I want to create some objects (boxes, cylinders, pyramids, doesnt really matter) which display text / a number on the side / on all of it's sides. Short of making individual materials with the numbers displayed on them by hand, is there a simple way to achieve this?
I am using Swift 4 in XCode.
Depends on what you mean by "by hand". If you want the text displayed on the surface of the geometry, like a texture map, then texture-mapping it is the way to go. If you draw your text into a UIImage, you can set that as the material contents, which is a bit more dynamic than, say, creating a bunch of PNGs that each have a different number on them. Just make sure to choose an image size/resolution that looks good at the size your objects are displayed at.
First thing, please try not to be discouraged. Thank you for reaching out to the ARKit community on stack :-)
We are here to help each other. (I do feel your pain…and why I am trying to help)
Here is an interesting stack page that has helped me with placing items on the sides of objects(like boxes cylinders, pyramids).
I hope it can help you or others.
SCNBox different colour or texture on each face
Rickster pointed out some other possibilities.
We all learn by sharing what we know.
Smartdog
For anyone lost in the internet trying to find an answer to this it's stupidly simple. Use SCNText and set it as a node. I just wasted 7 hours of my life trying to make number .dae models position themselves next to each other because there is no mention of this feature anywhere.
I hope I saved you as much pain as I just endured discovering this.