How do I render a cylindrical world space onto a flat, 2D view port in Unity?

Question

The question is just a logical extension of this question.

So, how should I render a cylindrical world space onto a flat, 2D view port in Unity?

Thank you.

Answer 1

The coordinates of any point on a cylinder can be expressed as (r, θ, z), where r is the constant radius of the cylinder, θ is the angle around the z-axis and z is the "height" of the point. You can convert that into 2D coordinates by throwing out r, treating θ as x and z as y.

Keep in mind that θ will be between 0 and 2π (or 0 and 360), so you'll need to scale that the appropriate width to look reasonable when projected onto the x coordinate. You'll also need to deal with the wraparound mathematically, probably by using the modulus operator. This blog post may be useful in coming up with ideas for how to deal with such edge cases.

You probably don't have cylindrical assets, but instead have 2D assets. As such, you should just be able to use them like you would any other 2D asset in Unity.