Artist and level designers

#101 I like the tree/rock generation idea - but what if you're not making a game with trees or rocks?

I think a solid plug-in system should be in place first. Then you can select plug-ins based on your project needs.

#102 As a large discussion point is an alternative to Constructior and/or improving the Sketch Tool, it reminded me that I actually began doing some work into that aspect.

So, I drudged up the work I'd accomplished so far and pushed it to a branch on my repo, here:

github.com/Areloch/Torque3D/tree/Sketch_Tool_Update_Experimental

So far, it supports per-surface material mapping(no interface for it yet, but you can manually set them via editing the mission file)

It also supports UV editing of each face, including X,Y Transform, X,Y scaling and Z rotation.

You can do this by selecting a face, and holding down CTRL while doing the transform or scaling options. Attempting to rotate the surface will rotate the texture.

I figure this is a good starting point for improving in that direction.

I dunno if a specific listing was made for 'Making the Sketch Tool better', but the list I thought up in the GG chat was:

UV editing(in progress, via my branch)
Per-surface material mapping(also in progress)

Vertex and Edge manipulation
Boolean Operations, such as Subtract, Intersect, Difference.

Additional Starting primitive shapes, such as Pyramid, Cylinder, Sphere, etc.

Honestly, the ideal is probably taking a majority of the base features and tools from Constructor and moving them into the Sketch Tool, haha.

One other useful tool I'd thought of is "Extrude Face along Path".
Idea being you'd select a face, click that tool, and it'd let you lay out points that form a spline path, akin to the road editor.

When you OK it, it'll extrude the selected surface into new brushes that follow the path slices.

This would be suuuuuper useful for stuff like roads, pipes and the like.

Anyone have other suggestions we could add into this list?

#103 This sounds awesome Jeff! really nice, can't wait to try it. now if only we could export Convex Shapes correctly to collada format for detailing or lightmapping to other 3d tools like blender!

@Richard Ranft
yes, it really is great to have a tree generator tool inside the engine. UDK is doing it and so is Unity. I agree, not all games have trees in them but still a majority of these titles utilizes it.

#104 I was also thinking of maybe you guys could add a Skydome or Sphere system where you can add a single dome texture or top and bottom half for spherical..

this moves forward with what developers and artists are using now, comparing it to other engines (Cry/Unity/UDK) that has long supported this type of static sky setup.

Advantages as always will be minimal textures and true seamless static skies.

#105 Very interesting thread.

There are things I'd love to see implemented and/or improved with T3D. I appreciate the level of detail the developers go to with many of the features and systems. However, I feel like they kinda sacrifice "user friendliness" in the name of "depth". They seem to create these systems more for programmers than for artists.

For example, the method of creating and, especially, editing materials in T3D has always driven me nuts. It seems like it should be straight-forward to use, but it's not. Their method of modifying values is just so odd and not at all intuitive. It can be done so much better.

Take for example, the material editor used in the Esenthel engine:
Click Here. I've linked it at the time where he brings up the material editor. You don't get an actual demo of it, but you can look at the interface and get the idea.

Look how simple and self-explanatory that is. And the material updates, in real-time, as you're moving those sliders. There's no guess-work or fiddling with numbers. To add the different materials (normal, macro, etc), you just drag them from a folder, straight into each slot and it auto-updates. It's as user-friendly and WYSIWYG as you can get.

That, to me, is an artist-friendly material editor. It's what T3D's should be more like.

Someone mentioned the water system being rather unintuitive. I agree there, too. That system could really do with an overhaul as well.

Basically, anything that requires an artist/designer to fiddle with numbers from 0.0 to 1.0 can and, arguably, should be replaced with a slider, with real-time updates. You should be able to see the waves changing speed, direction, etc. as you move the slider. This can be done, because I've seen it done in other engines.

All in all, I think all those types of systems could use an overhaul, with a view to making them more user-friendly, more immediate and WYSIWYG. It would speed up the process and make it sooo much easier and, dare I say it, fun to create environments.

Another engine that has some nice systems is the Neoaxis engine. They have, in particular, a system that I don't think I've seen in any other engine. That is, the ability to create a foliage system that can be painted on polysoup meshes - just as you'd do it on height-mapped terrain. That, to me, is awesome. The first time I played with that, it blew my mind. I'd never seen that in an indie-level game engine before. If T3D can do this, I've yet to see it done, or how to do it.


