Patrick

I'm a fan of world machine, I've used it in the past although a very long while ago... It's a great piece of software! Specially for large open areas and such but I feel that I'll be fine with what I have and everything, I'm trying to create some much more contained areas for my first creations in Leadwerks (before attempting sandbox like worlds.) I think you should be able to get your creations into Leadwerks without too much trouble...

You can use something like Topogun and create a lower resolution mesh and bake the details, I think that's what you're asking? 3D Coat automates this pretty efficiently with minimal setup required in some cases so you can also use that and get a much more friendly lower res mesh with the same quality...

You can always edit the models before you move on to rigging them... Also you can give a lot of personality to characters through animations, but with pre-made animations and such through Mixamo that's kind of mute.

Then Shadmar is just as awesome XD lol

Aggror, you're awesome!! Being able to have a look at this and everything will help me a great deal, thank you

Interesting... I'm looking forward to seeing that framework

It sounds a lot like what poser/Daz studio is, Just perhaps more game orientated than that was...

Honestly, when purchasing models to use in your games or creations looking the same is better than not matching up at all which is what you see when you find someone purchasing models from all different kinds of artists. Personally I haven't looked into Fuse too much but from what I did see you can get some nice variations of characters and it will be an affordable jump start so you have some nice visuals to work with. I find that Mixamo is what a lot of people are using to get out of having to pay a lot of money for custom animations too and it seems to work well. The first reply with the poly count info is a good response to this question. I'd like to add that it really is dependent on everything in the scene and such and how optimized you really want things to be, I always find myself giving a larger limit in the tris to my main character models than I do for others unless they're of importance. I usually try to stay around 8,000 minimum and around 16,000 maximum for my characters that are going to be used in single player scenarios. As you can see from the list above though, there are some varying factors and that is why some games use more or less. I'm aiming for a 3d person style game myself and I'm working on a bunch of assets to release for free but I don't know how long it will take me to get them all complete. You might be able to pick and choose a few props from there when they are ready though I think even if you try the Fuse & Mixamo solution now to make something you can always switch out the art later down the line for more custom stuff if you can afford to or something...

This is a nice introduction, thanks for putting it together, I did go over some other stuff a little while before I got the engine but this is great and I'm sure it will help many like myself who are new to LUA.

Perhaps you can use some sort of custom particle system for such effects? it would likely be FPS friendly and you can tinker with settings and such for different uses? This comment is in regards to the bullet trail or trail like effect in general...

Try again in two mins, it takes sometime to convert with Vimeo...

I've uploaded a second set of sketches, one with a more arachnid type thing and some other stuff, I like about two of them... Any feedback would help a fair bit Regards Patrick

Thanks, I was using Art Rage 4.

Oh wow... I guess I will scrap those two then I have Natural Selection 2 but I have never played it I have a hard time with these types of things lol, I have an immense fear of insects / spiders... So I try to avoid the overly insectoid like creatures simply because when it comes to creating a detailed image or model I have to gather reference on such things, it sucks because that type of stuff is what REALLY helps with aliens and creepy monsters, but I just can't stand even looking at the images of them The third sketch is the most insect like I think I will get (most likely)

I'm going to store all of the sketches and information on the process here in this second post and the actual content once finished will be edited into the above post for everyone... Nothing special in the vid yet though as I am very tired but its a start https://vimeo.com/84009954 Here is a second sketch video, I scrapped the ones I liked in the first video as they admittedly looked a lot like the images posted below from Natural Selection 2... Here is the second video link: https://vimeo.com/84168438 Regards Patrick

I'm looking to make a free fully textured, rigged and animated Alien / Creature asset for the community, but I am having a little trouble figuring out what you guys and gals might like to see, so I'm making this post to kind of ask. So far I have been fooling around sculpting up concepts and ditching them but I'm going to take a slightly different and much more organized approach... I'm going to sort of brainstorm a little design or idea here and take the feedback and work off of that on a concept sketch and once finished I will take it further and start blocking out the model in Zbrush. The model will be completely free for anyone to use, for either personal or commercial use, and I own my Zbrush commercial license so it's all legit. This won't happen over night as I still need to work on art for my project and I have a little freelance work, but I will do chipping away at this and want to get something finished for everyone and to see it in the engine sooner rather than later! I won't just be making the model as I plan to Unwrap and texture it, retopologise with nice animatable topology as well as optimize the poly count for a game. I will release the model once that is done and then I will work on a rigging it and then animating it and release that. The one thing about this is, I own and will be using Maya 2012, the rig will be a custom control rig that I will use for the animations and I will provide the core files for anyone who wants to get in and tweak or add to the animations, but you will need Maya. I will include a rigged fbx and maybe update a version for Blender as I know the joints and skin weights will transfer but the control rig won't. Unless someone else wants to take that and look at my control rig and recreate a Blender version. Here are the two base Ideas that I have so far, and I am happy for any suggestions or ideas: Little Quadruped Alien: The idea behind this would be something small and fast that would come at a player in masses or something, similar to the little face hugging things in the Aliens movies and games. Bipedal Alien: I quite liked the weird looking enemy in the demo video but I was thinking something a little less... Creepy unless creepy is what people would want? So far I don't have much to go with because I was hoping that maybe some members here would take part in helping me with some ideas for me to base a design off of. I am capable of creating disfigured things and ill proportioned characters, I will likely update this post with a few previews of sketches and sculpts when they come about, but I won't start on anything just yet, I would like to wait for a few replies while I think a little more on which idea to go with and then elaborate on it myself too. Final model will likely include a diffuse, normal and specular map. A nice rig and some decent animations although I am unsure how many I will be adding, maybe when it comes to that I will ask people what they may want in addition to the basics. Here is a sample of something I did for a friend in Sculptris, I was too lazy to go through my emails and contact pixologic for my info after performing a clean installation of windows: http://i.imgur.com/Ytgjm8o.png http://i.imgur.com/KIfVi5U.png Its always nice to take a break from something like my game art or work and just working on something different when you're stuck and going back to what you were doing with a fresh mind and that is what I'd be doing with this and why it wont be as instant **I'd prefer to keep the model mostly organic with perhaps some hard surface skin detail of some sort, no insane scifi armour, I have little experience with creating such things in Zbrush at this stage..(hard surface stuff that is) I'm not afraid to try though ** Best Regards Patrick

