YouGroove

Great 3D artist and very generous, it has put a bunch of textures and models on DevianArt. http://nobiax.deviantart.com/gallery/24853853

Not bad http://www.simplygon.com/discover/integration-api Mesh LOD http://www.simplygon.com/discover/meshlod Most used by companies when you have thousands of models and need to speed up LOD making, for indies like us that's rarely the case

There is already some community project done by Rick , ScrotieFlapWack and some others or it is not a community project ?

Because they was here from beginning of 3D, long ago almost every PC intro movies games was made in 3DSMAX , big companies they buy licenses for their employees so no cost problem, it has lot of stuff for lot of areas from advanced movie making , 3D modeling, many advanced features Biped, CAT etc .. http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-3ds-max/features/all/list-view But indeed for the price Modo is lot more cheaper and seems to have all you need also for game making.

@tjheldna : Even if you not shut down computer at least close all software, that's a sure memory and process cleaning. It's more green for the environment if you shut down your computer when not using it (what i ever done personnaly)

Indeed Zbrush dominates and far away, it is the best for super detailled characters and it has so much tools and options (zplugins also). As i own and used a lot these tools i will list the strong points only : Zbrush : + ultra fast sculpting because it don't relies on Voxels. Increasing resolution and you keep super speed sculpting + Low memory needed : I could have super resolution character in Zbrush with it taking only some 500Mo from system. + All tools and brushes and sculpting options you could ever need (Dynamesh, clip tools,insert mesh,subtools,Zspheres etc ... ) + .. .many stuff i can't list here - retopology tools are far from 3D Coat (even last retopo features makes too much polys sometimes for in game) 3D coat : + Complete painting tool : ability to paint diffuse/normal/specular maps + Easy to use and simple interface + Great for hard surfaces in Voxel mode + Tileable texture paiting feature + The best tool for retopology and fast retopology (quads tool , lines ...) , my personnal taste also. + All in One tool : sculpt, retopo, paint, export - Can crash easy when increasing models resolution, because voxels uses too much memory - Auto retopolgy, instable lot of times, crashes, not good results for in game low poly - Where is radial symmetry ? super needed I would say to buy Zbrush only if you target super detailled characters making or super detailled 3D assets. Otherwise 3D Coat is a really great deal as it proposes you a All in One tool from scultping , retopo, texture painting , you can make anything from idea sculpting to final low poly painted model without leaving 3D coat tool , that's something that's really shines

Mini game of April is ended now. It was fun and great to learn some things. Thanks to all participants.

Ok something to ask for LE3 engine.

Really good article, ideal to make 3D trajectory projectile in game. http://morgan-davidson.com/2012/06/19/3d-projectile-trajectory-prediction/ As the author stated he uses Unity, but the code can be ported to any 3D Engine; something that would be great to bring in LE3. Anyone know how to make 3D trajectory drawing in LE3 ? It seems that's Beam particle system ?

You bake normal map, than tranform colors to levels of grey, than apply layer diffuse texture in colorize mode to not alter grey map. This way you have diffuse texture with normal map volume height baked into it.

Our mid range hardware runs big games complex with multiple lights. @Einlander : So this means , we don't use spotlights with LE3 , so they are useless ? and like he said he already tried to optimize making hidding lights not near camera. The problem is LE3 is considered deffered rendered with unlimited lights and shadows so that's what people expect, and there is game cases where people will want to put lot of lights for night levels for example. I also expect from a 3D engine to be able to put several lights without having to care about frame rate, could the solution be lightmapping solution combined with real lights or some global illumination system. Performance improvments will come, you have to wait for now.

lol Anyway, having the name option would be good : Play( ... ,"walk", ...) You define it in the model editor when extracting sequences, and no more have to care about index and no more have to declare animations , just use the name that is easy to remember compared to number. It's a big plus, less low level programmer, more intuitive and intuitive for everyone.

