Archive for April, 2012
Unity: Animated texture from image sequence – Part 2
Posted by DimasTheDriver | Filed under Featured, Programming
The second and last tutorial of a series that explains how to create an animated texture from a sequence of images in the Unity engine. This is a direct follow up of the previous post, so if you’ve missed it, please read it here. As the first post, the same disclaimer applies: for animating a texture with a small number of frames and/or small frame sizes, it’s better to join them into a single sprite sheet image and use this script. For video playback, use the MovieTexture (only available at Unity Pro).
Just as a reminder, this series is about creating an animated texture from multiple image files. In the previous post, a script loaded all image files into an array and then changed the texture of the game object it was attached to. Continue reading: “Unity: Animated texture from image sequence – Part 2″
Unity: Animated texture from image sequence – Part 1
Posted by DimasTheDriver | Filed under Programming
This is the first tutorial of a series that explains how to create an animated texture from a sequence of images in the Unity engine. Before going into details on the script or the requirements necessary in order to make the animation work, please bear in mind that there are other alternatives available which will achieve the same results. For any animation with a small number of frames and/or small frame sizes, it’s recommended to join then into a single sprite sheet image and use this script. For video playback, please use the MovieTexture (only available at Unity Pro). However, if the animation doesn’t fit a 4096×4096 px image file, the script in this tutorial might be the solution.
Continue reading: “Unity: Animated texture from image sequence – Part 1″
Android: Creating a two color LED notification
Posted by DimasTheDriver | Filed under Featured, Programming
Another programming tutorial, this time, showing how to make the built-in notification LED on a Android device continuously alternate between two colors. That said, by the time this article is being written, it’s recommended to try this code on a real Android device that has a notification LED instead of running the application on the emulator. Also, the Activity featured below has been created to work on devices with Android 2.0 or later. All code featured in this article is available for download at the end of the post.
To continuously change the colors of the LED, it’s necessary to create and initialize a Notification object that changes the LED colors and post this notification using a handle to the system’s notification service (using a instance of the NotificationManager class). The notification is then canceled, its LED color is changed and the notification is posted again and the process is repeated over and over making the colors swap back and forth. Continue reading: “Android: Creating a two color LED notification”
Android: Obtaining the current orientation using a BroadcastReceiver
Posted by DimasTheDriver | Filed under Programming
This Android tutorial explains how to create a Broadcast Receiver that detects screen orientation changes that are triggered by rotating the device. Since screen orientation changes don’t happen every second, it’s better to detect it using a BroadcastReceiver instead of a Service. Both can be used to execute tasks on the background, but the BroadcastReceiver execution will be triggered only when the desired Intent is filtered (in this case, a screen orientation change). Right after the execution, the background task is killed, which is ideal since a BroadcastReceiver can be created to obtain the new screen orientation only after it has changed.
Continue reading: “Android: Obtaining the current orientation using a BroadcastReceiver”


