mdgunn

Unsure if tesselation fits your need. I think you probably can displace a mesh according to what you want to do but if it was me I'd probably do it in a more scripted and limited fashion so it only looks like the effect of what you are going for. I would have only limited locations where an animated fbx model was placed in location in the wall and textured and animated as if it was coming out of the wall. If only for effect then a simple approach may work. If a key mechanism of the game that may need to work all over the place then maybe not. Decals work well for things projected onto walls. Unsure if they can be animated but probably. Just thinking/typing out loud and this probably won't work but if you can hook up a camera to render to a texture you might be able to somehow record a 3d entity moving and project a processed version (e.g. alpha where 3d model not colouring image) on to an animated decal. Never tried anything like that but most of the bits are there (render camera to texture etc.), but unsure if it all joins up. Personally I'd probably try and fake it first with animated custom fbx models/decals done in 3D package .

As you can probably imagine there are probably a few ways to do this and it probably depends on your exact situation. Ultimately you probably want a flexible prefab (so you drag and drop it in and it of some sort with a flexible script but initially I'm thinking the flowgraph method may get you started quickest, particularly if you are prototyping (thought some people ultimately find the flowgraph frustrating or limited to use). It's a bit like very simple UE4 blue prints. A few notes to hopefully get you going down the flowgraph route.... Get your model imported and setup the animation sets on it (you may need to split up a single animation into it's frame ranges, e.g. idle = 0-32, death=33-64 etc.) Create a map and drop your model in Create a new script for the model which has a flowgraph exposed input method that can be called to start an animation. Add a CSG box to the map enclosing the area you want to trigger the animation - The script can be a modified version of an entry/exit detection script (http://leadwerks.wikidot.com/wiki:collision-enter-exit) that calls a flowgraph exposed output method. Set the CSG with the trigger material and set the physics to rigid body and trigger. So now you have your model in the map with a script on it, your CSG in a map with a script on it. Now for the flowgraph bit. Drop the model from the scene into the flowgraph and drop the CSG box in as well. You should then be able to connect them up. Note, it is possible to pass parameters via flow graph called methods though this is not documented so well. (try multi-level lift asset in work-shop). It is possible to solve the issue in code and ultimately this may be the way to go. You can GetValue SetValue to a build in table as a simple property storage or set up properties on scripts. You can then scan up parents and down children to locate items that expose a GetValue, script property or method and then call it. Lua tables provide simple structures that can approach OO but also allow very loose typing so non-similar things can be checked for property/method exposure and if they have it you can call it without having to compose object hierarchies. For game dev this looseness can be handy. As your game gets more complex something more structured may be useful. See recent discussions of events raising perhaps. The FPS Controller and Weapon related scripts provide a lot of information/clues on how to implement a medium complexity setup with objects talking to each other, spawning new items (bullets, debris etc.), testing method existence, having a prefab accept another prefab as an item it will use to talk to etc. This info may have helped or made things much more complicated. Hopefully the former.

Yeah shaders are powerful but you usually need a good understanding of some more advanced maths to write your own. The association between material shader slots (the UI) and the shader (code/file) is kinda loose. E.g. I think the emission shader, or one of them, internally in its code needs you to set it in slot 4 in the material UI, though slot 4 isn't specifically named as Emission in the UI. For PBR shaders I think they replace the existing shaders and I think use some additional slots as there can be more maps in a PBR workflow. Should be enough info around if you dig a bit

Yeah Leadwerks is by default quite conservative in it's initial setup. Lightprobes are nice too when you're indoors (and possibly outdoors?) If you haven't already you may wish to check out PBR implementations. There is one in the workshop but also one on github. I think it is still correct that the default shipping shaders don't have PBR (in LW5 - as we have some implementations maybe this might be soonish) but Leadwerks is open to writing your own so a couple have been done... Think this is PBR: https://www.leadwerks.com/workshopitem?tags=Material&queryType=1&fileType=0&fileid=658772226 And this stuff definitely is....

Maybe there should be a project or demo category or something on the workshop (not sure if there maybe was one in the past too). With more content it's hard to find these and not much incentive for people to upload an example without a sensible matching category.

I think there was a fairly full example of a previous leadwerks project converted to work on Leadwerks 3/4 but I'm sorry I can't remember what it was called to help you find it. If someone else reads this they may remember the name. Try searching the forums for 'competitions' and you might get an idea of what people have done recently. Usually there is at least an EXE version you can download. The competitions usually lasts a month. However, at least for myself I usually struggle to find much time so anything I submit is usually composed of a few hours of patchy work here and there and a couple of days of more focused time. Basically it's usually possible to get together a basic concept in a few days with Leadwerks. A full price style game of course takes much, much longer. You're right it would be good to have some more accessible and abundant sample projects. Josh is aware of this and planning some steps to address this. As a number of beta work has now made it into 4.4 it may be one of the next things on the list.

You want the map called '07-AI and Events.map' in the FPS sample project.

Tiered idea is good. I think it's very important that people can get a good idea of what assets are like and an actual sample is the best really. Very glad to see you are providing the PSD's too. It might be the thing that would push me to purchase (if the price was right). For this community (small, often single person projects) I think being able to rework assets in some way is hugely useful. Could you perhaps provide a sample PSD either in free pack or off a link (in forum or workshop asset) so people can get an idea of what they might be getting in PSD's too. Maybe a low res version or watermarked or something? If you'd rather not, no problem. Looking forward to your final release.