The direction is automatic if you use Navmesh GotoPoint() function. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/files/file/528-move-character-to-mouse-position/

@Cassius : Industry games don't bet on brutes lights and shadows , they use lightening optimized systems or they would be unplayable also. It has already been discussed http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8857-leadwerks-31-framerate-low/ I suggested also lightamps + dynamic lights, so you would activate dynamic lights only when player is near , and lightampping would allow to have lightening and shadows on whole level even from far distances without putting 30 real time lights or more. You need a really big machine to display almost empty level and really simple TPS basic game. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8589-models-lod-lights-per-object-shadow-qualitymip-mapping/page__hl__fps I think LE3 will have to implement some global lightening system or other optimized one instead of relying in pure hardware that will never be good for performance.

Let people make errors and learn , this is the best way

Good. This will make even more sense, the day editor plugins will be possible in LE3.

There are many way to make modular stuff. I just expose a simple basic one in Blender, it just covers modeling and preparing for FBX export. Mirror on Y the object Align to grid to be sure it is aligned on red axis with the other For the UV part : Just download the Blender file before the merging , make UV seams on one half modular piece , this will be automatically made on all instances. I hope you enjoyed this other Blender tutorial

I think you should be carefull , and search player entity one time only on the Start() function, this way it is initialized and found at game start. The example above i posted , the pivot object in Start function will find player entity refrence once, so you'll be able to use that reference on UpdateWorld(), upadtePhysics() any time you need it.

It works in Lua i used it in Shoot em up script (http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/files/file/524-shootemup-kit/) Player script declaration : Script.id = "player" Pivot declarations : Script.player = nil Pivot code start() function : local entities = GetEntityNeighbors(self.entity,5000,true) local k,entity for k,entity in pairs(entities) do if entity.script.id ~= nil and entity.script.id == "player" then self.player = entity end end Now the Pivot have a reference to player object, so Pivot can get position or any other information form player object. I would say stop using GetName, use like above a strong system as script variables (like id in example above).

So we will have to use diffuse shader only with lightmaps, can be good using fake normal maps, i mean texture looking normal mapped but it's a simple diffuse (clever used in Uncharted 2 game) . For the second use of lightmap, to paint on lightmap dirt, color variation , decals , anything to break tileable look of tileable textures of level. If we could have the diffuse+normal+specular shader working as it is now in 3.1 + lightmap , this is where lightmaps could be used.

Great work shadmar Now it's possible in LE3 to have thousands of building/street lights + dynamic lights when camera near. Another use: paint dirt or colors on the lightmap to make walls tileable textures variations or paint decals on walls Does this works with normal map or specular shaders ? i mean for the tileable wall texture, or deos lightmap works only with diffuse shader ?

It's just main guidelines if you are used to use 3D Coat, not deep step by step tutorials. Helmet tutorial: mainly used is Voxel extrude tool using lines or curves shapes drawing , powerfull way of detailling hard surface. Miner Armor : mainly used , retopology to reimport polygons in Voxel mode , this is fast way of hard surafces pieces making.

3D coat is cheap and pretty complete, for 3D coat users some cool hard surface videos Bonus some retoplogy tips

B3D format. I don't know how to export to FBX or MDL from that B3D. Anyway possible lightmapping would allow fast rendered levels with any number of lights , and using dynamic lights only on some areas activated when camera near enought, with lot of lights frame rate should jump up of 90%. b3d.zip

@shadmar : Here is a Deled quick lightmap level for you. The file contains MDL and textures + lightmap for all level. It is possible to have some shader working with LE3 lights also : Diffuse+Normal map + specular + Ligtmap ? The lightmap could have other purposes : - Combined with LE3 litghs : no use of LE3 shadows, so lot of GPU gained - Paint the lightmap to make custom variations of textures, colors, shadows on level surface for example to simply break the tileable aspect of wall textures by painting some areas on lightmap. litghmaps.zip