Development Blog

• Researching CSG slice tool and vertex editing - essential for good level art
  

Why, so we can have more blocks with orange grids? We're at a point where content is our bottleneck on nearly everything.

 

Leadwerks doesn't need to provide every possible model the user might need, but we need to do a better job of demonstrating the recommended way of producing content. A lot of issues like AI and weapons can't even be implemented without some stock content to work with.

Don't get me wrong, I like quality art content however there are still issues with the whole asset pipeline. For instance in my case I am building a city. The buildings are done in Sketchup, texturing is done in Fragmotion and the final asset is loaded into LE. The buildings I do are quite low poly so if we had support for full CSG tools (as in 3DWS) I could omit other tools and do everything in LE thus speeding the level design process and improving the production quality since I spend a lot of time going back and forth tweaking each building.

 

I don't believe that by providing better stock assets you will increase the quality of user output. Where is the connection? How would a beginner developer (artist, coder etc. in one person) improve their assets? Only by looking at your sample content? This does not necessarily raise their art skills. Perhaps they will have a standard "LE benchmark" but that would only make us go from orange grids and crawler to "LE industrial textures and a military gunmen" models used over and over again. Yes, it would improve the screenshots but the content will be the same in each shot.

 

The bottom line is, I think LE is still quite raw (at least version 3) we have many things changing from build to build. Look at LE2, only by the end of its support cycle users started to churn out some quality games/content. The engine has matured along with its users. Now comes LE3 and does a full reset, everybody's back to square one. Just some random thoughts...

Yeah, this is the difference of making assets for Leadwerks and making assets with Leadwerks. The Source Engine had this issue until the community came up with the solution of Propper to turn csg's/bsp's to mdl's. Leadwerks isn't quite at that level where the community can make such tools ,though I am definitely trying, but it may change. But Olby is right, for the majority (read everyone on the steam forums but not here), if its not in the work shop it's not going to be made.

Some people have been requesting a similar option in Leadwerks. It would be very very handy if one could collapse CSG's into a model. Prefabs are nice but they have a lot of random texturing issues therefore I'm reluctant to use them. In any case, I'm going to reiterate. The more we can do within LE the better it will be for aspiring artists and the coder-type developers. It is far easier to learn one package to do some basics props etc. internally rather than using multitude of external tools. This of course will not solve high-quality content issue but it at least there will be very detailed orange-grid based levels . I agree with Einlander regards the workshop, majority will just keep using stuff from it. It is important to support the ones who are making their own content and you can only do so by improving the editor and asset pipeline. (psst. **how about sound playback from within the asset panel?**)

I don't believe that by providing better stock assets you will increase the quality of user output. Where is the connection? How would a beginner developer (artist, coder etc. in one person) improve their assets? Only by looking at your sample content? This does not necessarily raise their art skills. Perhaps they will have a standard "LE benchmark" but that would only make us go from orange grids and crawler to "LE industrial textures and a military gunmen" models used over and over again. Yes, it would improve the screenshots but the content will be the same in each shot.

 

If Josh actually release the raw content, it will give people a "Ohhh, so that's how I do it" moment. I've learned a lot looking at decompiled models before, and they are always nice to have. But if the new models are just "Ok guys, new models" without any sources, then yes, nothing can really be learned from it.

 

I really hope the vertex tools and slicing are on the To-Do list, but there is a lot of issues with that. For example, creating invalid shapes, probably why Josh just added carving. Since I'm so used to not carving because it was seen as a sin with GoldSrc/Source, I don't use it as much. Hopefully someday it will be implemented.

 

Yeah, this is the difference of making assets for Leadwerks and making assets with Leadwerks. The Source Engine had this issue until the community came up with the solution of Propper to turn csg's/bsp's to mdl's. Leadwerks isn't quite at that level where the community can make such tools ,though I am definitely trying, but it may change. But Olby is right, for the majority (read everyone on the steam forums but not here), if its not in the work shop it's not going to be made.