Finally, on to the whole CSG/DIF thing. Here's the thing with that. I don't think we need to bring back, or hold on to DIFs. All we really need is a CSG-style editor, which can then save to Collada.

I've seen something like that for Unity3D... Here's a link to it. It does pretty much exactly what I just described and looks like it would be an *extremely* valuable addition to T3D.

I wish I was a programmer, because I would definitely be working to implement at least one of the things I, and others, have mentioned in this thread.

T3D has power, for sure. I just think its design tools could use some work.

#106 @Mike

Good points.

On the CSG/DIF thing: I don't plan to do anything with DIF. It's dead and gone. My interest is pretty much just getting a good CSG-type editor working via updating the Sketch Tool.

(And I've seen ProBuilder before. Getting some functions of that has been on my down-the-line list for a while now ;) )

#107 Added a few more to the initial post

#108 @Paul

May want to edit a few of those. Their grammar kinda goes wonky and I can't make out what they're talking about.


So, on beefing up the sketch tool, this was my progress for the afternoon:


Based on the branch I provided above.

The sidebar lets you easily modify the UV Offset, Scale and Rotation(rotation field doesn't work yet).

It also has a preview for your 'active' material that can be applied to the currently selected face.

If you click it, as you see in the screenshot, it brings up the material selector.

For TODO, The selector doesn't change the 'active' mat yet, and as mentioned, the rotation field isn't active.

I should have those working tomorrow, as well as the lift - takes the currently selected surface's material and sets it as the active - and apply buttons.

Then I just have to add a flip horizontal and Vertical and the UV stuff is more or less done for the near-term.

After that's done, I'll begin looking at grid snapping to make editing easier to do.

#109 @JeffR
"May want to edit a few of those. Their grammar kinda goes wonky and I can't make out what they're talking about."

gimme the ones u need more info on and ill go running them down

#110 @Paul

"*When you be outside a zone, particles just are visible also lights inside the zone. Noting should be visible inside the zone. except you use a portal

*Occlusion Volume. it also make the terrain invisible, there where the OV is active. But i would like to have a switch, so i can set terrain is visible or get invisible, depend what i like to have."

I think I get what they're saying, but the sentences are pretty wonky.

#111 and i figured that would be better than translating MY version of what they said.

i can do i though, if that means it gets done.

#112 Something similar to FaceFX would be a nice addition.

#113

SKYBOX and SCATTER SKY should work together somehow.

You get to control the art in your skies and better lighting.

#114 www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22265

github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/pull/708
like that?

#115 @Azaezel

awesome that's what I'm talking about! thanks. will this be fully supported and included in the next release?

i'm suggesting to have it there just a normal skybox to get the best of both features. you get to pick your own sky art with better lighting.. or add the cloud layers with the sky box. what kind of artist doesn't want that? unless i'm missing something or we have an alternative integration to great procedural skies like Simul's true sky or at least that triton sth

#116 moved this to a new thread..

www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/140555

#117 It's on our list of issues for 3.7, but its inclusion is conditional on somebody taking the time to fix it so it works with the latest engine code (it's broken atm).

#118 @Jeff

I think I explain it best by showing it with some video material from UE4

You watch from video 16 and onward to 22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQrNQtfNOHc&index=16&list=PLZlv_N0_O1gZS5HylO_368myr-Kg2ZLwb

You will quickly realize what a out of the box support for fbx animations means. I dream about Torque 3D could be what you see in that video. Notice how easy it is to work with.

#119 Sadly the fbx format is proprietary so I would not want to use it, just because of that.

#120 @ Dwarf King

Nothing in that video is dependent on the FBX format. Once a model or animation is imported into T3D or UE4 they're translated into the engines internal format. This is where you get cached.dts files in T3D and .uasset files in UE4. At this point it's all about what you do with it. The animation blending tools in UE4 are superior and that's what you should be asking for. Adding FBX support would not improve anything other than having more import formats. You'd still just import them to torque's internal format and it would still use the same blending systems.

In a nutshell: if you want better animation blending then torque needs better animation blending, not FBX support.