Existing tools...

#1 I'm not sure exactly what you asking here...

The tools that will come with stock Torque 3D are:

World Editor
- Object Editor (select, translate, rotate, scale, properties, creation, and scene tree)
- Terrain Editor (add, excavate, adjust, smooth, noise, flatten, import)
- Terrain Painter (diffuseMap, detailMap, normalMap, side projection)
- Material Editor (properties and preview)
- Decal Road Editor (creation, properties, editing, Material)
- Mesh Road Editor (creation, properties, editing, Materials)
- River Editor (creation, properties, editing, Materials)
- Datablock Editor (creation, properties)

GUI Editor

The Terrain Editor will allow you to import heightfields from L3DT but you may have to repaint your terrain for the time being.

#2

Quote:Mesh Road Editor

Really? Was that mentioned in the blogs? I must've missed it (quite possible, there are half a trillion comments).

#3 @Steve, I mentioned that there were actually two road editors in the comments, but it hasn't been elsewhere in the blogs. The "mesh" road editor allows you to create roads in the same fashion as the decal road editor, except instead of clipping against objects, it has its own geometry.

Also, there is one other editor that will be there, which is the Decal Editor (which allows you to place decals which clip geometry similarly to the decal road).

#4 Great!

#5 I think that artists and especially level builders/designers are definitely going to be enthusiastic about all of these new tools. The World Editor is more than just the "reskin" that some people keep calling it. Ease of use of every tool has seen much thought put into it beforehand. I have no personal experience with the Decal or Datablock editor but the Material Editor and Road/River tools just blows my mind! Couple that with the new Terrain, Advanced Lighting, and real time tweaking/editing... wow!

#6 Wow, great. Thanks for the reply. I guess my question was more centered on the existing 'third party' tools/genre kits/art packs for TGEA, like T3DT or torsion on the tools end. I'm guessing it's up to those developers to rework their material (if needed) to be compatible with any changes in Torque 3D.

So for example, if I buy the Aste Combo Pack 1 set, will this run without any issues in Torque 3D? Or should I wait until specific packs come out for T3D? I've read a few times now on just how different (and better) this new product will be, so that's having me wonder how far reaching these changes will be to other tools/art etc. that have been developed for use with TGEA.

thanks again!

#7 @Ken - Its gonna be hit or miss on the various addons, tools, and packs.

Torsion will work... nothing major has changed in TorqueScript that would keep it from working.

Art packs in general should work... DIF still works, DTS still works, materials still work (better in fact... detail maps work).

Still with Torque 3D there hasn't been a strong focus on backwards compatibility. So there will invariably be some things that work differently or have been removed to help make a better engine.

For example... the per-pixel specular was moved from the alpha channel of the diffuse map to the alpha channel of the normal map. This now allows you to have per-pixel specular on objects with transparency.

#8 On the specular map moving to the normal map alpha, that's a good change. It's going to hurt converting all of these textures, but a good change nonetheless.

#9 Fully agree. The move of the specular to the normal map is a very good thing

#10 Yeah it's a good move to change it to the normal map, still struggle getting the map into the alpha channel of a png in the first place though

#11 with photoshop you just add a new color channel and add your grayscale alpha data to that channel
Then save and you are done :)

#12 So can normals be in DDS now? (I'm sure DDS for normals didn't work in TGEA)

#13 Can't say for sure about the past, but you can use DDS for normal maps in Torque 3D.

#14 We used DDS for normals with Lore Aftermath without issue and it was TGEA 1.7 so I don't know why there would be an issue with T3D. Overall though this is a pretty positive change.

#15 Just had a quick retest and yep, works fine having DDS as normals. I must've screwed up on my first attempt somehow and just thought "that was that".

My bad!

edit: Ah, now I remember, using DDS for normals gives a worse "pattern effect" over distance on tight brickwork. I've no idea what that "pattern effect" is called but you see it on TV with tight black and white stripes and clothes and in real life on denier materials and nylons (on ladies legs!). Anyhow, that "pattern effect".

Still my bad for not remembering.

#16 That pattern effect is because your using a block compression (DXT), the eye is very sensitive to the lighting changes the rapid changes between the blocks, caused when just using DXT1 for normals.

You can place one channel of the normal into the alpha and use DXT5 which gives you one non block compressed channel which helps a bit. ATI has for a while and most modern NV hardware support an 2 channel block compression mode that is designed for tangent space normals and is much much better.

Rather than placing the specular in the alpha of the normal map, placing one of the component of the normal their, would probably be higher quality. Specular intensity tends to be smoother than high frequency normal data.

#17 I had read Steve's post earlier today about dds normals whether they work or not.... I see he already figured it out, but fwiw Apparatus used a few in the Warrior Camp level and they looked good in TGEa also... it just took me a while to check.

Kind of off-subject but of possible interest while we're talking about that "pattern effect"

That "pattern effect" is called a "moire pattern". It's most noticeable when looking at closely knit contrasting colors(parallel black and white lines being the most common or undersampled anti-aliased grid-like textures.

Although usually an undesired artifact it can be used to great effect for optical illusions. This is kind of an extreme example -- I just couldn't resist! Don't look too hard! :P

#18 @Dean, ah thanks for that info, and yes, I was using DXT1.

@Michael - Cool illusion! "Moire Pattern", so that's what it's called. Awesome gif from wikipedia too!