Unity for Interactive Storybooks? (Is it the right app?)

Unity Engine
,
1

Clearly, Unity iPhone is a 3d environment not optimized for 2d or 2 1/2 D apps. But I own it, love the work environment,but I’m fairly new to this type of development. So I’m asking this question of experienced Unity iPhone developers…

First, take a quick peek at this 30sec preview of a animated storybook app for young kids. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak5r97pCHss&NR=1 It’s functionally close to what I am talking about. (and it’s just a neat lil app ).

If such an app was 20-30 pages long, the pages would likely need to be (I’d assume) 512x512 if not 1024x102 to retain quality / crispness of each illustration. Could a Unity iphone build be made to not choke on that many texture maps? I figured that each page might need to be a separate ‘scene’ as to clear it out of memory before loading the next. But that would no doubt introduce loadtime between ‘pages’.

Then there’s the draggable type graphic elements. My though was that if pages were scenes, the draggable (static or animated… i.e. a bird flapping, worm wriggling), would be on separate layer?

Clearly for app size considerations, the most efficient solution might be to do an Xcode/Interface builder type project(I think), but Unity iPhone (as my friend pointed out to me, allows me to mess with physics, particles, even cut up the illustrations and get a nice ‘multiplane’ feel to each page’s background. There would also be, music, sound fx(local to touch items, and possibly, narration.

My question is, am I barking up the wrong tree to ask Unity iPhone to pull off a project like this? It is a 3d platform.

I’m about to pull the trigger and start preproduction on this type of project, so any knowledgeable, production savvy input would be most gratefully accepted.

Thanks,
Brendan G. 8)

2

I think it is totally doable and actually quite easy.
You don’t need so big images (1024), 512 x 512 will work fine, just turn off compression to have them crisp.
Unity works really well, and what it is not displayed on screen will not take / use memory (in most cases at least, GUITexture would have to be manually turned off when offscreen), so you don’t have to cut each page into a different scene, and mostly it will not be a problem for iphone or unity to display a few 512 textures on screen at same time (for the page change effect) preserving very good performances.

3

taio,

Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate you taking a moment to share your insights.

Brendan G.

4

Personally I find that Unity is more than just capable of creating 2d-looking games/apps, it’s actually a pretty great choice. Before getting into app development full time, I was a character animator by trade, so being able to work with tools I’m comfortable with seamlessly (i.e. maya/photoshop) is a huge benefit from my perspective. The asset pipeline in unity is pretty amazing and saves me an insane amount of time. But there’s really so much you can do with 3d features to enhance or simplify the process of making a 2d app - such as adding subtle perspective or layers of depth to an image, animating multi-part objects intuitively via transforms rather than cycling through dozens of sprites, etc.

5

I wrote a review of Unity time ago,
Its just too wonderfull and amazing!
You can make lots of complex stuff with an ease…

6

Without doubt, Unity is capable of this. The biggest potential issue I can see with it would be the final app size as Unity apps tend to be pretty big. You’ll also have trouble replicating the page turn effect in the video you linked to, as that’s Core Animation which isn’t accessible within Unity as far as I’m aware…

7

Thanks Guys, for the great insights. It’s quite valuable to get an idea of how different folk would approach a project like this. Whether to use scenes, or simple slide ‘pages’ (with their draggable children), off screen and hence out of memory.

As for page turning, I don’t think I would go with a page-flip effect, not only for the reason you mention, but simply because I like the touch and drag approach, like viewing photos on the iPhone. Probably add some low profile graphic or animated, ‘nest’ effect, but more of a hint than a PRESS HERE FOR NEXT PAGE.

I love a clean, simple gui that’s obvious, but not heavy-handed, unless it’s a more immerse part of the experience ala WoW.
B.

8

An interesting read and food for thought.

However, I now have “The wheels on the bus go…” stuck in my head :twisted:

9

My daughter loves the wheels on the bus application. Definetely potential there for tons more (just think of all the nursery rhymes).

Sadly i have no idea how such a thing would be done in unity but i look forward to hearing more

10

hello,

We realized a comic app reader with Unity.
On iPhone 3g is very fast …so Unity it’s fully capable to manage 2D contents.
To avoid app size we are testing a system for streaming assets.

The project is under NDA but if you need more info, pm me.

Andrea

11

You can definitely do a lot like this.

I’ve contract developped a 3D book system which even supports the usage of 3D models within.
This system works different than the system on the video, as it is targeted as beeing a teaching utility, but you can definitely achieve a lot

12

Please check this asset if it meets your needs. It is simple, but it has an event system that allows you to add more functionality for each page/frame.