MikeV

Hmm.. So I need to write code to have collision work? Or, is that something else I'm supposed to be editing? I haven't actually come across any documentation that mentions anything about that. Only the phy generation program and such in the documentation. Also, I converted the file from PNG to DDS using the converter provided with LW, so shouldn't that have corrected/overwritten any issues in the material? Same for the FBX2GMF converter?

Hey all... So as a test, I put together a quick and ugly model, complete with UV texture just to see how the process works and if I could get through it without any major issues, etc. A quick run through of the steps I followed... - I exported as FBX, converted to GMF via the tool. - I converted the texture to DDS and then from the DDS, I used the tool to generate the .mat file. - I also exported an .obj version of the model to set up collision with the phy program (I selected the one that wasn't collision hull.. forget the exact name right now) I copied all those files into their own folder under Models, and am able to successfully to bring the model into a scene. Everything went smoothly until.... Problem is two-fold... 1. The model is showing up blood-red with a hint of the texture in there. I had no color set for my diffuse or anything like that in Blender and the UV map looks fine outside LW editor. 2. Even with the .phy file generated and physics active in the editor, I'm still falling through the model when trying to land on it. I've tried searching around for help on it, but no dice. Sooo... Here's a screenshot of the model in the editor... Appreciate any help/advice/feedback anyone may have... Thanks!

Just a quick update. I loaded up the map from the screenshots above and now it's running fast and smooth. So, I don't know what was going on last night and why it was running so slowly. Whatever it was seems to have fixed itself. So... Onward and upward!

Hiya Aggror. I have actually downloaded and looked through that. Couldn't seem to find anything relating to terrain speed/performance, etc. Could be I overlooked something, though. I can take another look. Thanks! Edit: Curious. I can't test this myself since I'm not at home at the moment, but was just wondering if the size/resolution of the base map can have an effect on performance, etc?

Hiya folks.. Thanks for the feedback. I did try disabling all the post effects, 'cause I thought that might what the issue was as well. The difference was negligible. As for hardware, I'm running on a NVidia GTX 560Ti with the latest drivers. It's not cutting edge (ie. 600 series), but it's still a fairly beastly card that runs all the other demos for LW beautifully. The arctic mountain one with the forest runs at up to 100FPS in some spots, but never drops below 80. Granted, it's probably also a smaller map overall than what I'm using and the visibility isn't as far. That's why I'm wondering if there's some important step I'm missing somewhere. I've gone through tutorials and such, but can't find anything that I may have overlooked. Not sure if it's relevant here, but in case it is, I'm on an AMD Phenom II 3Ghz x4 (unlocked to x6). Also have 8 gigs of RAM. Running on Windows 7 64-bit.

Just a quick update. Thought I'd go ahead and post a couple quick shots of what I've got so far. It's not much, but then I've been watching 'Event Horizon' for the last hour or so.. >.> I had a rough heightmap of the zone in PNG format, which was used by another engine I was checking out, but it caused really bad stair-case effects in LW. So I brought it into L3DT, did some fixing up on it, and exported it to a .raw format. There's still some bumpiness in there, but that can be dealt with as I go. So, I got the heightmap in there, and then overlayed the area map I created in order to give me reference of where I need to adjust the terrain, etc. What you're looking at in the in-editor shot is the SW corner of the map. The overall zone will be about 2 square kilometers overall, with about 1.8 kilometers of actual explorable space. The lines with slight shadows you see are changes in elevation, and that's what I have to go in now and "fill in". Most important thing is I have the rough layout in there, which will make life much easier for me. The darker areas that are drawn "over" the higher areas will be tunnels, created from polysoup models. As it stands, I'm kinda concerned about the performance/frame-rate I'm getting in the editor. I've looked, but haven't been able to find anything to do with enabling LOD on the terrain, or reducing/increasing the clip range. I don't imagine it'll be too much of a problem in the final result, though. At least I hope not. Any tips on increasing/optimizing performance on that? Hopefully I'm not doing something horribly wrong here lol. Here's the pics.

Yep! Got it working now. I figured it had to be something simple that I was just missing. Thanks again!

EDIT: Okay... I figured it out. I didn't have a regular texture layer added. As soon as I did that and reduced the opacity on it, the base texture showed up. I guess the base texture needs something to blend with/against in order to work? So... problem solved! Edit of the Edit: lol I just read your edit after editing mine lol. So yeah, that confirms that's all it was Thanks for the help!

Hello, So, seem to have run into my first speed bump here. Ahh the joys of being a newbie :-p I've selected an image to use as the base map for a terrain, but it doesn't seem to want to show on the terrain itself. I initially had trouble getting it to load, as I kept getting an error to do with loading abstract::-filename-, etc... I ran the GenMat program on it, it generated the material file and so forth. I was then able to load the image successfully into the editor. However, now it won't show on the terrain at all. I've searched around for info on this, but couldn't seem to find anything specifically about my issue. Curious if there's some setting I need to adjust, etc?

I guess I just haven't graduated beyond "Potential Riffraff" status yet :-p It's fine. I don't need to start one "omg right now". Just thought it would be cool to start one at the beginning of my progress, etc. It can wait.

Hello again.. Quick question this time. Do you have to be a licensee of the Leadwerks engine to start/maintain a blog? I was thinking of starting one, but can't see anywhere to create a new one on my profile > Blogs screen. Just want to make sure I'm not missing some glaring button or option staring me in the face.

That is a beautiful thing. Thanks!

