kirk

Thank you, Benton

I think I saw a few links to Lua tutorials somewhere on this site. Are they still here?

Thanks for your offer. I am still a bit hesitant regarding Leadwerks. Mostly because my coding experience is limited to some expressions/commands in 3d soft only. I am searching for something an artist friendly but still good graphics capable. If I'll make my stop at Leadwers I'll definitely avail myself of your offer.

Thanks evreybody for the answers Does it mean that it's not possible to do something with the auto generated LODs ? For example, there is a group of trees seating on a cliff and I would like to replace the whole group to a flat poly and pre-baked “group of trees” small texture at a certain distance? Is there any workaround for lods hierarchy? Maybe in that barrels case it's possible to have a kind of “grouped 5 barrels” object that is shown only when zoomed out and never at a close distance? ps. Have anybody used some GLSL code exported from Mental Mill and whether it's possible at all considering Leadwerks deffered render? I am interested mostly in adding some extra Fresnel effects and a few animated things to a standard “specular + normals/parallax” shaders.

I am a game artist and curious about Leadwerk. Here is a few questions I have, Would be appreciated if somebody answer. Does it support rotated (edited) vertex normals within its importer? Does it support hierarchical lods ? It's when a group of separate objects (hierarchical branches) are replacing into a single object ( parent trunk ) with a distance and so on. So you have a lot of separate objects close to a player and a few ones on a distance. Is there any tool to organize such a hierarchy or import it from a 3d soft directly? Does it support any visual, node based shader creation? Any third party tool like Mental Mill? Is it supposed to be be used with its editor terrain system only? The modern 3dsMax/ Maya versions are quicker imo for an environment creation and more flexible than any game editor imo.

Thanks Metatron

I mean in such a simple scene like the tunnel I get about 60fps full screen with my not very new 9800gt while would expect at least double of that for an almost empty scene. I am curious what fps could I expect with animated characters in a full scale game? Or on such levels like Chernobyl's one I saw in video examples? Looks like SSAA is a fps killer also. Is it kind of work in progress feature?

thank you for the info, Metatron.

So I need to write a piece of code for that and a special shader. Right? It's not a check box somewhere in a shader or an object settings? I am an artist and coding is out of my expertise

Is it possible to make a car surface reflecting the world in real time? I guess the engine should support render-to-texture capability for that. I see some objects are reflected in the water(except trees) so perhaps it may be possible in a car surface too?

Thanks. I have one more question. Is it possible to make a sun light diffraction effect ? One common for modern games when you see a bright spot of light ahead of any geometry that may screen it partly. With a hdr sky texture or something?

Is it possible to use not a box but any other shape for the sky? The box is rather waste of texture space and quality for a sky background

For example a water surface shader, a car paint shader or any kind of general shader that would interact with lighting a bit differently. Wet materials, frost materials , interactively changing materials.

I mean s software that would be possible to use with Leadwerks. Something like Shader Fx for 3ds max.

thanks

I open Material editor but when I try to push edit shader it opens my default internet browser. Is it a kind of trial version limitation?

ok . thanks. Sorry for so many questions but I just can't make a well-considered decision toward Leadwers over other engines. It involves mostly not the cost but rather a time and my ability to cope with it. It's pity that it allow to really try almost nothing with the trial.

Regarding the sky. I found the atmosphere.gmf file in engine assets. Guess it's a geometry file. Would it work if I build and replace it with a new gmf from my preferred model ? A dome instead of the cube?

Thanks to everyone for the info. Looks like the engine nevertheless requires some Lua learning. I found the Editor a bit too simplistic and having a bit lack of control over things. So I see LUA is inevitable if I go further with Leadwerks. I would like to estimate how much time it may take to learn some basics to be able to modify other people scripts at least. Is it realistic at all from an artist point of view? Would be appreciated if somebody who went through the same way, can share an oppinion.

I actually don't want to make a game. I just want to make an environment demo. But that demo should have some basic capabilities like decent lod system and modern lighting/shadows. Leadewerks, being quite affordable, looks like able to offer that and much more, with nice looking lighting effects. My experience with shader creation is not coding but mostly from using such software like Mental Milll and Shader FX which allow a visual ,node based work-flow and getting a code after an export. And I don't know LUA either. Modern 3d programs , like 3ds Max, Blender, etc allow you to work without coding anything (almost) . I have nothing against spending some time for learning some basic scripting but definitely would prefer to work the same way the 3d soft do. By means of nodes connecting or simple expressions in a visual interface. ps. I can't find any tool to convert fbx to gmf. Does it come with a full version only?

To import and test any object in the Editor I need the full comercial version, right?

Can I just place a huge sky dome object onto a scene and force it to work the same way as skybox do with a special shader?

Thanks again. I got the idea with the lights. It works pretty well. Regarding the Sky box/dome. I see the trial version have a cube as a sky model. It's a very ineffective model considering texture space required. I have my own sky textures which I would like to try. It's intended for a low poly dome. Can I use it instead of the box someway? Maybe it's also a few lines? I have not found neigthter groups, nor any lod or their distance settings for obects. Is it also in a full version only?

ok, thanks. it wouild be great. I have a few other questions regarding how deep access I may get to a lighting and lods settings without coding anything. For example I am accustomed to so-called hierarchical lod system when a groups of objects, including a piece of a terrain being replaced with a distance to a single pre-rendered object or a background element to reduce an amount of objects on a scene. Is something like that possible? Can I give a slightly blue tint to shadows ? Maybe an ambient component color for materials? Guess it should be possible by editing shaders or something Can I load my own sky dome model and make interchangeable, fading one to another textures for it. If possible, whether it also may be done without coding?

Thanks. Does it involve any programming experience? I am an artist and have only very basic shader creation knowledge and no coding experience at all. I am looking for something to make a demo to show my work. Is the procedure of making game.exe simple enough to be used by an artist?