nick-funk/unity-web-server

Connect and control Unity 3D through a web user interface.

Intro

unity-web-server is an example project showing how you can use a web server hosted within Unity plus a Node.js React Web UI to remotely query and issue commands to Unity.

The example showcases creating, moving, and listing the objects inside a Unity scene while the game is running.

How the interface works is as follows:

• A request is made on the web UI to the Node.js proxy server
  • The request is remapped and sent to the web server running inside of Unity
• Unity processes the request and queues it so it can be processed within the next game loop
  • We process the request and respond back
• The Node.js proxy receives the response and forwards it to the UI

Just like that, we've created an interactive loop that we can issue commands and queries to a Unity instance that is running.

Getting Started

If you want to start up the project, you need to do two things:

unity-server

• Load up the Unity editor and open the project stored in the unity-server folder
• Make sure you have the MainScene open
• Click play button inside Unity to start the game simulation (usually in the center top of Unity Editor UI)

client

• Once Unity is running the game simulation you can start the web UI client

• Open a terminal in the client folder and run the following commands

  npm install
  npm run start
  

  • NOTE: subsequent runs will only need to call npm run start to build and run the Node.js proxy and web UI. (i.e. you only need to run npm install once)

• Open a browser and navigate to: http://localhost:3000/

• Congrats, you should be staring at a web UI to control Unity! Try spawning some objects, moving them, and refreshing for the list of current objects in the scene!