I am currently working on a 4-month project focused on mapping coconut plantation areas. My goal is to create a web application that visualizes these areas using Cesium. I am considering using Cesium for Unreal for the development phase but have some questions regarding the transition to a web-based environment.
I would appreciate some clarity on the following points:
Unreal to Web Workflow: Is it possible to develop the project within Unreal Engine and “build” or export it directly as a web application? Or will these necessarily remain two separate applications (one in Unreal for development/high-end visualization and a separate one using CesiumJS for the web)?
Token Interoperability: Can I use the same Cesium Ion token across both platforms? Specifically, if I generate a token within the Unreal environment to access my assets, can that same token be used when building the CesiumJS web project?
Security Best Practices: How secure is it to use these tokens in a web application? Are there specific measures I should take to protect my Cesium Ion account/assets when the token is technically “exposed” in the frontend code of a web app?
Library Requirements: If I want the web application to display the results or assets I’ve configured in Unreal, do I need to download specific libraries or use a particular bridge to “call” the Unreal-based configurations into the web environment?
Unreal to Web Workflow: Is it possible to develop the project within Unreal Engine and “build” or export it directly as a web application? Or will these necessarily remain two separate applications (one in Unreal for development/high-end visualization and a separate one using CesiumJS for the web)?
We just began experimental support of Unity deployment to Web, this is mainly because of Unity’s long running support for WebGL and our community interest. We don’t currently have it on the roadmap to support this kind of workflow for Unreal Engine, and Epic Games stopped supporting the pipeline officially with version 5.0.
It would be possible for you or the team you work with to do this yourselves, but you’d have to consider the 3rd party approach to deploying to web through Unreal, and the potential hurdles that introduces with Cesium for Unreal/Native.
Another work around would be a pixel streaming approach, but this is handled entirely outside of Cesium.
Token Interoperability: Can I use the same Cesium Ion token across both platforms? Specifically, if I generate a token within the Unreal environment to access my assets, can that same token be used when building the CesiumJS web project.
Yes, tokens can be used for multiple applications, and you can add multiple whitelisted URLs as well.
Security Best Practices: How secure is it to use these tokens in a web application? Are there specific measures I should take to protect my Cesium Ion account/assets when the token is technically “exposed” in the frontend code of a web app?
Primarily by controlling what accesses the token has, such as read only. “Assets-limited list” is already a great step, as setting the token to only list selected assets will restrict them as needed from even knowing other assets are available.
Library Requirements: If I want the web application to display the results or assets I’ve configured in Unreal, do I need to download specific libraries or use a particular bridge to “call” the Unreal-based configurations into the web environment?
This really depends on your approach from step 1 above. A pixel streaming approach, or a cloud render that produces an image visible in a web app appear to be viable work-arounds.
Thank you for the answer, so i want to have a follow up question, so the best practice is going to have unity for web development? Is there any documentation related that i can use to make a functional web app like, how to make the front end and back end work from web but the cesium used and build in unity
This is entering more Unity/Web Dev territory vs Cesium support. But I believe you would still handle any UI within your Unity Application and just build for/target WebGL, and if you need some kind of server backend like a traditional web-app you would probably handle that using unity’s web requests framework. This looks like a great starting place for that: Create and publish WebGL builds - Unity Learn