Delerna

I am concentrating on terraforming more than the textures at the moment. Looking for places where I can split the terrain into multiple terrains should that become necessary Good points Lumooja. That's actually one of my ideas also (multiple models instead of 1 large terrain) Providing all of my terraforming comes out when I export the the hieghtmap I was thinking I might be able to use another software I have that can convert the terrain into a model. I can then cut up the model into pieces that are then guaranteed to be the correct size in relation to each other. Maybe I am going overboard...I don't know yet Edit I was also thinking that there are many places in a terrain where the player can never go. The tops of steep cliffed moutains for example. For these a billboard might suffice, perhaps one shaped like a tent or a pyramid. I know it's not a billboard then but the term illustrates the idea well. A simple shape that relies on its textures to give it definition

I have had leadwerks now for a while but up to this point I have only been tinkering with it. I have (probably unrealistic) dreams of a largish open world game set in ancient greece. So I have set myself the goal of discovering whether leadwerks and especially myself are capable of the above. Over the past couple of days I have been playing around with the terrain editor to see whether I could put together a large map and it's comming along quite nicely for 2 days work. So I thought I might post a couple of screenshots. This terrain started life as a greyscale heightmap that I extracted from a dem of Greece with free software that I downloaded from the internet as told by this site http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=27052 Greece is probably too large for an effective terrain so I used paint dot net and reduced it to just the Peloponnesus. I am starting to think that even that might be too large since the FPS is down to between 30 and 50 frames depending on how much of the terrain is in front of the camera. Anyway, It will be interresting to see how quickly the framerate bogs down once I start adding houses etc. I have plans for about 5 major towns on this terrain I have ideas for getting around the bogs but, for me, these are just theoritical until I try them out. Ayway, here are the screenshots. There is still a heap of work to do but I am pleased with the results so far This one is the heightmap of the peloponnesus and I have marked the aproximate locations of where I took the other 3 shots from 1 is looking towards 2 2 is looking towards 3 3 is looking back at 1 on the right and 2 on the left When is the next version of leadwerks comming, I need more texture slots and I need the river nodes and I need ..... Any pearls of wisdom that those who have experience with this sort of thing are prepared to share are appreciated.

All this is good to see Unity certainly is not the be all and end all for asset management, not all of it is great. But they did do a reasonably good job of it and you could do worse for inspiration. What I am trying to say is that your editor is quite new I believe, having only recently being released. As such it is quite impressive, some things missing, some improvements need to be made but overall very logical and user friendly. Having extensively read many forum posts I know most of your users agree.

Do you mean the interface to an object that is added in lua from the directional light script function class:InitDialog(grid) self.super:InitDialog(grid) group=grid:AddGroup("Light") group:AddProperty("Resolution",PROPERTY_CHOICE,"256,512,1024,2048") group:AddProperty("linearoffset",PROPERTY_VEC3,"0,1,2","Linear offset" ) group:AddProperty("shadowdistance",PROPERTY_VEC3,"","Shadow distance" ) group:AddProperty("Range",PROPERTY_FLOAT) group:Expand(1) end If so then that's not correct. Your way is nicer and possibly more powerful but Unity can do that sort of thing too

Josh I didn't mean to imply that is was dissatisfied with the assets pannel the way it is.There is nothing wrong with it and I think I agree with you. I was actually referring to objects that I will never use in the project I am working on. For example, I am working on a medieval game..I don't want my fighter jet models cluttering up the list when working on that project. Macklebee showed the solution for that and having played with that for a couple of days I have decided that, at this stage, I prefer my original idea over that. Each project folder containing ALL files for that project (including the editor/engine files) and ONLY the files required for that project. Why? I can quickly change from one project to another by simply going to the project folder and running the editor. I can easily have two editors open on different projects for comparison purposes I am a beginner with leadwerks so I can see myself doing that a lot for some time to come. I do like the current system for naming assets and for the same reasons that those who also like it mention. I didn't at first but it has grown on me However For one project I might decide that the assets used by that project are best organised by asset type all my boxes organised under boxes all my trees organised under trees etc But for another project I might decide that those very same assets are best organised by function or by location or some other system of organisation. For example I might have a level that has 10 houses and each of those 10 houses have one or more couches, fridges lamps etc If my assets were organised by asset type then all instances of couch are under couch all instances of lamp are under lamp all instances of fridge are under fridge With that sort of setup if I asked myself what does house 1 have in it I would have to open everything to see, does it have a couch, does it have a lamp, does it have... I think in that project I would rather have my assets organised by location for example House 1 might be a top level of organisation and under "House 1" I would have all the instances of assets that are located in "house 1". How could I achieve that without a whole lot of file renaming. That way all I need to do is open House 6 and I can instantly see everything in it. That's why I thought of writing myself an HTA split vertically. On the left side all my assets are listed On the right side I can create a folder structure in my projects assets folder and then drag the assets I want over to the right side and drop it into the folder I want it to go into. As the file gets copied across then the files will get renamed (by script on the HTA) according to the folder I droped it into. Then when I open the editor they will appear where I want them. I realise that I will need to give all of this careful consideration. I don't think I want to have the same couch stored multiple times in various locations just so they will appear in the correct place in the assets panel......but then again, maybe I do. I don't know yet. If I could drag the instance of my model in the leadwerks editors assets panel from its current location and drop it under a different node , then I wouldn't have to do that. The fact is though...I can't so if I want to re-organise my models according to project needs then I have to do something like that

ohhh...thanks macklebee. I have changed the gamescript path before but for some reason I did not associate "Game path" with locating the assets. Now that you point it out ... der.

