wailingmonkey

Particle deformers: - Non-linear: bend, taper/flare, sine, squash, twist, wave - free-form cage deformer (customizable matrix) - sticky particles (with 'sticky-ness' customizer, gravity editor, and ability to splat/radiate from contact point---hello gib-tastic particles!) *edit* forgot to add, trail particles that could potentially be based off of a spline tool similar to road tool (not just 'trailing' off of a geometry's animated motion)

awesome!...and just a short walk to the river.

really nice seeing your experiments as of late, MG!

maybe a way to implement Tessendorf waves?...I suspect it's pretty fps-heavy, but as I'm no programmer...maybe you could work wonders. Here's a guy who implemented them in XSI (before it was Autodesk Softimage): http://www.amaanakram.com/?page_id=131 *edit* Oops...forgot to say, looking good, Gandi!

yep, as macklebee suggests...hoping to have speedy camera acquisition of specific items as well as just a handy way to 'frame all' of your models in the scene. The option to exclude the terrain being available for huge maps that may have just a 'cluster' of models somewhere on a large terrain, so framing to the terrain as well could be fairly useless. Also, would be very nice to be able to assign one's own hotkeys/mousekeys for navigation. I'm used to the 'Maya-style' and would find *only* WASD to be inefficient.

will you also incorporate a 'frame selected' (f key?) and 'frame all' (a key?)--- the latter omitting the actual world terrain as an option to set in preferences?

nice job, Marleys Ghost!...performs exactly as one would expect!

adding sway/wind on the trees and subtly on the grass would probably add a bit of immersion too! (nice work, franck22000)

Also consider it's not just bone hierarchy...how the model was envelope-weighted/skinned per vertex will have a bearing on how each model deforms when animated. Differences in mesh topology and just general silhouette/scale can have great affect, unless you can figure out a way to create a 'cage' that is universal to all of your assets as well as a universal bone hierarchy scheme that serves as an intermediary. So yeah, not really a trivial task, and that's why even the big boy DCC products don't do it all that well (3dsMax, Maya, Softimage ...although Softimage has some advanced tools in there that can do pretty well like GATOR/MOTOR). You might have a look into MotionBuilder as well, since it's pretty industry-standard in dealing with mocap (or already animated bone hierarchies).

right back atcha, Marleys Ghost! (and everyone)

I'd say you'll need to edit your smoothing angle in UU3D to whatever angle you've got in Max. Also, looks like you've set your texture to repeat a certain amount in max, but your UVs are not actually scaled to that degree on the 0-1 UV space when exported, so once they get into UU3D you'll need to set their repeats to match what you did in Max. (I don't use Max, so sorry to not be of more help... there may be a more elegant export option someone else can assist with) Or perhaps an easier solution might be to use Arbuz's exporter?

lol, tournamentdan (instantly hums benny hill jingle) Josh, having these extra parameter controls accessible will be of great use! (I'm liking gamecreator's ideas as well) depending on how fps-costly this is, I could see this also being immediately applicable to adding secondary 'non-conflict' life to a game world--thinking flocking fauna (fish, birds, etc.) or man-made stuff like background airplane paths, cars, etc. The idea would be to set 1 'hero/leader' NPC on a path and have instances or other NPCs flocking behind. In this regard, some built-in randomization or noise/turbulence to the accuracy of the path-following would be handy too.

perhaps consider affecting the normal as well in coordination with the specular? (thinking puddles tend to wash out --sorry for pun-- the bump detail they're sitting on top of...although I do like the gradient effect of the second image around the shiny edges--the puffy outer edge seems off though) Seems like you'd definitely need multiple UV-channel support for anything affected by your rain shader. (I'd guess there is probably a UDK shader example out there somewhere too)

good job. in terms of critique, maybe a bit 'muddy'...perhaps another layer of grainy pits over the top of the bricks to bring a bit more crisp feel? (personal taste, of course)

nice work, franck22000!