digman

I thought I make a thread where I will put things I am learning about the Leadwerks engine for art assets. This is just a test on using the displacement and normal map shaders together on a higher polygon model... Too many polygons for a game. The man bust is 22,000 quads polygons of course triangulated by the game engine. I'm going to retopo him to more of a game level amount of polygons and then compare the difference...

No problems in Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit so far... All is well in OZ... Like my other comment at the forum... Updater worked correctly. Then when I started to run a map, Leadwerks said I needed to update my map which was done through the Project Manager... I just updated "MyGame" and two files were updated.

Doing some more forum checking, I came across these two threads on setting a light quality in the App.lua script. This really did help the rendering distance (extra stages) for the directional lighting when running the map. The rendering distance now is good for what I need and it also fixed some light bleed issues inside of some model hallways. My walls are plenty thick...LOL so no worries there.. Cascaded Shadow Maps, I have been reading about today, very interesting.. I added the below to the App.lua script. self.world:SetLightQuality(2) I will give both threads, You as a user read them and decide if you want to use the two settings possible as Josh made a few comments about their use. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/9061-incorrect-lightning-shadowing/ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/9266-light-bleed-at-csg-intersections/

Josh, thanks for the quick reply.. Increasing the light quality helped a little though the effect is still there. It's just good to know how the directional light works... I will use the spot light by changing the settings under the light tab to be more like a sun which I have done in other software...

I putting this here as I do not know if this is a bug or I am just missing something or is the shadow rendering distance hard coded? When I put a appox. 35 meter (appox 115 feet) brush wall in the engine.The shadow for the wall only goes a certain distance and does not traverse the whole length of the wall... My setup New Map. Two brush objects, one for the floor, one for the wall. appox length of the wall and floor 35 meters... default directional light moved to create the shadow. ( static and dynamic) I place the fps player at the 30 meter mark on the floor using the grid. Run the map and the wall shadow is not rendered to the end of the wall. As I walk backwards it continues and more of the wall shadow disappears. Question, am I missing something here, maybe something added to the lua script?, The FPS player script? Under the light tab, range as no effect, infinite has no effect under the appearance tab... Scale has no effect... Linux 3.1 Standard, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 64 bit. Any help here, I would be thankful for or if it is a bug this post can be moved there by the Admin.

The most simple way that I found to quickly get a skybox. Create four separate brush cubes enclosing the scene. Apply the skybox material to each cube.The cubes can overlap each other, no seams show. I am using the word cube here in a generic fashion, The cubes can be rectangular as well. They do not need to be the same in height and width. You just need to enclose your scene by overlapping the brushes (cubes) Assets /Materials / Sky / skybox_texture.mat The skybox_texture.mat uses the sky.shader. I would imagine there are better ways with manual scripting or the postprocess shader that appears to be coming down the pipe but the above is so much better than black.

@YouGroove... Thanks a million. That is where it is hiding under the assets folder revelled by right clicking on the fbx model...

That is the only general SDK available information I found so far but I am new and just slowly working my way around but trying to find information before I post here.

EDIT: The information below is incorrect. YouGroove was so kind and made a quick tutorial here in his relpy post. I been studying this myself, If appears that you need the source SDK using the Phygen tool to create a collision object based off your model. A ply file is automatically created upon import for you when using the SDK version but the Phygen Tool can give you more control. In the 3.1 standard version when you right click on a imported model or an included model under the scene tab "save as shape" is greyed out. Only non - compound rectanguluar shape brushes can be saved as a phy file. I am very new to using the Standard 3.1 version so if I am incorrect please correct my information... http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/Documentation/le2/_/user-guide/models2/phy-files-r501

I am running the demo under wine using Linux... Yes I know the brushes are going to be updated in the version 3 series and be better than 3dws. They are I'm pretty sure not in the current release as Josh in his post that I read said he was working on getting Linux out the door. Even if I fork over 50 bucks, I really don't mind as it will take it's place in the my harddrive's lost world of software if not needed. Heck, I still got my first 3D paint program lurking about. Tattoo3D... Thanks for your input...

In my forum searches, I found that Josh has plans on adding more advanced features to the Brushes closer to his other software 3D World Studio which appears no longer in active development. Josh stated that he has ported it over to his version 3 series of Leadwerks and 3D World Studio had it's day. Currently 3D World Studio has few more advanced features than the brushes in Leadwerks so would it be good to purchase the program until the editor becomes more advanced in 3.1 ( Your opinion here) ""3D World Studio Version 5.6 fixes a registration problem, and features better integration with Leadwerks Engine, with a GMF model exporter."" Now the GMF to Mdl converter has been removed in the version 3 series of Leadwerks. I found that in my fourm search that you can just rename the GMF extension to the Mdl extension and that works for Leadwerks. Is that still true for version 3.1 Fire away with your advice and or opinions...