Not something I need but I mention it as it is something that is supposed to work well with deferred rendering engines.... This is something I came across while reading the docs for Decal Machine (https://machin3.io/DECALmachine/) a low cost Blender Addon that I think is gaining a lot of attention right now. From the Decal Machine docs https://machin3.io/DECALmachine/docs/installation/index.html#instructions Currently I am hoping that I can use Decal Machine to bake out normal maps and but I'm not sure it is supported yet (development is moving quite fast though). I think there is an imminent Unreal exporter but I'm not sure if that uses this geometry rendering for decals or not. Thought I'd mention it in case it is something that Leadwerks is suited to implementing fast (at some point in the future) if it suits the architecture well.

Thanks for the info on the update of this interesting work. What's the roadmap?....Are there any future features which are soon to be integrated and what is the further future for the product? If it is sensible to elaborate anyway.

I'd be interested too!

1) On starting a new project and launching it seemed to me that some anti-aliasing was happening even though settings initially say none. Looked like about 2x. Setting to 2x and back to none seemed to be result in the correct more jagged stepping to me. May already be fixed? Image attached probably not showing it (there for other things sorry). 2) Rendering of the menu options is a bit spidery. In particular the O's in options look like there circle has almost got gaps in it. 3) Title would be better if not 'test test test'. Forgot what it used to say but 'test test test' for some reasons bugs me in a jarring way. Maybe this is the intention but something a little less random would appear more professional should you want to post a quick screen grab from something in development without having to worry about 'test test test' appearing should you forget to correct it.

You are right Einlander! Some multi-monitor related issue. Unplugged 2 of the 3 monitors and it builds OK now. I'll give your notes on the issue a read.

Windows 10 64 Triple monitors. I don't think I see the crash message but I see the project launching in the task bar then just disappears.

Current beta seems to be crashing for me (tut sample as base then simple box with camera and spectator script). Window launches but never makes it. Normal branch seemed OK. Executing "D:\Work\Leadwerks\Projects\Tut2\Tut2\Tut2.exe"... Initializing Lua... Lua sandboxing enabled. Executing file "D:/Work/Leadwerks/Projects/Tut2/Tut2/Scripts/Error.lua" Executing file "D:/Work/Leadwerks/Projects/Tut2/Tut2/Scripts/Main.lua" Executing file "D:/Work/Leadwerks/Projects/Tut2/Tut2/Scripts/Menu.lua" Initializing OpenGL graphics driver... OpenGL version 451 GLSL version 450 Device: Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics Process Complete. I might uninstall everything and put beta back on but it would be tomorrow night before I get a chance.

What needs to be uploaded. The whole zipped source folder? In this case there is really nothing special in the scene. I created some CSG boxes gave them a mass of 5 and put them on top of each other. I duplicated the stacks to make sure there were a number of similar things in case some did not exhibit a problem. The boxes were are all duplicates of 1 box created and placed with snapping on so should be identical to each other and lining up to the snap grid in dimensions and placement. There are some meshes in the scene which do exhibit the same problem, so not limited to CSG. As this seemed so basic I imagined others are seeing this without providing the source for such a simple situation.

I see much jigging about if you stack physics objects. I imagine this is due for fixing. Beta branch Release branch (non-beta) Beta branch

GRENADE, GRENADE, GRENADE...OK I think I've got it this time.

Unfortunately I started work on completely the wrong weapon, a portal gun! I only just realised now so no submission from me. Still the competition got me doing something I might not have challenged myself with and I hope to get it completed sometime. Hope to have something for the next challenge, which I hope continue.

Sounds like I'm doing the same thing. I'm on a laptop with integrated Intel graphics, which is very usable with LeadWerks for simple stuff, but I think this rendering to a material from a camera may not work. I can't test this on my desktop for a few more days but I suspect it will work when I retest there. Thanks for the feedback.

EDIT(My post title a bit mis-leading - not sure I can edit - I'm really trying to set things in the editor with minimal code, so setting a camera 'Render Target' not setting this in code). I was fairly sure I'd had this working before but I can't remember if there was anything special I did to do it.... I want to render to a texture like someone did here... Here is my non-working version... QUESTION: If you are setting the 'Render Target' on a camera in the EDITOR what else do you actually need to do to get the image appearing on a brush/model? I thought setting render target in the editor to a texture and setting that texture on a brush might be enough (though I suspected it would not be that simple too). I've seen the security cam scripts but it seems like these are doing some of the work that setting the Render Target of a cam in the editor is probably doing (i.e. rendering the texture for you). My texture stays black. I am using the standard FPS controller (which creates its own camera) and another camera set so I can set the position and the Render Target. Is this maybe the problem where maybe 2 cameras are active at once? Was thinking setting 'Render Target' on a camera handled any switching of cameras as it needed when running. Any ideas what I need to do to get this working?

Good find. Thanks.

I forget...does loading additional LUA libraries mean you can't use sandbox and can't deploy to player?

You mean just the few materials that come with the standard projects, like smoke and tracer? No, the emitters I showed above use all new materials though you can do quite a bit with the the simple default blur and smoke.

OK thanks for the info!