No problem. Credit where it's due. Yeah I recall that bit in the video where you're talking about being able to focus on usability, and then put really good graphics tech on top of that, rather than going the other way around. One thing I dig about LW's terrain system is how you can paint directly on the height map, or normal map, etc. I think that's going to make terrain editing for a larger area a lot easier, since I can rough in the general shape of the area, and then go back in and fine-tune it. Is there any way to load in a sorta template background image to trace over? I hadn't actually checked into that last night when I was checking it out.

Funny you mention that. I'm at the very end of that very video and you're wrapping it up as I type this. I've been listening to it while here at work. I did check out that bit with the automatic navigation and, I agree... that is pretty darn awesome. And yeah, it was great seeing his expression lol. Can't say I blame him though. As a designer, it's extremely awesome and inspiring to see such effort put into making what I do (or will be doing, anyway) as streamlined, intuitive and empowering as possible. I don't know how much you've messed around with other indie engines or their toolsets (I know you mention Crytek, Unreal and Source a bit), but your focus and execution on that kind of ease of workflow is so woefully rare in the indie game scene - and that's going back to Cartography Shop, as I've mentioned before. As a (wannabe/aspiring) environment/level designer, it's exciting to think that I can finally have a nearly 1-to-1 ratio of "having an idea", or a sketch, etc... and then implementing that idea quickly in the editor and then see it in action with a single button press. Very, very cool. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on those tools personally I'm also interested in learning Lua so I can work on implementing my own interaction and such for my prototype. I've typically shied away from learning any kind of programming, since my previous attempts at learning have been rather fruitless (I'm firmly a "right-brainer"). But I think I'm going to give it a serious and wholehearted go this time.

Wellll... I don't know how "discerning" I am, considering how long it took me to find and try out Leadwerks. I do appreciate the compliment though! I just appreciate a design environment that empowers me to do what I want to do, rather than one that feels like I'm fighting it, having to constantly refer to a manual, or dig through mountains of obtuse and unintuitive menus and windows every step of the way. With some of the engines I've looked at, I have seriously wondered - not being facetious here - what the creators were trying to do, or if they understood their intended userbase at all.

Ah okay, that makes sense, then. I assume the introduction of CSG editing is a part of that shift in focus you speak of. If so, then I agree with it! I personally think there's plenty of room for it still in environment design. After posting in this thread last night, I went and checked out a few of Josh's blogs on the subject, and my view of CSG seems to be right in line with his in terms of the benefits of using CSG over creating polysoup models in another 3D app. If you can put together a fairly complex building using straight-up blocks for everything, or even just mock things up to get the scale and layout right of everything, then why go through the steps of modeling, uv-unwrapping, texturing, exporting, converting, etc. etc. for the same effect? If it's a tool that speeds up or makes that process easier, then why not use it? That's what I think anyway.

I take it you mean previous versions of the Leadwerks engine, right? Not as in, "look at other 3D engines from other developers"? 'cause I've looked at a ton of them lol. I'm kind of surprised I didn't come across your engine sooner. Probably would have saved myself a lot of time and aggravation if I had. Well, for the time being, I have the evaluation for the current engine which is giving me plenty to look into, etc. Thanks again!

Hiya Josh, Thanks for the info! So, basically, just lay in the terrain, cut holes in the ground and place my underground areas, and the engine will do the heavy lifting? Well that's pretty darn neat. I just came from trying another engine that requires all this placement of portals and anti-portals and zones and all this. Real pain in the neck that was. As for the pricing for the full engine, I guess there's going to be a price increase, then, when the new engine comes out? And what time frame are you looking at for the new engine to be released? I'm looking to get a license in about 3 weeks time (I get paid bi-weekly, and next check has rent coming out of it, else I'd be buying it sooner). That's great about the CSG editor built-in to the engine. That's incredibly useful. I was kind of fond of that similar functionality in another engine I checked out (starts with 'T' and rhymes with 'fork') but, as is usual with any tech from that company, it was wonky and annoying to use. If the usability of your built-in CSG is anything near what it was even for Cartography Shop, then that's going to be a beautiful thing. Especially having it built right into the editor. Don't even have to export/import anything. I know "BSP" style modeling is supposed to be all "outdated" now - or so it seems from a lot of remarks I've read. But I don't know, as a means of creating non-organic objects, like buildings and the like, I find it to be far more efficient and easier to work with than modeling and then having to UV unwrap and all that. Anyway.. Good to know! Thanks again.

Hello! As the subject indicates, I'm a prospective/future licensee of Leadwerks Engine. I've been checking it out a bit for the past few hours, reading documentation, watching videos, poking around in the editor and so forth. I've been extremely happy with everything I've seen and experienced. As an artist type, it seems extremely straight-forward to work with, the performance is awesome, the toolset is very user-friendly and intuitive and overall, I'm just really liking what I see. I remember being really impressed with the usability of Cartography Shop back when I used it several years ago. Josh just seems to have a really solid grasp on making things intuitive and easy to work with. That's very rare in the indie game engine world, and in the AAA engine world, for that matter. So, while I still have a month left to fully evaluate the engine, I already feel confident I'll be purchasing a license as soon as the funds are available in a few more weeks. It's good that I have a lot more time I guess my first question relates to how Leadwerks manages seamless transitions from outdoor areas to underground/indoor areas. I haven't seen any demos demonstrating it, and I haven't seen anything discussing how it's handled, so I thought I'd ask. Is there any kind of portal or zoning system? A dynamic visibility/culling system, etc? What kind of set up would that entail? Another question I have for now is regarding using 3D World Studio to create structures and such to bring into the LW engine... even if just for mock-ups of buildings or structures, to use 'til I can create the full detail models, etc? Is that a feasible or at all recommended pipeline to work with? And I guess that's all I have for now, question-wise. Any feedback or advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!