Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category
Unity3D: Using textures larger than 4096×4096
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Featured, Programming
This post explains how to assign images larger than 4096×4096 px as textures in Unity. This image size is the maximum supported dimension for a texture in that game engine, however Unity allows us to write our own custom shaders that can use four images as textures, instead of just one.
Therefore, this post shows how to create a simple diffuse shader that takes four images to compose a single texture. That way, a 8192×8192 image can be used as a texture by breaking it into four 4096×4096 pieces, thus respecting the engine’s image size limit.
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Android: Bitmap to Integer array
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
As stated in the title, this post explains how to generate an Integer pixel array from a Bitmap object, that will hold the color information from each pixel of the image. This post also explains the opposite: creating a Bitmap object from an Integer array. This can be useful when one needs to apply effects to Bitmap instances. As usual, an example Eclipse project is available for download at the end of this post. It works both on the emulator and on physical devices running Android 2.0.
So, let’s get to the code. Putting it in a simplified manner, the below Activity decodes a PNG image into a Bitmap object, then, an array is created with the same number of pixels as the image. After that, a method from the Bitmap instance puts the pixel color information in the array. Continue reading: “Android: Bitmap to Integer array”
Android: obtaining SD card memory information
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
This Android tutorial explains how to obtain the primary external storage (normally, the SD card) information, such as the total available space and how much memory it has left to be consumed by applications and data. Fortunately, this is a short and simple code, that can be used to create file explorer app, or to check if the SD card has enough space to copy data into the external storage. An example Eclipse project with the source code is available for download at the end of the post. It requires Android 2.1 (Eclair) and works both on a real and emulated devices.
In simple terms, the code below checks for a connected SD card, by querying its state. If a external device was found, it then obtains the external memory’s total and available sizes, returning the values in GB, MB, KB and bytes: Continue reading: “Android: obtaining SD card memory information”
Android: Fixing the API 12 Demos project errors
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
This post shows how to fix some of the most common errors when creating a project with the API 12 (Android 3.1) demos in the Eclipse IDE. The API samples comes bundled with the Android SDK and are a set of Activities that exemplifies how to do almost anything in Android. Following the instructions described at the official documentation to create a new Eclipse project with the API demos 12 code will cause a lot of errors.
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Unity: Scaling Pixel Art
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
This Unity post explains how to prepare images and set the Texture Importer settings to correctly render pixel art in Unity3D. So, this post covers how the different Texture Importer settings affects the pixel art textures in 3D models and in the game’s graphical user interface (GUI).
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