Hi folks,
I was approched today by a client to create interactive textbooks. First thought is that this task suits iBook Author much better, but the client would like to have the same books on Android devices as well.
So, would do you think that Unity3D could be used for such book creation? As I see handling long texts as texts are problematic, but maybe with a custom plugin Unity3D could be enchanced to fit for such jobs…
I would be very interested in your thoughts…
Yes it can do it, use Megafiers plugins if you want some spiffy animations to throw in.
I agree, Megafiers are good for some parts, but what is about long texts?
I wouldn’t say it’s ideal for entire textbooks, but it would work. Can you not use something like MonoTouch?
For long texts, you should use a texture. Be texture map is big enough so the text is readable. Make sure the mipmap level doesn’t blur it too much as well!
For what you’ve described I wouldn’t use Unity personally, something like Monotouch as recommended by RickyBozzy would be a lot more suited.
If you did decide to use Unity though then a few recommendations- store the text as text and render it using a GUI system, trying to store a textbook amount of text as images will rapidly consume a lot more memory than a mobile device has, store them as text (even compressed text) and render the pages as needed. I’d also consider not using the physical book metaphor too strongly, it’s great as a demo or for a book a character may read “in game” but to try and read a whole textbook from it would be needlessly painful. Display the content full-screen, use 3d for nice page transitions if you wish but don’t compromise readability.
If you’re after strong formatting functionality then look at one of the addons which allow you to embed a browser in your solution, writing and formatting the text using HTML/CSS will mean you’re able to use a standard (and reusable) format without needing to lay everything out by hand.
Where Unity would rock for this type of application is in making it truly interactive, doing things you could never do with paper. A textbook describes the structure of DNA, and in a small window an interactive model of DNA is there allowing the reader to rotate it as they wish, even possibly demonstrating recombination, mutation and degradation. Although not a textbook, and not in Unity, there is an app called “Alice for the iPad” by Atomic Antelope which has a number of fairly simple interactive elements, applying that approach to a textbook would be splendid.