Hi all Been away for a month trying out Unity3d and I must say I liked everything except the price. For several reasons Leadwerks is still my engine of choice so I started thinking about what I preferred in Unity compared to Leadwerks and how could I mimic it in leadwerks. There are a few things that I came up with but I would like to discuss only one of them here. The biggest difference I saw is the way that unity handles project assets. Leadwerks displays every asset in the folder that contains the editor regardless of whether it is used or not. This means the more assets you acquire the bigger and more cumbersome the list gets. Add to that the fact that each instance also appears in the list and ...... woa, its huge. The features of Unity's asset management that I would like to mimic are 1) The "Asset Panel" for any project only shows the assets that will be used in that project. 2) Able to easily re-arrange assets into a structure that (I feel) suits that project. 3) Have my assets so that all files used by an asset are either listed under that asset or not displayed at all. Like the prefabs in Unity The solutions I have come up with to achieve those are. 1) I have copied the leadwerks install folder and deleted all unnecessary files so that I am able to run the editor and edit and run LUA scripts (This is tested and working) My intention here is to keep multiple copies of this and add different files so they become "Template" projects. one for first and one for third person shooters, one for driving games, one for blank projects etc etc. When I start a new project I will copy the template folder and paste it onto the USB drive for my projects and rename it to my project name. That way each project will have its own leadwerks engine completely separate from all the other project. If I run the editor in my project foder, the assets panel will be empty. All my assets will be saved in a separate assets folder. Any asset that my project needs I simply copy it and paste it into the assets folder for my project. Run the editor in my projects folder and my new assets are listed in the assets panel and only the assets that the project needs is listed along with their instances. I realise that this will result in copies of my assets all over the place. I would much prefer one central copy of an asset that is pointed to from any project that uses it. Unfortunately I cannot think of a way to do that and not have EVERY asset appearing in the asset panel. I had thought of swapping the "models" folder in and out of the leadwerks install folder. The problem is if you update leadwerks all the missing "standard" models get re-downloaded. Also it would be more difficult to have multiple projects in progress. 2) This could potentially lead to a lot of renaming of files whenever I create a new project. My thought here is to create an HTA that allows me to drag assets from my store and drop them into my projects assets folder structure. The asset and its associated files gets renamed to suit as it gets copied accross. This would also remove the copy/paste of assets step mentioned in (1) Again, structuring the assets in the leadwerks install folder doesn't work because updating leadwerks causes the standard models to be re-downloaded, cluttering up my carefully planned asset structure as well as duplicate copies in different places. 3) From what I have seen so far, I think the script that is attached to a model acts somewhat like a prefab. Drag the model into your scene and the script automatically loads in the other models, sounds, particles etc etc used by that "prefab". Add to that the heirarchical nature of gmf and I think the properties of Unity's prefabs are perfectly acchievable Need to do more experimentation on this Anyway, I apologise for the length of this post. I have posted it because I am an experienced business software developer but am pretty raw with this 3D development stuff. I am open to and interrested in anyones warnings or gotcha's, constructive criticisms,alternative ideas and suggestions.

Hi all, my first contribution to the comunity I have been struggling with the post title for a full week. After lots of trial and error and trolling through the forums I finally think I have the process down pat. Thanks everyone for asking the same questions I was having and especially thanks to everyone who posted answers to those questions. Anyway, at my age I have trouble remembering new things. So using all the tips and answers and pitfalls I found on this subject I put together a word document mapping out the flow of creating and texturing models for leadwerks. I thought others may find this useful also, especially newbie's like me. So I saved it as an HTML and zipped it and posted here. I hope someone may find it useful. I have been dabbling with 3D modelling and various 3D engines for several years but I am by no means an expert. As such I do not guarantee the complete acuracy of this, I have tried hard to be accurate and to my current understanding, it is accurate. Experts, please feel free to correct me where I am wrong. There are some things on it that I don't fully understand....yet. I intend to continue working on this over the next month or so, because I need it, putting hypertext links to further info and explanations for unfamiliar terms/processes etc. If there turns out to be any interrest in this one then I will repost that one also. Well I am off to start creating some real models for leadwerks. You can expect me to take a leaf out of Gimpy73's book (thanks for your generosity) and start posting any models I think the comunity might find useful and I am prepared to give away. Incidentally, I use Wings3D and Sketchup Pro for modelling, and UU3D Pro for skinning . I also have Milkshape (don't really like it but probably haven't given it a fair go) and Fragmotion for when I start animating my models. PS I have seen the videos for 2.3 using windmill.gmf and while trolling around the forums I have seen a lot of discussion about it. I have also seen that it was not included in the latest release of 2.3. I would like to ask, where can I get it? i've looked everywhere (except where it is obviously). Or is it just not available any more? EDIT Yes, it was done in word and converted to HTML from that. That would explain IE only. There were no images on it??? Anyway I took a screen shot of the word and saved it as a JPEG image instead. Deleted the original zip and attached the one with the jpeg. That should solve it. Yea it does look like a complicated process doesn't it! Bear in mind though that I have included various alternatives, not all of them would be used by any one particular person. I hope this doen't turn anyone away from leadwerks because it really isn't as complicated as it appears. It's just that when starting out there are a few places where things can go wrong and it took me a lot of searching and reading to find the answers. My intent from posting this is that this will ease that process for someone. I don't know whether leadwerks beats all other engines out there or not. I have tried many including the pre 2.3 version of leadwerks. This new version of leadwerks however fits my way of thinking and working better than everything else I have tried. This is the first time I have felt I would be able to manage anything more than just tinkering. Modelling.zip