve missed something that could improve it!

January 2016 Updated to Version 2.1:

Vastly expanded design & components options.
Now equally at home with walls, not just fences.
Drag & drop your own Game Objects to use as any components in the fence or wall

Can also be used as a very fast general-purpose object-placement tool for click-adding any Game Objects to your scene, with the benefit of smart alignment, orientation and scaling.

Stepping through some of the presets (no audio)

Parallel Walls:

1 Like
2

Nice one, reminds me of railclone plugin for 3dsmax :slight_smile:

3

Thanks, just took a look at that, looks like a great plugin :slight_smile:

4

It prety much started as a fence creator plugin but evolved to a full procedural modeling plugin with a node editor. I am sure you can find many ideas there for your future developement, cheers!

5

Hi, just bought this, when I try to create a build I get this

Assets/_IMPORTED/Auto Fence Builder/Scripts/AutoFenceCreator.cs(2,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `UnityEditor’ could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly

Any idea what to do here?

Thanks

6

Does your asset work with 2d images/sprites? like ferr2d. And can it be used to procedurally generate stuff.
I’m actually thinking about castle building with this.

Thanks. :wink:

7

Sorry to hear you’ve had an issue. Can you confirm that this only happens during a build?
We hadn’t seen this before, but since reading your post we’ve tracked down the culprit and will have a fix ready tomorrow. If you could send us an email at the support address in the readme or manual, we’ll send you an update straight away.

Thanks

8

@Kiori Thanks for your interest, and good questions!
At the moment this doesn’t use the 2D system, it’s purely a 3D modelling utility. As such it’s an editor design tool only and has no runtime component which would be necessary for procedural generation in-game. Also, castle walls would require mitering at corners which fences don’t require.

It’s really good at fences ;), but best to be clear and say it’s not a general purpose procedural generator.

-------- Edit --------
Since v2.0 we’re glad to say it’s now very much more a general purpose tool, and is ideal for castle building! :slight_smile:

9

Sorry

Sorry, what is the support email.
I can run the game in debug, error just shows when I try to build it.
I have removed your asset and I can build again.

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twoclicktools at gmail dot com (trying to avoid spam bots)

Thanks

Joe
TwoClickTools

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*** UPDATE ***

A bug in a previous build before 1.0.1 could cause build errors, or prevent compilation for Web Player builds. Please email support for a fixed update if this affects you before you can get the Asset Store update.
Pre-update, if you have your File/Build Settings set to Web Player, setting this to anything else will temporarily resolve the problem.

Thanks, and sorry for any inconvenience.

Joe
TwoClickTools

12

Having fun with this, but I just put a fence around a big mountain terrain and it took 4 clicks instead of the advertised twoclicks. Can I have my money back? Just joking :wink:

Is it possible to use my own fence designs inside your asset? I mean use my own parts along with the included parts?

13

Yes!
It’s not an advertised feature just yet because of the danger of adding a faulty mesh with unpredictable results. But there are some hints in the back of the manual how to do this:

If you import one of the included .fbx parts ( e.g. a post or rail) into max/maya/cinema/blender or whichever modeling software you use, you can then use it as a template to build your own. You may find the orientation/rotation/scale looks different to what you expect after import, but that’s because Unity and the modeling programs have different ideas about up/forward etc.
If you build or modify your own to follow the template’s orientation & scale, once imported in to Auto Fence Builder, it will appear as expected.

If you find this tricky, or don’t have the software to import/export the right format, just email the mesh & material to the support address, and we’ll send you back a prefab package that you can just drop in.

Joe
TwoClickTools

14

i’m trying to replace a material on the fence posts with my own but when I do it only changes one post. how do I make it change across the whole fence?

15

OK, thanks, I got them imported but when I use the fence the posts I made in Maya, they appear buried half-way through the ground in Unity, I can fix it by changing ‘Post Height Offset’, but how to I get them to be correct in Maya?

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In Maya, make sure the pivot is in the centre of the base of your post, then they’ll automatically align perfectly with the terrain or ground. (For rails, they need to be in the centre of the left edge)

17

OK, sounds like you’re modifying the already-built fence? (in Current Fences Folder, or the Finished AutoFence folder?). If you change the material on the prefab instead, Auto Fence Builder will use that for all subsequent posts.

Prefabs are in Auto Fence Builder/Resources/FencePrefabs.

HTH

18

Thanks, that worked. ( actually, works in all projects except one, but it might be a project issue)

19

Great :slight_smile: Remove/re-add AFB to the hierarchy. It sounds like it’s just cached the old prefabs.

20

Update 1.1 is now live. Includes the fixes mentioned previously, and two new fence prefab sets: Concrete Mouldy Panels and Gilded Assassin - an ornate gold carved panel.
Shown in the post below: