Medusa Pro - Coming Soon from HPTWare
by Matthew Genge · 10/26/2013 (7:17 am) · 10 comments
We at HPTWare are in the final stages of development of Medusa Pro - a rock model creator for Torque3D. 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 for T3D, Medusa automatically generates LODs and collision meshes and each model imports seamlessly into the world editor. Medusa even features a batch creator allowing hundreds of 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 example of a couple of models generated by Medusa Pro are shown below. Each model is generated randomly at the click of a button (actually two clicks).
The scene below shows what Medusa Pro can do (even with our limited scene creating abilities). Creating the models and the scene took less than 20 minutes. The scene features only one rock model painted onto the landscape using the forest editor. The trees shown were created using our other product Forester Pro and are from the snow trees template pack.
We will keep you posted and hope to announce the release of Medusa in the next couple of months. In the meantime Forester Pro can be downloaded from our website and includes a free version. The registered version of Forester Pro is $20. We expect that Medusa will also have a free version and a registered version with a pocket friendly price tag...after all...us guys and gals working in basements on a shoe-string have to stick together.
www.hptware.co.uk/forester.php
An example of a couple of models generated by Medusa Pro are shown below. Each model is generated randomly at the click of a button (actually two clicks).
The scene below shows what Medusa Pro can do (even with our limited scene creating abilities). Creating the models and the scene took less than 20 minutes. The scene features only one rock model painted onto the landscape using the forest editor. The trees shown were created using our other product Forester Pro and are from the snow trees template pack.
We will keep you posted and hope to announce the release of Medusa in the next couple of months. In the meantime Forester Pro can be downloaded from our website and includes a free version. The registered version of Forester Pro is $20. We expect that Medusa will also have a free version and a registered version with a pocket friendly price tag...after all...us guys and gals working in basements on a shoe-string have to stick together.
www.hptware.co.uk/forester.php
About the author
I am an Earth Scientist who likes writing games for fun.
#2
We will have some template packs, but not as many as in Forester. I suspect we will have a dozen or so different rock templates come with Medusa.
10/26/2013 (9:42 am)
We potentially could make Medusa generate breakable models, eventually. It would be quite complex to implementWe will have some template packs, but not as many as in Forester. I suspect we will have a dozen or so different rock templates come with Medusa.
#3
10/26/2013 (1:13 pm)
Looks really cool! A must-buy imo, although the wireframes look a little weird here and there ;) 
#4
10/26/2013 (1:53 pm)
Very interesting, realistic organic modeling can be very time consuming, as Lukas said "A must-buy"! 
#6
Have you lot at HPTWare looked in to having really high polygon models to generate height maps for tessellation etc?
Great to also see you are expanding your product line with really great tools to help easily create new and interesting environments.
10/26/2013 (5:04 pm)
Looks great and again I would say a must buy like the Forrester Pro :-)Have you lot at HPTWare looked in to having really high polygon models to generate height maps for tessellation etc?
Great to also see you are expanding your product line with really great tools to help easily create new and interesting environments.
#7
The texturing is always an issue with automatically generated models. It is difficult enough to achieve manually let alone in code. It uses an optimized projection by looking for near orthogonal directions that satisfy the most faces. There will always some mismatches across seams. However, we added a means to tweak the uv coordinates if necessary.
10/26/2013 (5:54 pm)
Currently Medusa is limited to 50,000 polys, but the models shown above are much lower 300 and 1000 polys. I suspect it would really start to crawl with more than 50,000 but we still have to optimize.The texturing is always an issue with automatically generated models. It is difficult enough to achieve manually let alone in code. It uses an optimized projection by looking for near orthogonal directions that satisfy the most faces. There will always some mismatches across seams. However, we added a means to tweak the uv coordinates if necessary.
#8
But I noticed even big commercial games do not care so much if their art is not all perfect, they try to hide the ugly sides as good as they can and then leave it that way.
10/26/2013 (6:59 pm)
Even if you do it manually there are issues. I think the best solution would be a seamless texture that gets cube projected and the borders get blurred into each other, like with the terrain in Torque, but at the moment I don't know how to accomplish this.But I noticed even big commercial games do not care so much if their art is not all perfect, they try to hide the ugly sides as good as they can and then leave it that way.
#9
So far it looks really Gneiss! (Sorry)
10/27/2013 (10:50 am)
I need something just like this for my project, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.So far it looks really Gneiss! (Sorry)
#10
11/02/2013 (5:52 am)
There will be some schist in there too ;) 
J0linar
love the idea,
i would like to suggest a feature -
add a random generated brakeable version to the medusa tool
my question would be, are you guys goin the same road with medusa
as you did with forester
extendable thru model packages or is medusa simply goin to produce
the meshes from primitives?