Medusa Pro Released - A 3D Rock Model Creator
by Matthew Genge · 02/28/2014 (2:02 pm) · 12 comments
We've just released Medusa Pro, a rock model creator for windows. It is mysteriously difficult to generate realistic rocks...they so often look like blobs even in big budget games. Medusa can turn any shape into a realistic looking rock model and has a wealth of functions including bevel, crack and fold as well as per vertex editing to allow you to generate models for your application that suit your needs. Just like our other product, Forester Pro the tree creator, Medusa automatically generates LODs and collision meshes and each model imports seamlessly into the world editor. Medusa even features a batch creator allowing numerous randomized models to be created at one time. Medusa generates rocks based on real geological principles (finally the geologist on the team is useful).
An introduction tutorial for Medusa Pro can be seen below. Sorry about the geologist narrator, he gets a bit too excited by rocks:
The scene below was generated using models created in about 5 minutes:
A free version of Medusa is available, Medusa Lite, which can generate an unlimited number of random models from two different templates (boulders and crags). A license for the registered version Medusa Pro is a very friendly $30.
You can download Medusa now from our website.
www.hptware.co.uk/medusa.php
An introduction tutorial for Medusa Pro can be seen below. Sorry about the geologist narrator, he gets a bit too excited by rocks:
The scene below was generated using models created in about 5 minutes:
A free version of Medusa is available, Medusa Lite, which can generate an unlimited number of random models from two different templates (boulders and crags). A license for the registered version Medusa Pro is a very friendly $30.
You can download Medusa now from our website.
www.hptware.co.uk/medusa.php
About the author
I am an Earth Scientist who likes writing games for fun.
#2
But this was just a quick test, I will test it more later.
02/28/2014 (4:50 pm)
I have waited for this, looks really cool, the rocks are very realistic, but my critic so far is still the texturing, while I like the way it is done (with interchangeable seamless textures) there are still seams. If you would want to improve the program, you could try adding some more settings for the texturing, like cube, sphere, cylinder etc -projection, sometimes other methods fit better. Another little critic is, that the mouselook rotating around the rock is annoyingly slow, should be faster or an option for changing it.But this was just a quick test, I will test it more later.
#3
You are right texturing is always the greatest issue with automatically generated models. One size or technique definitely does not fit all. We spent a long time experimenting to come up with the solution as present. We are definitely going to add some more projection options, and a way to edit UV's without the nightmare of a horrible 2D editor..so at least if there is a seam, you can move the texture a bit to minimize it.
So...options for UV and mouse rotate speed will definitely be on the release list.
02/28/2014 (5:23 pm)
Is there a Linux windows emulator? We've been told user have been running Forester on a mac, relatively happily. It is years since I used Linux (back in my Fortran 77 days).You are right texturing is always the greatest issue with automatically generated models. One size or technique definitely does not fit all. We spent a long time experimenting to come up with the solution as present. We are definitely going to add some more projection options, and a way to edit UV's without the nightmare of a horrible 2D editor..so at least if there is a seam, you can move the texture a bit to minimize it.
So...options for UV and mouse rotate speed will definitely be on the release list.
#4
For example one of your rocks has 1000-500-300 as lod-stages, but I found out, they can be much lower, for example for small rocks I use 300-100-30 polygon count, since the last lod-stage should be as minimal as possible, you do not see anything of the shape anyway, just the outer lines of it.
And for some cases, you may want only 2 lod stages, since it is not necessary to change that often the polygoncount.
So free selectable lod stages would make the program fit more for professional users, for example chose if you want to have 2 or 3 lod stages and how many percent they get reduced in polycount.
It depends much on the situation how you want the lod stages to be.
02/28/2014 (5:54 pm)
Found another thing to improve, the lod-system, it should be free selectable, since it depends much on the way you want to use the rocks.For example one of your rocks has 1000-500-300 as lod-stages, but I found out, they can be much lower, for example for small rocks I use 300-100-30 polygon count, since the last lod-stage should be as minimal as possible, you do not see anything of the shape anyway, just the outer lines of it.
And for some cases, you may want only 2 lod stages, since it is not necessary to change that often the polygoncount.
So free selectable lod stages would make the program fit more for professional users, for example chose if you want to have 2 or 3 lod stages and how many percent they get reduced in polycount.
It depends much on the situation how you want the lod stages to be.
#5
02/28/2014 (7:00 pm)
One more thing, I noticed in the demo the texture normalmaps are not y-inverted, but Torque needs y-inverted to display them correctly and I think the other big engines need it this way also. 
#6
That aside, I congratulate you on a produce that is looking to solve a particular issue in environment modelling which is natural rock production. You are right in that this is an area where most rocks just look like round blobs. Its a particular area that is overlooked and an art in itself. If you could solve the uv map stretching it would definitely be of interest.
