My first review of Arteria: Egyptian Temple kit from the Workshop

[Christian Clavet]

Hi, I just bought yesterday the Egyptian temple from the workshop and think it would be nice to give a feedback about it.

 

Current verdict: Need improvement, really beautiful but not useful. (april 2016)

 

 

Buying this pack:

It was relatively easy. I've got it from the community page on steam (browser) and then reserved the amount to buy it and then took it. I find this easier to do that way. Once the buying is done, I simply go in Leadwerks and download it. At first I had some problem getting paid model from the workshop directly from the workshop in leadwerks. The method I use now make it work all the time.

 

The pack:

Art Quality:

The pack contain lots of models, of components of a temple and some temple props. So you can decide to build your own version of a temple. The models are really well done and beautiful with tons of details on them. A note, this is only temple parts, there is no pyramids in the pack, neither as the sphinx.

 

Leadwerk integration:

This is were the problems starts. They've done a lots of round corners to pack this for leadwerks and really done it bad.

 

First, the "demo" map that come with it was done in another path then they simply moved it without changing the path for the assets, as a result, Leadwerk gave me more than 240 errors about missing files.

 

Second, I'm almost sure it's missing some assets. Even by taking models outside of the demo map, I've still got some error (missing textures) on some models.

 

Third, No optimization of the model. The demo scene run in debug at around 20fps on my NVIDIA GTX 780. So really nice, but without LOD or optimization of the model, the scene is beautiful but cannot really be used to make something in real time.

 

Fourth, there is NO source FBX for the models, so no way to retopo these models to make them useful in real time applications. So for me I can see the art but cannot use it.

 

Finally:

Clearly they will need to improve on making a proper leadwerks integration. Next time, If I don't have the source FBX, I will not get it. It's also not totally clear on what type of licencing they use for the models.

 

I think Arteria3D made a good move by promoting their pack on the Leadwerk Workshop, and I just hope they will improve and that other will join.

[Josh]

Thanks for the feedback. I've since added support to allow authors to include source art files, and am encouraging them to include these.