 

Importing a model or texture to Source is A LOT more confusing than it is for LE3. Again with the source engine, people are generally making mods, and have the entire resource library of 3 Half-Life games, and if you know how, you can port models from Left 4 Dead, and other games. This is where I think if Leadwerks had it's own set of content, it will give new users a starting point, or at least a better one then they have now.

 

Overall, I think if Josh does release the sources of new content (both models and textures) and with that, having more in-depth tutorials about creating the such content for Leadwerks, I think this issue will be better addressed.

Although I agree with the fact that source models would be really helpful it still doesn't change the fact that having a blender file or something else would necessarily equate to increased content quality. I for the fact have experienced this myself. Back in the days I de-compiled Half-Life models and so what? It didn't made me a better modeller, I still had to do everything from scratch. In this regard a dedicated tutorial set explaining from A to Z how to make an animated character model or a weapon including modelling, texturing, rigging, animating and exporting would help more than 10 or 20 new high quality characters.

I was looking at Poser Game Dev and Morph3D. Both seem to make it easy to get good quality custom characters with anims into a game. So you can easily change character size, clothes, hairs, add anims etc. I've only looked at some vids, haven't actually used them but something like that where you can select presets and tweak to get custom characters is a major time saver. Modelling a high quality character from scratch is only something an experienced character modeller will be able to do in a time efficient manner so I like the idea of these character creators where you can piece together different characters to suit your game.

 

@Olby. Although looking at blender files might not make you a better modeler, It sure helped me on how to properly rig a model to work. But allowing the end user to take a model and let them be able to modify it can be a learning tool. Everyone learns differently.

That's a good point. I don't think we can teach Z-Brush sculpting (I don't even know how to do it) but there are other ways we can help set everyone on the right track. A tutorial on how I did the skybox would be one way.

 

We will get more CSG features later on, it's just important to realize that isn't our biggest issue to work on right now.

@Olby

In this regard a dedicated tutorial set explaining from A to Z how to make an animated character model or a weapon including modelling, texturing, rigging, animating and exporting would help more than 10 or 20 new high quality characters.

 

It is not to 3D engines to provide you how to make good characters and animations, there is thousands of tutorial over internet for every tool like Blender, Maya ,Sculptris, Zbrush ... and for generators like MakHuman, Poser, Daz3D ,Mixamo etc ...

If you want to make custom specific characters for your game looking good, then you'll have to follow tutorials and practice a lot , only that. practice and practice a lot.

You have great tutorials like Digital Tutors, and once you get the basics you are free to make anything you like.

 

 

I don't think LE3 must have a goal to teach people how to make characters or buildings. I made tutorials in the past for LE3 , but the interest was not so big and that didn't braught 3D artists to LE3 neither.

 

The best way for serious projects , is to find a 3D artist to work with you.

Rick is the perfect example of coder that found a great 3D artist, so now they are a small but complete team.

 

Otherwise, advanced next gen characters packs for LE3, can only be good as graphics is what 3D engines must show at is best to make a good impression to future buyers.

I created a new tutorial showing exactly how I made the skybox in Vue:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/tutorials/_/creating-realistic-skyboxes-r35

 

The beta branch has been updated with the Vue scene file, in the "Source Art" folder.

Although I don't need help with 3D art myself I do believe if there would be at least one tutorial demonstrating full character production pipeline it would only bring more people on board. We don't need to focus too much on the modelling part but more like the general do's and dont's and how it all works together in Leadwerks.

Very nice tutorial. Only criticism I have is that the 3rd party software you need costs more than the engine itself. I think for the future, it's best to recommend free/open source and multi platform applications if you plan to do any more. I get it that Vue is a professional skybox program, and there is prob not a good way to do it in Paint.Net or Gimp.

 

I recommend tutorials on how to get a model from Blender into Leadwerks with the correct rotation and scale. It also be nice to document how animation files should be written, and how to load it. It does not seem to be talked about in the models and animations tutorial. You did a good explanation

, but it's buried within the Leadwerks Youtube channel.

If those applications are too expensive it makes sense to just buy some texture packs. You're not going to get good art tools for free.

That's why i will make a few more skybox packs. It'll just take some time.