Artist and level designers
by Paul Yoskowitz · in Torque 3D Professional · 11/03/2014 (4:32 am) · 141 replies
Where do you feel that T3D is falling down as far as things for the artist and level designers?
This isn't about the latest DX/OGL or anything like that. What tools are missing compared to other engines out there right now that you feel would breathe new life into T3D-MIT and make development easier for you?
This is the list so far of issues or things that need added:
*Interior/structure designer like Constructor
*Prefab object that combines models and scripts
*Improve forest editor
*Beefing up the sketch tool
*Beef up the material editor
*Fix the Shadow system
*Jitter in terrain system between terrain and models
*Add weather system
*Better snapping system
*Better Zip file functionality
*Re-add terrain erosion
*Add terrain specular, and if needs be, remove parallax from the terrain pass to make way for it, but retain parallax for shapes.
*Add the ability to set a kind of 'alpha mask' for the terrain tools, so you can set the strength & shape of the tools a bit more specifically.
*Add more flexibility in the noise tool again, maybe being able to set a tiled heightmap mask to it so you can again control the behaviour of it better depending on design requirements.
*Water... although i havent played around with it in recent builds, and it may have been changed since i have used it properly, the settings for water could really be simplified down to make it more user friendly, alot of the settings are awkwardly named considering their effects on the water blocks.
*A basic precipitation and particle library
*Add split screen "view ports"
*Better terrain materials manager
*Add a semi "auto-zone" widget kinda thing. for example selecting a building shape, and at click of a button, create a "zone" item matching its bounds etc.
*Ground Cover needs collision support
*Add terrain layer sensitivity to the forest
*Improve character import
*Add more keyboard shortcuts and show on the menu
*Light bleeding through the seems
*Possibly change the ground cover and forest editor to be 2 more generalized editors
*when standing outside of a zone, particles and lights are visible that are created inside of it. the only way that they should be visible is by looking inside the zone through a portal.
*Occlusion Volume. It should have a switch that allows it to effect the terrain behind it or not. As it stands, it causes the terrain to disappear behind it, which u dont always want.
*More 3D imports
*Artist friendly - add sliders along w numbers input
*SKYBOX and SCATTER SKY should work together somehow
*Better animation blending
This isn't about the latest DX/OGL or anything like that. What tools are missing compared to other engines out there right now that you feel would breathe new life into T3D-MIT and make development easier for you?
This is the list so far of issues or things that need added:
*Interior/structure designer like Constructor
*Prefab object that combines models and scripts
*Improve forest editor
*Beefing up the sketch tool
*Beef up the material editor
*Fix the Shadow system
*Jitter in terrain system between terrain and models
*Add weather system
*Better snapping system
*Better Zip file functionality
*Re-add terrain erosion
*Add terrain specular, and if needs be, remove parallax from the terrain pass to make way for it, but retain parallax for shapes.
*Add the ability to set a kind of 'alpha mask' for the terrain tools, so you can set the strength & shape of the tools a bit more specifically.
*Add more flexibility in the noise tool again, maybe being able to set a tiled heightmap mask to it so you can again control the behaviour of it better depending on design requirements.
*Water... although i havent played around with it in recent builds, and it may have been changed since i have used it properly, the settings for water could really be simplified down to make it more user friendly, alot of the settings are awkwardly named considering their effects on the water blocks.
*A basic precipitation and particle library
*Add split screen "view ports"
*Better terrain materials manager
*Add a semi "auto-zone" widget kinda thing. for example selecting a building shape, and at click of a button, create a "zone" item matching its bounds etc.
*Ground Cover needs collision support
*Add terrain layer sensitivity to the forest
*Improve character import
*Add more keyboard shortcuts and show on the menu
*Light bleeding through the seems
*Possibly change the ground cover and forest editor to be 2 more generalized editors
*when standing outside of a zone, particles and lights are visible that are created inside of it. the only way that they should be visible is by looking inside the zone through a portal.
*Occlusion Volume. It should have a switch that allows it to effect the terrain behind it or not. As it stands, it causes the terrain to disappear behind it, which u dont always want.
*More 3D imports
*Artist friendly - add sliders along w numbers input
*SKYBOX and SCATTER SKY should work together somehow
*Better animation blending
About the author
http://winterleafentertainment.com/
#2
"doors as some sort of prefab object" - are you wanting a prefab library?
"system to dynamically load content like paging terrain" - noted.
11/03/2014 (7:58 am)
"interior/structure designer like Constructor" - why not something like Blender then? Just asking."doors as some sort of prefab object" - are you wanting a prefab library?
"system to dynamically load content like paging terrain" - noted.
