Skin Editor Video
This time the video is about the Skin Editor. Like the last one this video tries to give an insight in how things are done and how the editor works. Since the video issue with ModDB is still unresolved the video is once again on YouTube. Please excuse the desync on audio/video but FFMPEG for some odd reason doesn't capture at a constant frame rate. Sometimes it just records a couple of frames more messing up the timing. So without more words here the video.
As always feedback welcome and will be gladly taken into account for the first release.
Daily Grinding
Work continues with more tickets worked off. The ZPOC test case produced some more bug tickets than I hoped for but they are worked on to be resolved. I've added preview of objects/decals being placed as had been requested from the last video. The import skin menu and new from model menu is now enhanced for more convenience. Using the ZPOC test case dynamic skins with nested world rendering work now better including improving the GUI scripts included in the engine distribution (you'll see it when it pops up on my YouTube). Also improved the new game definition file created for new projects to get you started quicker. Modified also the animation export script to allow exporting individual frame ranges for individual animations. This allows now artists to create animations in Blender in a more flexible and clean way without impacting the export. The rest is not that important although time consuming tasks.
Outlook
Next up is another editor video besides more engine work. Can't say much right now so just be patient and see :D
![Drag[en]gine](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/engines/1/1/9/crop_120x90/banner_large.png)
Wow your skin editor is very powerful. Seemingly more powerful then Neo Axis has ever done with there own editor. You have allot of different things you can add to a skin. Making your own properties and stuff is ingenious. I really like that I wish Neo Axis had a similar system. It kind of reminds me of 3Ds max in some ways. But being able to add your own properties. That is really awesome. Great job. and Thanks for showing me you do have normal mapping. Your engine is awesome indeed.
Question. How do you setup game play objects? Like say if I wanted to make a drivable car? Or a gun or say start coding for the engine? Do you have your own scripting lang or?
There are different scripting modules. As game-dev you an choose the one you want to use. This defines then your access level to the engine (low level to high level) and the language used. Right now I'm using my own scripting language. In the first release there will be also a Smalltalk and Python module. More will follow as time comes by. All of the three scripting modules are low-level so you have to code what you want to do. More higher level modules can be added later on.
That is a simple and cool editor with a lot of functionality! I wonder if your dynamic materials could be used in a cartoony (Zelda like) game to change the facial expressions of the characters?
Also, is there any way to use an Alpha as a mask to change the strength of the normal map effects? That would allow to tweak the materiality even more. As usually: I'm blown away. Especially when you showed that dynamic stuff my jaw dropped. The ways that can be used are simply infinite.
Yes you could use a separate texture inside the skin for the face and then assign either individual images or even videos to the individual characters to dynamically change the face. You change then only elected texture properties so you still keep full control over the look of the texture. Videos by the way you don't have to take literally. Video modules just provide image sequence so this could be videos, old school animations or anything else that's an ordered sequence of images. You could even use a single video resource containing all the images you want to use and just change the playback position to display individual stills from the video. It's up to you how fast you play back the video or not at all for stills.
Not like that. You can use any image as the source of a texture property but not individual channels thereof. You never mix images together (image overloading). You always use one image per source type. Hence you would use one RGB image as color and one Grayscale image as the transparency. The graphic module can then decide itself if it mixes channels together for optimization reasons. On the artist level though you work with separate files as you do already while authoring them. This removes the need to pre-process source textures into combined textures. You just use your artist created source images as-is. This also means you can easily reuse images across different texture properties without worrying about channel combination. This way you can also choose the best compression/quality ratio for each image individually to optimize space/content.
Can you go more in depth about your terrain system? Talk more about your terrain system and do another full video about it? I am very interested in learn more about the terrain system in general. Also when do you plan on making this engine available to the public?
Also about the scripting languages is there any way to add something like Basic or even C# to the scripting system?
Have a look at the previous video: Youtu.be . It contains towards the end some information about vegetation system and terrain but not too much. What in particular you are interested in?
The engine will be made available as soon as the tickets for the first release version are done. This means in particular the point in time where the interfaces to the game developer should not change drastically anymore. The second milestone is then when the interfaces towards all modules are finalized too. I can not give a good prediction yet but I hope it is in a couple of month time if nothing major breaks.
In general you do not add scripting languages yourself "directly". The idea is to add scripting language module written by individual people as they are requested. Of course you can code such a module on your own and hopefully making it available to the public. The power of this engine lies in the free software nature so adding many modules to it helps to obtain a game engine which surpasses whatever AAA engines can do so far.
Well the creation of maps in general. How do you make your terrains? Can you take a grayscale image and make the terrain itself? Height map? Can you use a full color map over the entire terrain? Basically do something similar to this tutorial I wrote for the Neo Axis engine.
Neoaxis.com
Basically make terrains that looks like these.
Assault-knights.com
Using one full color map that covers the entire terrain and then a few Detail textures across it. That are normal mapped. All these terrains I have made with the Neo Axis engine.
Could something similar be done with your engine?
Also what limits if you can use heightmaps. What is the limit on heightmap sizes that can be used. Meaning can I use heightmaps that are 4096 x 4096 and the engine still run good? Without much slowdown?
I didn't read it all the way through as the amount of clicking required killed my brain. That's nowhere what you do in my engine. You just start painting on the terrain and during saving you can say where the files going to be saved. You can edit outside the editor of course if you want since all image files are standard file formats but most of the time you do it in the editor.
In general you can do either geometry terrain using Components or using height terrain as showed in the video. Height terrain is currently 1024x1024 but that could go higher. In general though it's better to break a terrain up into multiple sections each having it's own sets of images instead of one large chunk. Makes it easier to work with. The current image modules provide support for 16-bit float image files (PNG-16 for the time being) so accuracy is not a problem. You don't slam one huge texture on the terrain and add detail textures to it. I never liked this approach. Instead you paint layers of textures using a mask for each layer. I've got plans for something "special" concerning this but I'm not going to talk about it until it's ready on the table. Once finished it's going to knock your socks off, that's for sure.
Anyways, it's just really a just go and paint it straight into the map where you want to see it.
Well using Alpha masks is very much similar to how Neo Axis does it. Neo Axis still uses Alpha masks to color the terrains. And uses a Base map and a detail texture. I just stretch the base map over the entire terrain using a color map. Then tile detail textures over the terrain and use normal maps with them.
I am not sure if you looked at my pics or not on my website. Of my maps made like this. But they are some of the most beautiful looking maps in the Neo Axis community. And have had high praises from allot of members in the NA community. 1024 x 1024 is fine. For most cases. I was just wondering if you planned on making bigger heightmap sizes available. I also love that your heightmaps are png format. That was one of my biggest hates with Neo Axis. It uses .raw files. And I can't stand that format. So a big thumbs up on that! :)
Anyway when you get ready or need a beta tester for your engine please consider me I would love to test your engine out. And maybe help you with it. I am a 3D model maker. Level designer. And other things. I would love to help you out and beta test your engine. I am also good at finding bugs and other things.
As mentioned the 1024x1024 is the size of one sector. You can use as many sectors in a height terrain as you see fit. The size is thus quite endless. You also don't apply normal maps but entire skins as layers. You get thus all the texture properties you also get for any other element in the world.
When the engine is released for the first time anybody can test it. There's no such thing as restricted group of testers or similar. Anybody can test it and anybody can file reports in the official ticket tracker afterwards. So you can just jump in without any hassle.
Awesome I really look forward to playing around with your engine :D.