Unity has this concept of Camera Depth.  It's got nothing to do with the zbuffer, it's the order that the cameras get rendered if you have more than one camera active.   Somehow my main game camera got set to a camera depth of -1 when I added another camera which meant that even if it was the only camera active it didn't get rendered.  So that's an hour I can never have again. 
If your camera mysteriously stops working despite the fact you can see it working just fine in other camera views...  this could be your problem. 

https://answers.unity.com/questions/418471/camera-preview-is-okay-but-game-view-is-not.html

You'd think that making the camera frustum visible in the scene editor would be simple but it's not.
Here is a work around.

• Select the camera you want to look through
• Lock the inspector (this will mean Unities camera preview stays visible)
• Add another inspector tab to edit objects with

Tip from:  https://gamedevworks.com/blog/unitytips-lock-camera-preview-window/

This is another "Dave won't remember this if he doesn't write it down" post.

I'm building out a tiled level in Blender for export to Unity.  I have a series of tile components and I want to texture them in Substance but I need the textures to match with regard to density and scale.  I found a trick for this.  If I select all three objects and go into edit more, I can select all the UV coords and do a Smart UV Project.  This means all 3 tiles share the same texture but also means they are scaled consistently. The only problem I found was that smart project sometimes rotates faces to pack the UV map.  My solution to this was to use masking in Substance to get the fill layer textures to match.  It's not perfect, but its better than trying to get the faces to scale manually across multiple UV sets.

Here you can see in substance I used layer masks to all for rotating the brick texture to match the UVs.  Getting the final alignment with the offset tool was a bit tricky, but it works.

This is another "Dave won't remember this if he doesn't write it down" post. 

I had weird cracks in my Shadows.

Reducing Bias and Normal Bias appear to fix or reduce this... and I don't have time to read up on why... 

This is another one of those if I don't write it down I won't remember posts... because I have a memory like a goldfish.  Here's the fix... and the credit.... 

How to get Unity text mesh pro (tmp) objects to render last or without clipping for HUD elements.
TBF, I'm not really sure what TMP is doing and I don't really care, but changing the shader seems to do what I want.  This is the right shader on PC.  For some reason my project defaulted to a different one.
This is another "Dave made a blog post because he'll forget if he doesn't write to down" blog post. 

This was the project I worked on in the first 2 months of UK lockdown.  I'd say it was 2 months full time work and lots of mistakes were made.   I've been away for most of the summer, it's been a crazy year, but now I'm looking back on it and looking to see what I could do better next time. 
I need to learn how to make outdoor environments, and I need to learn to to do retopo so I can have better facial animation. 

I accidentally got my 9 year old nephew hooked on some little blindbox action figure toys called SuperZings.  We worked together to design our own SuperZing.  He did the concept work and then I modeled, printed and painted the toy using Blender and my Ender3.

It was a fun little project and hopefully it inspires him to think creatively or something. 

 I got an e-bike!  I used to be a keen cyclist, but I'm lazy and unfit.  CV19 seemed like a great excuse to get back out on a bike, especially if a battery could take some of the slog out of it.  I knew I wanted a basic exploring/hybrid type bike rather than an mountain bike and I didn't want to spend a huge amount of money.  Then there were stock issues, many bike stores have pictures of machines on their websites that they don't have in stock.  I didn't want to order something and then wait 3 months...   
Halfords have a family of bikes that all use the same tech, you just need to pick the flavor you like, I went for their urban commuting model called the Subway, which is sort of a cross between a fixie and a hybrid touring bike in appearance.  You could also describe it as an old school mountain bike with bmx tires. 

It's powered by a Suntour HESC system.  That's a geared rear motor system which is street legal.  250W and pedal assist cuts about at 25kph (16mph).  It doesn't have a hand throttle, which means it also doesn't need to have e-bike specific brake levers.  The crank contains cadence and torque sensors which combined with some software result in natural feeling riding experience for the most part. 

