A better way to integrate Unity3D within a native iOS app

Update: I’ve created a new tutorial for Xcode 7 & Unity 5.

Last year I published a blog post about how to integrate Unity3D within a native iOS application.

Last week I found a better way to integrate Unity3D within a native iOS app, which also eliminates some issues with my previous version. Because it’s quite a long explanation to do and I noticed in my previous blog post that not everything was crystal clear, I’ve made a video tutorial how you can achieve this.

Continue reading A better way to integrate Unity3D within a native iOS app

Dynamically load Collada files in SceneKit at runtime

The problem

For an upcoming project, a client asked me if I could build a prototype which could load Collada files at runtime. The flow has to be like this

User downloads Collada zip file while using the app (e.g. in-app purchase)
Collada file gets unzipped
Show the downloaded Collada file in the app

I started looking a possible 3D engines which I could use like Unity, but then I remembered Apple has released the SceneKit SDK which allows pretty high-level access, but with excellent performance.

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Sandbox Unity app in an existing iOS app

I HAVE CREATED A NEW WAY TO INTEGRATE UNITY WITHIN AN EXISTING IOS APP. YOU CAN FIND THE POST HERE.

The problem

After my previous blog post on how to sandbox an iOS app inside of a Unity project, I got some questions on how to do the same but put Unity inside of an existing iOS app.

After playing around with it, I found a solution which works well for me to add Unity app in an existing iOS app.

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TNColorScrollViewController – easy scrollview with different color views

For a few iOS projects I needed a scrollview which had different UIViews with different background colors. Because it came back regularly it became cumbersome to write the whole thing over and over again. So yesterday I created a view controller which takes away the pain of writing it.

You can find the code on Github with a demo project on how to use it, but the steps are easy.

Create an array with TNColorViewData objects and give it a background color or a reference to a custom UIView class (this class has to subclass TNColorView)
Create a config object in which you add the array and have the possibility to set some extra properties so the view controller knows how to behave
Present the view controller
There is no step 4

If you have any requests, just put them in the comments or add an enhancement in the GitHub issue tracker!

Call methods on Unity3D straight from your Objective-C code

The problem

So you want to trigger functionality in your Unity3D scene straight from your native Objective-C code? For example you have different scenes, and you want a regular iOS component (e.g. UIButton) to trigger a new scene. It takes some work, but it is doable.

tl;dr

Read it … bitch 🙂

The solution

Unity exposes a way to call code in your Unity3D project (normally this will be javascript or C#). There are 3 components you need to get in place.

Have a Unity3D scene
Have a Unity3D script
Have an Objective-C class

The way it works is that you can bridge your code from Objective-C to C# or Javascript in Unity3D with the ‘UnitySendMessage’ method.

Continue reading Call methods on Unity3D straight from your Objective-C code

Add Unity3D in a native iOS application

I HAVE CREATED A NEW WAY TO INTEGRATE UNITY WITHIN AN EXISTING IOS APP. YOU CAN FIND THE POST HERE.

The problem

For a project I need to implement an augmented reality feature inside a native iOS application. We chose to go with Unity3D and Vuforia to do the augmented reality bit, as it’s free and lots of people are saying it’s the best solution. The only problem when working with Unity3D is that the exported iOS project is not easy to implement in an existing project as we only need Unity3D for 2 views inside a project with some dozen other native UIViews. Continue reading Add Unity3D in a native iOS application

TNSexyImageUploadProgress – A nice way to visualise an image upload in Objective-C

I’ve just pushed some code to GitHub to easily visualise an image upload in Objective-C. Hope it could help some of you out and save you some time! The class can be easily customised via various setters to change the radius, colors, etc.

image upload progress in objective-c

You can find the code on GitHub. If you have any requests, put them in the issues panel. I’ve tested as many scenarios as I could, but if you find any bugs, please post them as well!

ps: don’t let the name mislead you, it isn’t really sexy. I just wanted to see the effect on clicks 😉

TNCheckBoxGroup – Custom checkboxes for Objective-C

There is now also a Swift version available: read about it here.

A few weeks back I pushed some code to GitHub to easily create checkboxes in Objective-C, but there were some limitations to the class. I’ve now updated the class so you can work with checkbox groups, like TNRadioButtonGroup.

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TNCheckBox – A checkbox class for Objective-C

This class is no longer maintained…please check out TNCheckBoxGroup!

I just pushed some code to GitHub to create customisable checkboxes to use in your IOS projects.

As it happens with designers, you can’t always use the built-in UISwitch class. So I took the time to create a few classes which are pretty customisable to have checkboxes without all the hassle.

Continue reading TNCheckBox – A checkbox class for Objective-C

National Geographic UIKit Animation transition demo

This afternoon Thomas Degry (one of my students, www.devine.be) asked how he could program the neat little effect they use in the National Parks iPad app made for National Geographic. If you want to see the effect yourself, I suggest you download the app to check it out. Just select one of the parcs and then tap on the stats or the weather button. You’ll see a nice transition in which the master view ‘steps’ into the background, while the new content is placed in front of it.

It took me a few minutes of tapping to see how the animation works, so here is how you can mimic the effect. Just play with CALayers and some transformations 🙂

Continue reading National Geographic UIKit Animation transition demo