Jumping back into Obi 6.3

[DeliciousOrange]

I've long wanted to actually use Obi for my games, however I've never been able to get it functioning properly. I gave up on using it years ago, but decided to give it another shot with a small gamejam project I recently did.

Suffice to say, my experiments so far haven't been good.

After going over the youtube tutorials, they were all outdated and following them resulted in Obi Softbody not working in my project.

I went through the documentation and learned a few things. Tried following the online documentation:
- Obi Solver and Obi Updater as a parent of the soft body.
- Obi Solver added to the Updater's Solver list.
- Obi Softbody applied to the mesh. Blueprint and Collision materials added.
- Initially tried using an Obi Softbody Skinner, but when that didn't work I decided to simplify the softbody into it's own mesh without any bones, just using a sphere as a test object instead.
- Blueprint made for the mesh using the built in blueprint generator. Blueprint appears to be working correctly, even though the particle display seems to have a bugged material.

The Obi Solver can't use Oni in the URP, so I switched it to Burst, which threw an error saying it needed "Mathematics, Collections, Jobs, and Burst packages". I thought those were all included in Unity, but just to be sure I went through and installed those packages via the package manager where able (Burst) and then when that didn't work I manually installed the remaining packages via github.

All told I've spent 4 days going through documentation, trying and retrying, experimenting with different settings, different updaters, and so far the best I've managed to do is cause the mesh to occasionally disappear into the void. Obi has never thrown any errors on any of my attempts.

I'm out of ideas for what else to do to try and figure out what I'm not doing right. I've tried looking at the sample scenes, but none of them are functional, they just throw critical errors on play and then freeze. Are there better resources online for how to get Obi up and running?

[josemendez]

After going over the youtube tutorials, they were all outdated and following them resulted in Obi Softbody not working in my project.

The tutorials in the "videos" section of the page should be up to date, only minor differences in the blueprint one (which we are redoing for 6.3, since blueprint parameters in the inspector were reorganized and new ones added):
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/videos.html

I went through the documentation and learned a few things. Tried following the online documentation:
- Obi Solver and Obi Updater as a parent of the soft body.

Only the solver needs to be a parent of the actor (in this case, the softbody). Updaters are used to specify when to update solvers (during FixedUpdate, after FixedUpdate, in LateUpdate, etc), they can be anywhere in the scene.

- Initially tried using an Obi Softbody Skinner, but when that didn't work I decided to simplify the softbody into it's own mesh without any bones, just using a sphere as a test object instead.

You always need to use a soft body skinner. This component binds a mesh to the particles used for the simulation, if you don't use a soft body skinner all you will see is a static mesh, no simulation at all: particles will move around but the mesh won't follow them. See the first paragraph of the setup page: http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/manua...setup.html

Softbody simulation and rendering are taken care of by two separate components:

ObiSoftbody
Simulates a particle-based representation of a mesh.

ObiSoftbodySkinner
Binds an arbitrary mesh to a ObiSoftbody's particles, so that they move and deform together.

Using two separate components lets you decouple simulation and rendering, which is often very useful. Also please note that you're not forced to have a single ObiSoftbodySkinner for each ObiSoftbody: you can skin multiple meshes to a single softbody, using multiple ObiSoftbodySkinners.

- Blueprint made for the mesh using the built in blueprint generator. Blueprint appears to be working correctly, even though the particle display seems to have a bugged material.

If you're in URP, use the URP shaders for the particle renderer. The default shader used is only compatible with the built-in pipeline and will display incorrectly in URP.

The Obi Solver can't use Oni in the URP, so I switched it to Burst,

URP is a render pipeline, Oni and Burst are physics solvers. They're completely orthogonal, both Oni and Burst will work fine with any render pipeline! not sure how you came to the conclusion that only Burst works in URP.

which threw an error saying it needed "Mathematics, Collections, Jobs, and Burst packages". I thought those were all included in Unity

Nope, you need to install them using the package manager. The packages that come preinstalled with Unity are shown in the "Built-in packages" tab of the package manager.

but just to be sure I went through and installed those packages via the package manager where able (Burst) and then when that didn't work I manually installed the remaining packages via github.

Make sure you installed the correct versions, see:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/manua...setup.html
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/manua...kends.html

I've tried looking at the sample scenes, but none of them are functional, they just throw critical errors on play and then freeze. Are there better resources online for how to get Obi up and running?

I'm unable to reproduce any errors regardless of the Unity version/render pipeline used. I can help you with those if you share the error messages, I'm sure they're simple to fix.

The manual is probably the best resource to learn to use Obi. Keep in mind it is a *very* complex and large engine aimed at advanced users, so if you haven't done much physics/rendering it does have a steep learning curve.

If you need it, I can record a video specifically for you. Let me know your use case (what you're trying to do) and I'll do my best to give you step by step instructions.

kind regards,