So what's it like to ride?
Well it's a lot like riding a bike honestly, but with a couple of foibles you quickly adapt to.  The first foible is that there is a bit of lag between the crank moving and the motor starting.  I'd guess this is around half a second. Same thing with the motor stopping.  This is actually fine for hill starts, you just have to trust the motor is going to kick in as you reach the bottom of your pedal stroke.   Where this can bite you is turning the bike around.  If you aren't expecting it at low speeds, having the motor kick in while manoevering can be bit disconcerting.  It's something that you quickly adapt to.  The motor makes a hum/whine while its operating so you get a useful audio cue as well as feeling the power. The other issue is the speed limiter. It really does limit your speed.  16mph takes about half the effort that 17mph does, so if you wanted a fast bike, this probably isn't it, unless you have the lungs and legs for it.

Batteries
The bike uses a 36v 8.7Ah 313Wh battery and they claim a 60 mile range.  But that range probably involves a small rider who lives somewhere flat and likes to use Eco mode.  What I found was that my range is probably a bit less than half that.  I'm about 240lbs and Wales has hills. Still 30 miles is a good couple of hours pedalling so can't really complain.  Overall I feel that the balance between range and power is pretty good.  I mean if the motor had more power, then the batteries would drain faster.

I'm scared of punctures
The motor is in the rear wheel.  There isn't a quick release for the backwheel.  Removing the back wheel involves disconnecting some electrics and cutting some cable ties as well as the usual stuff. It's not something I want to try for the first time at the side of the road.  At some point when I'm feeling brave I'm going to change out the tires for some puncture proof ones and maybe I'll put slime in the inner tubes. 

I wasn't sure if it had enough gears
It has gone up every hill I've found so far.  Don't get me wrong, I still have to pedal and I'm still a mess at the top but it goes up 1:10 gradients that I would normally have to walk up.


Rest of the bike
I'd budgeted for a better bike, I was kind of expecting this thing to feel cheap which is part of the reason I didn't get a model with cheap suspension, but its actually very solid, the frame is crazy stiff, the welds and paint look top notch. The hydraulic disk brakes work well.  The rear mech is a bit chintzy but easy to upgrade.  I was half expecting it to feel like the cheapest bike possible with a motor thrown on it considering the price. 
The only changes I made so far was to change the ergonomic bar grips out for some round ones and to add an adjustable stem to raise the bars about an inch.  Apart from that its fine, even the saddle is alright.

​Summary
I love it. It feels like riding a bike, BUT WITH BIONIC LEGS. I would definitely like to try one with a more powerful mid drive motor when lockdown ends and the mountain bike parks and trials are open.  I'll probably rent a modern full suspension MTB and see how I like it.  Hey you never know, if I ride the one I have enough, I might even be fit by then. 

I was trying to keyframe a camera to follow an object by hand yesterday.  A combination of things including my misunderstadning of how keyframe easing made that a lot less fun than it needed to be. Lots of horrible interdependencies in my keyframes and jerky camera moves. There is a constraint that will allow the camera to track an object.  And you can easily check your easing in the graph editor.   Another great video from Grant Abbit:

For some reason I was thinking interpolation and easing were connected and I was treating it like black magic... then I watched this video that shows how to see the interpolation in the graph editor.  Duh! Why didn't I think of that...  :-) 

With these 2 videos I'm able to smoothly track an object flying through space from a stationary camera which is exactly what I wanted.  But for spaceships it probably makes sense to have the camera track an empty that the ship is attached to.  That way things like shake can be added to the ships coordinate system and will show up on camera.
This blog really is just notes for me on how to be less of an idiot :-)
​

Another "my memory is so bad I have to make a blog post" entry.  This is a great little video showing how to use the graph editor for path animations.  So you can control the start and end of the path evaluation as well as the gradient of the curve.  

  The other thing I seem unable to remember is how to scale the graph editor axes independently which is very useful when doing find adjustments.  I know I've probably googled this 10 times. 
Ctrl+MMB and move the mouse up or down!!!!  Dumbass.