I sent this tutorial to you in e-mail but posting the video link here as well. The tutorial is using Max smoothing groups but it looks like Leadwerks uses something very similar. I will know more when I get the engine in a few days... The video is short and to point but very informative on basic understanding and using smoothing groups...

You got me lock, stock and barrel.... LOL April fools days and I fell for it big time... I was driving with a friend and he said it is April fools day you know... I had to delete my first post to help wipe the egg off my face...

Ah, did not see this... Thanks for the heads up on Linux 3.1 standard delivery's date as I walk alway all gloomy, wait another week, somehow I must endure... LOL...

The Standard verison 3.1 ($199) has both c++ and lua... "C++ and Lua work together in one application.*" "*Requires Leadwerks standard edition" http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/features?showbanner=0 Steam indie version 3.1 ($99) does not have c++ You can now get a steam key for the standard version 3.1 other than the regular way but you have to choose the steam key or regular. Read this thread to understand the offer. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/9215-version-31-delivery-plans-with-steam-key-option/

Oh, I forgot to say a big Yahoo!! I will get to test the game engine for the very first time real soon... Thanks Josh for making a Linux version of your game engine.

Thanks for the information. I will stick with a non-steam version. Later if I need it then I will just buy another license for the additional Steam features to stay in the loop, I will make Windows 8 suck it up and install steam but keep my Linux baby to myself...

Guppy, then you the linux man!! Aggror, I think you are correct though it never hurts for me to learn more about Linux... I really should take the time to learn my way around the terminal like when I learned dos back in the day but I rather go 3d sculpt, 2d paint or listen to music today... I got the game engine so I can put game assets into the engine for testing and also for just creating scenes with models. It just darn fun to walk around a 3D sculpture and scenes you created instead of static renders...

That information would be good posted and pinned somewhere, since I pre-ordered and did not see that the lua library for linux would be included in the game engine... Thanks for the heads up...

Hi all I am posting this because questions will come when others need to install Lua in Linux I completed the install of Lua version 5.1 for 12.04 LTS in preparation for the new Leadwerks 3.1 linux version. At the Ubuntu forum it is stated that Lua 5.1 is the officially supported version for 12.04 LTS. I am sure other versions would work but I am not a linux guru so I stuck with this version of Lua. I ran a simple Hello World script from the terminal to see if Lua was working correctly, so far so good... I did find that the lua script needs to reside in my home directory though If I brush up on linux commands then I think I could place the file in another directory and just put in the right path... This is the method I choose and the easiest: Open the terminal. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lua5.1 This is the Ubuntu forum where I obtained my information. I had ran into the same problem the poster encountered when I tried to compile Lua version 5.2.3 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2139812 I had used these terminal commands posted at the Lua site to make the compiling easy but this was aborted has you got the fatal errors when you ran make linux test. There is also a detail instruction for compiling but I choose the simpler method. The terminal commands where I got the fatal error listed above. url -R -O http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.2.3.tar.gz tar zxf lua-5.2.3.tar.gz cd lua-5.2.3 make linux test What appears to be the problem is the path is not set or the directory it is looking for does not exist. When I came across the information from the forum, I went ok so I do not have to dig around the net to find the right commands or read the detail instructions at the LUA site. I did the search for commands when I installed Cuda in my Linux system. Since I am not a linux guru, though linux commands remind me of the old DOS days, I hope this will help others and anyone whose is a experienced linux user can post here to help others as well. Plus you can correct any errors you might see in my post.

In the newer "versions 4" of 3DCoat, you do not have to manually mirror uv islands. Any uv island that is the same just use the copy and paste function for layering mirror uv islands...

Thanks Josh for stopping by and answering I did pre-order just 4 days ago...

I hope the above is not true as I bought the standard $199.00 "3.1 version of Leadwerks". I have no need at the present time to install steam on my Linux machine and I did not see in the pre-order that the upcoming Standard Linux version would be a Steam version only... Ok, It looks like question was answered in this thread... http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8974-is-membership-of-steam-now-a-prerequisite-for-leadwerks/ The reason I do not need steam is I am only creating assets for a developer as I am not a programmer myself and just need to be able to launch the game to be able to view the assets inside the game... Please do not take this as I am against using Steam,at the present time it's just not needed, this can always change of course...

Will the Linux Leadwerks 3.1 version will be packaged up in a "deb" file which when double clicked opens up the Ubuntu Software Center and then you just click "install" "Or" The tar.gz file method where after unzipping it creates a folder and you are ready to run the program. 3DCoat uses this method for it's Linux version. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which is stated to be the distro that Leadwerks 3.1 is developed on. Just curious... EDIT: I forgot to mention that the question was for the Standard version...

Finally a game creation engine for the Linux coming soon, Yahoo! Thank you Josh... I had seen Leadwerks quite awhile ago and then I saw it was coming to Linux, that sold me...