I am currently looking into PCG quests after reading up on the dungeon generation methods and such, I hope I can actually implement these things into a demo of my own

HAHA, so true... I am looking to get into Procedural Content Generation although I would transfer everything from a tutorial like that into something I could use for something a little different I'd like to see as much stuff related to this as possible. I am currently planning out a Dungeon Gen script for the game I will be working on once I get this... I think I will be able to grab the engine pretty soon too

well... There is a Procedural Content Generation Wiki with a ton of very useful resources, I have been reading it over for a while now and learning a lot from it. There is also something a little more simple too and this might help you get started. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/blog/52/entry-882-lets-make-a-game-procedual-content-creation-part-01/ Its a lot less complex but you gotta start somewhere I'm trying desperately to get into that whole topic of coding, well I am no programmer but I am attempting to learn to code as I am insanely interested with PCG and AI related things! I hope that link helps you a little and here is the wiki I mentioned, it will have some articles that are more in depth and even some tutorials on there but you may have to dig around a little: http://pcg.wikidot.com/ Regards Patrick

Thanks for the reply... I have a little programming experience but nothing that I would use to call myself a programmer by any means, I mostly code things in Python and Mel. Mel is Autodesk Maya's language and I use that to write small plugins to help me with my work. Other than that I covered some Javascript a while back and I am able to pick up on things although sometimes it may take a little while, I just usually try with the trial and error method and looking around for how to's when it comes to game related programming though. The main reason I asked for books or something was because I won't be able to get the engine for a little while, so covering some LUA that I could use to get used to the language beforehand would probably help quite a bit. I did a little LUA coding around three years back when someone suggested I learn it, from what I remember it wasn't too hard but I didn't stick at it (sadly) I much prefer the art related stuff as I am an artist but I also want to develop something of my own and see how far I get with it. I appreciate the advice! From what I have seen the documentation is pretty good. I really cannot wait to get into the engine and play with it, but while I wait I have much art I can create for my little projects for when I do get the engine anyway and until then I will surely be lurking around the forums haha Regards Patrick

You should perhaps make the '*' items that are standard only Bold or more noticeable, that could likely be missed by some people... Honestly I almost didn't see the note at the bottom and I didn't notice the '*' until I went back over them after seeing the note and checking which features were standard only lol I just thought this worth mentioning...

Hello everyone... I'm a 3D Artist, and I don't own the Leadwerks engine just yet but I was wondering if I had to, to be able to take part in the 'Workshop' area, by take part I simply mean upload assets for others to use with Leadwerks. I was working on some Alien / Creature type characters to upload for free for others to use but it was taking a little longer for me to flesh out the design as I literally just jumped into sculpting with no reference so they're not yet finished, but it would be nice to contribute once I get them finished up. I've been planning on making a dungeon crawler type game and I was going to shoot for that "next gen" look but I found a game on Steam earlier called 'Dragon Nest' and I really like the style/proportions of the characters so I spent an hour sketching up the archer and modelling it out in a new software I've found to kill two birds with one stone and see what i could get done with the software. Long story short, my game art style will likely be similar to this at least for prototyping the model creation process will take significantly less and with me working on learning LUA and this engine too it will help a great deal but I will probably make some characters of the same style that I won't include in my game and upload to the 'Workshop' for those wanting to make an adventure type fantasy game or whatever they can think of that doesn't involve FPS and maybe help add a little diversity to the output of the engine a little, but it won't likely make great use of the amazing rendering of this engine... Here is a preview of the model I created based on the game art of the above mentioned game I found earlier. It might be a little off because I only played it for like an hour: (the software used was Nvil by Digital Fossil) http://i.imgur.com/24zdCLO.png That's the type of model / art style I will now be using when I start with this game engine, but I would need to look into perhaps making a custom shader/material? Sorry for rambling on a bit there, its 1am and I'm quite tired... So off to bed now and I will be back to check for replies in the morning. Thanks for reading and hopefully you can help me with the info on uploading to the 'workshop' section.

This looks great!!

OK, sorry that this is not really a specific programming with the Leadwerks engine question, but more towards the language in general. I haven't got the engine yet but I will get it once I am able to, but I want to start learning some LUA before I purchase the engine so that I am able to jump in and start using it and learning how to use LUA with the engine. So my question is, how might you guys (and gals?) recommend me going about learning LUA, do you know of any good books I can pickup or free websites that I could use, also keeping in mind that I fully intend on using Leadwerks with LUA as soon as I can... I'm going to be off Googling some stuff on my own anyway but I'd appreciate your opinion's and thoughts or advice towards this! Kind Regards Patrick

Yes it is... Here is some proof: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/7426-my-game-project/ I don't believe the programming language restricts the ability to do that at all, there is a LUA random dungeon type tutorial that I don't think was finished, posted by a user as a blog of sorts here on the site, use the search feature Regards Patrick