#3
In all seriousness though, it is an old format. However, it does make things really easy to build quick convex shapes. What if we had had a different format from .map files to kill off the old dif format? I know I know, I'm beating a dead horse. Andrewmac will yell at me later for saying this :P
OGL for OSX and *Unix pls ;)
11/03/2014 (8:20 am)
haha, see im not the only one who wants the dif format to remain ;)In all seriousness though, it is an old format. However, it does make things really easy to build quick convex shapes. What if we had had a different format from .map files to kill off the old dif format? I know I know, I'm beating a dead horse. Andrewmac will yell at me later for saying this :P
Quote:This isn't about the latest DX/OGL or anything like that.
OGL for OSX and *Unix pls ;)
#4
The other issue is, that there is no tool to create shapes in the editor, the sketch tool can do so, but not satisfying. The sketch tool could be build out to create simple level geometry and export with a button to a static collada object or so. If the sketch tool would get grid snapping, vertex manipulation and texture alignment, you could build simple levels with just this tool, without having to learn a complicated modeling software.
Programs like Constructor are the wrong way to go in my opinion, since it is too complicated to learn, to slow to use and not complex enough compared to blender and others. But a simple shape creator tool would help beginners a lot, so they could start immediately building levels without having to learn anything.
11/03/2014 (9:55 am)
Spontaneously I would say the forest editor is an issue, since you cannot build a level with forest in a modular way. you have to access a global datablock in the game engine for this and there have been issues in the past breaking the forest setup, so you can start from scratch if you want to get rid of the bug, no idea how much of this is left in the newer versions. So the issue is, I cannot just build a level and send it to you and you can drop it into your folder and test it, you would have to modify the forestdata by hand or overwrite with mine and breaking your other forests.The other issue is, that there is no tool to create shapes in the editor, the sketch tool can do so, but not satisfying. The sketch tool could be build out to create simple level geometry and export with a button to a static collada object or so. If the sketch tool would get grid snapping, vertex manipulation and texture alignment, you could build simple levels with just this tool, without having to learn a complicated modeling software.
Programs like Constructor are the wrong way to go in my opinion, since it is too complicated to learn, to slow to use and not complex enough compared to blender and others. But a simple shape creator tool would help beginners a lot, so they could start immediately building levels without having to learn anything.
#5
As far as DIF goes, it would be nice to have a .map importer that just went straight to DTS like the COLLADA importer does now. No need for DIF to remain, but the CSG modelling tools could still be used. This is a close second behind the sketch tool improvement - if the sketch tool was a full-featured CSG modelling tool this would be unnecessary.
<tl; dr> Many people find full 3D modelling packages unnecessarily cumbersome, some simpler CSG tool would be nice.
11/03/2014 (9:57 am)
I think beefing up the sketch tool so that you could quickly build structures would be nice - right now it can be used fairly well but better solid modeling tools would be nice. Like Chris, I feel that having to model a structure in Blender (or other 3rd party tool) can be a pain with the export/import process, weird material import, etc.As far as DIF goes, it would be nice to have a .map importer that just went straight to DTS like the COLLADA importer does now. No need for DIF to remain, but the CSG modelling tools could still be used. This is a close second behind the sketch tool improvement - if the sketch tool was a full-featured CSG modelling tool this would be unnecessary.
<tl; dr> Many people find full 3D modelling packages unnecessarily cumbersome, some simpler CSG tool would be nice.
#6
11/03/2014 (10:01 am)
PS: The material editor is also unfinished and bugged, I have heard someone worked on it while they were developing a game with Torque3D, but then they quit and left the material editor in a partly unfinished state.
#7
it also needs a better way to organize the terrain materials instead of 1 big unwieldy list
11/03/2014 (10:23 am)
something that was mentioned in IRC is to replace the terrain material painter with something simular to the forest editor so that u can use a brush that combines materials instead of using a single material per brushit also needs a better way to organize the terrain materials instead of 1 big unwieldy list
#8
the forest brushes (occasionally) disappear so that the trees no longer show. this tends to happen if a lot of forest brushes are added with multiple trees in them. It will not error, the trees just stop showing up on the mission.
11/03/2014 (10:32 am)
Add in a drop down or something for all the 'metrics'the forest brushes (occasionally) disappear so that the trees no longer show. this tends to happen if a lot of forest brushes are added with multiple trees in them. It will not error, the trees just stop showing up on the mission.
#9
11/03/2014 (10:33 am)
On materials editor incompleteness: environment map slot is un-implemented (andrewmac replaced it for deferred with the translucency map option), dynamicubemap bool checkbox is not exposed, and Material tags for sorting rather than dealin with a large list took hand editing, either because it's not there, or it was too obscure. Can't really speak for the usefulness of the lightmapping end of things since that's tightly coupled to a 3rd party plugin. 
#10
"system to dynamically load content like paging terrain"
Then the shadow system is very laag.
