Blender 3-D View Pivot Point
Rotating the 3-D view in Blender sometimes behaves strangely. The pivot point seems to lie somewhere between me and the screen, making it very difficult to manipulate the view. The fix is to change the pivot point. Options include: Numpad . to pivot around the selection’s center. Shift C to pivot around the 3-D cursor.
Mercurial HOWTOs
I’m starting to use Mercurial on Bitbucket to manage shared projects, and I’m recording the problems I run into and their solutions. Problem: hg commit yields “no username supplied” Mercurial apparently doesn’t record which user checked out the repository in the metadata. (I’d love to know why.) I fixed this by creating an .hgrc file […]
Make a one-sided surface two-sided in Blender
I often model things like walls and leaves with only one side. Most computer graphics tools I’ve dealt with only show geometry that faces the viewer. This puts one-sided surfaces in a predicament. When the viewer goes behind them, the geometry disappears. One simple workaround to this problem is to duplicate your one-sided model and […]
Schedule something for future destruction in Unity
Problem: I have a game object, a prefab probably, that I instantiate and velocify. It goes off screen. I want it gone then. Solution: To expire a game object or component based merely on time, call Destroy(thingToDestroy, nSeconds). After nSeconds elapses, thingToDestroy will disappear.
Colliding with and mutating text in Unity
Problem: I want, in the Unity game engine, to shoot projectiles at text and decrement the number the text is displaying. Solution: Add a 3-D text game object. Add colliders to projectiles and the text. The collider on the 3-D text will automatically size itself around the bounds of the text. Implement OnTriggerEnter and update […]