03/01/2014 (12:59 am)
Matthew - this is looking very good from the demo I have looked at. Just one small concern though, there appears to be quite a lot of stretching of the UVs on the high poly version - not so critical on the low poly versions but the high poly one does have areas where quite a bit of post UV work would be required. That aside, I congratulate you on a produce that is looking to solve a particular issue in environment modelling which is natural rock production. You are right in that this is an area where most rocks just look like round blobs. Its a particular area that is overlooked and an art in itself. If you could solve the uv map stretching it would definitely be of interest.
#7
However, there are a couple of things we can allow to vary in the UV calculation to allow the user to interactively optimise for a particular model. It already numerically analyses the mapping to detect for stretching and tries several different projections and choses the best.
03/01/2014 (1:57 am)
There certainly are some faces on some models that have some stretching. We tried lots of ways to project UVs, spherical, cylinder, cube...all were about as bad as each other. Trees are easy, their trunks are basically cylinders, these rocks are essentially entirely random shapes. More seams equal less stretching, less stretching equals more seams. You've also got to avoid repetition and reflection. We opted for what seemed like the optimal scheme.However, there are a couple of things we can allow to vary in the UV calculation to allow the user to interactively optimise for a particular model. It already numerically analyses the mapping to detect for stretching and tries several different projections and choses the best.
#8
03/01/2014 (5:39 am)
Oh wow, cool stuff Matthew! 
#9
03/01/2014 (8:19 am)
Nice tool. Will be on my wishlist to buy.
#10
We've just posted an update to our website of Medusa Pro addressing some of the comments we've received. We've completely reworked the textures so you'll probably want to download and reinstall.
The changes are:
(1) We've reduced the intensity of normal maps and fixed those that had the wrong sense. They now look a whole lot better.
(2) We've fixed a bug that prevented the rock properties menu from being opened on some systems.
(3) We've doubled the mouse rotate speed.
(4) We've put some extra checks on import of collada mesh to capture those not supported by the parser (we are planning to add support for those soon).
Anyway, see an example below of how the textures now look:
03/03/2014 (5:06 pm)
Dear All,We've just posted an update to our website of Medusa Pro addressing some of the comments we've received. We've completely reworked the textures so you'll probably want to download and reinstall.
The changes are:
(1) We've reduced the intensity of normal maps and fixed those that had the wrong sense. They now look a whole lot better.
(2) We've fixed a bug that prevented the rock properties menu from being opened on some systems.
(3) We've doubled the mouse rotate speed.
(4) We've put some extra checks on import of collada mesh to capture those not supported by the parser (we are planning to add support for those soon).
Anyway, see an example below of how the textures now look:
#11
Some critiques:
The camera still seems slow, even at 2000dpi... esp on the horizontal axis. Maybe expose scalar in the prefs?
A toolbar rather than a context menu would be an easier workflow... right now the functions 'feel' buried. This has the effect of reducing the perceived effectiveness of the software. Also takes 2 clicks to do what should be 1 for many functions.
I feel the properties panel could be exposed at all times rather than as a modal window... possibly in an accordion type of gui? Not a fan of modal windows generally, i prefer blender's approach as nothing gets covered up. Right now the properties panel feels like it's "in the way" rather than a window I work with during creation of the rock shape. Hope that makes sense.
I will be putting this through some production paces in the next couple months. Great start to this... I can't wait to see where it goes.
Thanks for this and keep up the amazing work!
03/05/2014 (1:17 pm)
I have Forester Pro... great tool that integrates really well with blender. I just picked up Medusa Pro. Looks like it will be another major time-saver like forester.Some critiques:
The camera still seems slow, even at 2000dpi... esp on the horizontal axis. Maybe expose scalar in the prefs?
A toolbar rather than a context menu would be an easier workflow... right now the functions 'feel' buried. This has the effect of reducing the perceived effectiveness of the software. Also takes 2 clicks to do what should be 1 for many functions.
I feel the properties panel could be exposed at all times rather than as a modal window... possibly in an accordion type of gui? Not a fan of modal windows generally, i prefer blender's approach as nothing gets covered up. Right now the properties panel feels like it's "in the way" rather than a window I work with during creation of the rock shape. Hope that makes sense.
I will be putting this through some production paces in the next couple months. Great start to this... I can't wait to see where it goes.
Thanks for this and keep up the amazing work!
#12
Thanks for the comments. We are right now working on the next release with some more options for UV mapping. We're not planning on making major updates to the GUI....sorry....we've also had opposite comments from some users that the GUI is easy to understand and straightforward....lets face it, not something we can say about Blender.
We made the two click decision on the basis that most of the functions accept some more input to add extra diversity.
However, we have a whole list of more functional update ideas that will add even more options to models.
Best,
Matt
03/06/2014 (2:45 pm)
Hi Jameson,Thanks for the comments. We are right now working on the next release with some more options for UV mapping. We're not planning on making major updates to the GUI....sorry....we've also had opposite comments from some users that the GUI is easy to understand and straightforward....lets face it, not something we can say about Blender.
We made the two click decision on the basis that most of the functions accept some more input to add extra diversity.
However, we have a whole list of more functional update ideas that will add even more options to models.
Best,
Matt
Jimmy R Armes