No terrain jitter between models, trees, objects and the terrain when you move or turn the camera/player! (you can see that effect when you have large terrains)
Radar and map system also compas as stock.
weather system
more player animations like turn at axis and walk/run, side forward, pain and a attack system like death system, so you can just add more attack animations.
BUT most importand, everything that improve FPS .
11/03/2014 (10:46 am)
I would say that is most importand."system to dynamically load content like paging terrain"
Then the shadow system is very laag.
No terrain jitter between models, trees, objects and the terrain when you move or turn the camera/player! (you can see that effect when you have large terrains)
Radar and map system also compas as stock.
weather system
more player animations like turn at axis and walk/run, side forward, pain and a attack system like death system, so you can just add more attack animations.
BUT most importand, everything that improve FPS .
#11
11/03/2014 (11:06 am)
instead of just prefabs, in IRC they also discussed a possible way to do something simular to the T2D toys that will allow scripts *and* models to be packaged and dropped in for use. 
#12
Current feature requests, for reference. Also, I asked reddit. EDIT: and got a really fantastic answer. Click the link. Do it.
11/03/2014 (2:51 pm)
Better snapping is something I hear brought up occasionally. Including snapping to surfaces, snapping to nodes, etc. Also node-based editors for shaders and gameplay scripts.Current feature requests, for reference. Also, I asked reddit. EDIT: and got a really fantastic answer. Click the link. Do it.
#13
11/03/2014 (4:30 pm)
ive hear the Zip File functionality works... how about making an interface for it
#14
11/04/2014 (12:04 am)
Here's a summary of a great answer I got on Reddit:Quote:More detail in the answer.
The biggest things for me as an artist are (in order of importance):
1. Entirely GUI-based engine interaction
2. Easy file management
3. Comprehensive search functions
4. Keeping rarely-used functions of the interface hidden unless deliberately exposed
5. Instant feedback on model/texture changes
6. Realtime previews of shaders as they would appear in-game
7. Easy character animation selection and playback
8. Support for common filetypes
#15
There has been a lot of times developing stuff for DM that i have thought "oh i would love to be able to compile in/out certain features for the editor vs game build and not use horrible if statements (sorry bit off topic as i am talking as a programmer and not an artist).
11/04/2014 (2:35 am)
Personally i think the biggest area it falls down is not having a true stand alone editor. I know the whole wysiwyg approach the editor uses now some people really like but i think this makes the editor limited in what it can do. Some tasks the editor needs to do is just not suitable for realtime. Just look at CryEngine and UE4 they both use standalone editors and while not been 100% wysiwyg they are still pretty darn close because they are still using the game engine obviously for rendering etc.There has been a lot of times developing stuff for DM that i have thought "oh i would love to be able to compile in/out certain features for the editor vs game build and not use horrible if statements (sorry bit off topic as i am talking as a programmer and not an artist).
#16
11/04/2014 (3:12 am)
well, it seems like there is a decent list here of broken (or not quite 100%) features that needs addressed thats been mentioned by T3D users and basically a nice re-do of the UI (according to some of the shredding) from the people in Reddit.
#17
11/04/2014 (3:44 am)
Bear in mind I'm pretty sure none of the Redditors are commenting on T3D in particular because... drumroll... they haven't used it :P. I was just asking in general.
#18
11/04/2014 (6:00 am)
Torque3D is really similar to CryEngine, Torque3D does not use a separate editor, but that is a good thing to me. Torque3D and CryEngine are 100% wysiwyg. Unreal needed compiling the last time I used it. CryEngine also has the bake lightmap function, so after you hit bake lightmaps, it looks different, but this is only for special situations like indoor levels.
#19
@Timmy - have you thought of making a separate T3D project that is intended to run as a stand-alone editor for your current project? As "particular" as T3D is about its folder structure this might be a bit of a challenge, but it would be effectively the same approach UE4 uses. It would be really nice to add a script editor interface too. I'm going to have to put some thought into this....
11/04/2014 (7:49 am)
UE4 "cooks" assets (creates its packages, precompiles its blueprints, bakes lightmaps, etc) when you actually run your game. The editor is a special case of the game now, so you can see exactly what it will look like in game but the prep can be irritating. There is a "play" feature that lets you run the game in the editor as well, but it skips some of the game start-up. You can rebuild lighting and occlusion any time from the editor.@Timmy - have you thought of making a separate T3D project that is intended to run as a stand-alone editor for your current project? As "particular" as T3D is about its folder structure this might be a bit of a challenge, but it would be effectively the same approach UE4 uses. It would be really nice to add a script editor interface too. I'm going to have to put some thought into this....
#20
Just curious, but do you actually have an example case where having a completely separated editor would provide benefits?
I'm sure there is, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
11/04/2014 (11:02 am)
@TimmyJust curious, but do you actually have an example case where having a completely separated editor would provide benefits?
I'm sure there is, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Chris DeBoy