External or Streaming Shader Components Possible?

Unity Engine
1

Hello,

I currently am evaluating Unity as a possible replacement for an existing app I use in the product visualization market. These would be products such as soft drinks in cans and bottles, chips in bags and canisters, etc.

The primary need is to visualize packaging or product label variations in 3d, under the most realistic lighting and material conditions possible. Additionally, flexibility must exist for my client to swap out at runtime, at a minimum, the diffuse texture map, and optionally the bump, opacity and reflection maps.

My question is, can texture maps exist outside of the compiled executable, and a shader or script refer to these textures at runtime? This assumes a generic naming convention such as diffuse_01.png, diffuse_02.png etc, and any updates would maintain these identicle names and be copied over the original.

Thank you very much for any insight you may provide on this. Unity looks quite exciting so far!

Steven McEuen

2

You can use the WWW class to download external textures from a web site.

The “Old: Script Examples” project has an example of a live updating web cam in New York.
http://unity3d.com/examples/index.html

Unity has a wide range of per pixel shaders to choose from. A lot of people use Ambient occlusion or radiosity lightmaps baked with Maya.

There are also sample scripts on how to create soft shadows on the unify wiki.

3

Thanks for the rapid response!

Does the WWW class encompass the local file syntax or does it limit it to an online url?

Thanks for the tip on the examples.

Steven McEuen

4

At the moment it is limited to url’s but we hope to change that in a future version. (Of course only in the standalone and editor not webplayer)

If you need it right now you can write a plugin. Alternatively we also offer contracting services.

5

…or you can read from any file format you have by using .NET classes (System.IO) and then use SetPixel on a newly created or existing texture.