Leadwerks needs tools like this...

[ConradAlistair]

i was doing a little research on other game engines (im not betraying LE ) when i came across this engine that Intel bought from some other company. the engine is called Project Offset.

 

these are just SOME of the tools that they have. the art tools to be exact:

 

 

i think just the tools in this video would be great (not saying that they would be easy to get though) to have in addition to the road editor.

 

so what do all of you think?

[Pancakes]

you know what? Blender game engine can do all of that and more.

 

Blender game engine's code is OPEN SOURCE

 

you know what? Leadwerks can develop a plugin or something for blender game engine's artist tools for FREE

 

Leadwerks can entirely change the interface of blender if it wants to because it's OPEN SOURCE

 

*end broken record until the next time

 

here's the thing, I'm not even sure why Leadwerks is developing it's own editor and hiring lots of people to do that when you can plug the SDK into blender, change blender's interface to be whatever you want, and take advantage of all that wonderful beatufiful code and constant development because Blender game engine is OPEN SOURCE

[Josh]

Thanks for the video. Will check it out.

[Pancakes]

btw i've known about project offset for quite some time so my response isn't just a knee jerk reaction to the vid

[Michael Betke]

I was never impressed by this video. Offset is a dead end project since they are taken over from Intel.

 

All they do in this movie is building up a house from lots of small models. I also can do it with any other engine out there and turn it into a prefab/group (ok not LE at the moment).

Usually you use your 3d app for building up a house out of several small pre-made sets which you reuse.

[ConradAlistair]

i understand what you guys have said, but i wasn't just looking at the structure building stuff, i was also looking at the decals that were being put directly on the house model and all the other manipulation tools in that vid.

 

and i have a quick question: is it possible to make plug-ins for any of the leadwerks tools? i know you cane get library's

[ZioRed]

and i have a quick question: is it possible to make plug-ins for any of the leadwerks tools? i know you cane get library's

Someone else was asking something like this, that is the creation of plugins for the editor, but this feature is not present atm (it would be nice).

[wailingmonkey]

... I also can do it with any other engine out there and turn it into a prefab/group (ok not LE at the moment).

...

Doesn't this kinda underscore the reason the OP was making this request in the first place?

[ConradAlistair]

also another reason to have tools like this in the LE editor, is that its always nice to have everything in one. there isn't as much converting, transferring and scaling. also this would help LE win the hearts of more game developers through good eye-candy.

[Michael Betke]

Everyone can do such workflow with leadwerks. All Josh needs to do is a simple function which allows to turn selected models into a group. Without a grouping feature it would be a bit tricky to select the building as one.

decals are done by quite some forum members now. maybe they even can be done be displayed on geometry

[Pancakes]

Well from my experience in blender it's not so much the question whether you can do something or not it's about how intuitive and natural it all feels. The freedom of being able to tweak an animation within the game engine, and then only seconds later without changing programs, to tweak your UV map, extrude more geometry on a mesh, edit some scripting elements - having it all literally at your fingertips there is nothing like that other than blender game engine.

 

Sculpting, rendering, blender has volumetrics and nurbs, and splines, and sculpting you don't have to be a so called artist to make awesome things. For instance, with blender you can make your own terrain maps of any quality, you can make your own sky renders INTERACTIVELY within the game engine! It's just a level of feeling natural that blows everything else out of the water.

 

Record physics interactions, render movie sequences, model everything, it just confuses me why software like this that can offer so much to a game engine like Leadwerks would be ignored when the software itself is free.

 

I think it would make a lot of buzz in the CG community to see something like that happen. And I think whoever is the first to do that will be copied immediately by everyone else. As they look at the cost/benefits ratio and realize that millions of dollars worth of software engineering is OPEN SOURCE and ready to be taken advantage of to do wonderful things.

 

How can people ignore that? It just confuses me.

 

Maybe someone can explain it to me. It's got it's own exportors/importers it's own dev team that works at a lightning pace.

 

 

 

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/

[Rick]

How can people ignore that? It just confuses me.

 

It gets ignored for a few reasons.

 

1. The Blender interface is horrible. People look at it and run away. This is the very first hurdle to get over.

2. When making a game with other people, generally you have roles like level designer, animator, modeler, programmer, sound guy, etc. These people have industry standard tools to do their work and most aren't Blender. So they prefer to use what they know. Also the ability to edit anything game related in Blender is cool, but generally when your level designer is building a level, he's not an animator and so he'll never tweak an animation. Your modeler isn't a level designer and so they just make models. Etc. That's generally why your level design is separated out from your modeling.

3. The blender interface is horrible. Sorry, but it's the truth. It may be functional and amazing once you dig into it, but people have to get past the overwhelming feeling of when they first open it up, and honestly most don't. It's all about first impressions. And the first time you open Blender you have no clue what you are looking at.

4. Those screenshots they have under game engine aren't helping them either. They don't look that impressive.

[Rekindled Phoenix]

I was on the verge of finishing my prefab caves like the TES Construction Set. (see my gallery)

 

Most of the models in this video, much like any game, are created to be used over and over again. If you think about the way that Bethesda creates their caves and dungeons, it was modelers who were doing the real work making everything seamless.

 

In the video there were neat texture tools, something that would be a wonderful addition to LE.

 

(Blender is a great addition to any 3d application, but is hard to learn because of the bland interface. I hear they are updating it soon though)

[Davaris]

It gets ignored for a few reasons.

 

1. The Blender interface is horrible. People look at it and run away. This is the very first hurdle to get over.

3. The blender interface is horrible. Sorry, but it's the truth. It may be functional and amazing once you dig into it, but people have to get past the overwhelming feeling of when they first open it up, and honestly most don't. It's all about first impressions. And the first time you open Blender you have no clue what you are looking at.

 

From what I understand they are remaking the Blender interface. I haven't seen it, but I read a comment where someone said it is similar to Cinema 4D.

 

Check out the 2.5 alpha here:

 

http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/

[Pancakes]

It gets ignored for a few reasons.

 

1. The Blender interface is horrible. People look at it and run away. This is the very first hurdle to get over.

2. When making a game with other people, generally you have roles like level designer, animator, modeler, programmer, sound guy, etc. These people have industry standard tools to do their work and most aren't Blender. So they prefer to use what they know. Also the ability to edit anything game related in Blender is cool, but generally when your level designer is building a level, he's not an animator and so he'll never tweak an animation. Your modeler isn't a level designer and so they just make models. Etc. That's generally why your level design is separated out from your modeling.

3. The blender interface is horrible. Sorry, but it's the truth. It may be functional and amazing once you dig into it, but people have to get past the overwhelming feeling of when they first open it up, and honestly most don't. It's all about first impressions. And the first time you open Blender you have no clue what you are looking at.

4. Those screenshots they have under game engine aren't helping them either. They don't look that impressive.

 

1. Blender is open source. If a game engine wants to write a plugin and say do something like make use of blender's abilities you have the right to completely change the interface. Because it's open source. Therefore, the whole argument of horrible interface is null and void. (besides that it's interface is actually quite brilliant, Ton Roosendal the guy in charge, says that learning blender is like learning a musical instrument. Knowing to play a guitar does not mean that you will know how to play the drums automatically. But once you learn an instrument it becomes like second nature. Blender's interface may be more difficult to master, but it IS a brilliant interface once you do take the time...no other interface feels so organic and second nature as blender's... once you learn it... but that's besides the point)

 

2. As tools advance so does the behavior of mankind. I think that once people used to right horses and wagons and that their travel habits were much different than they are today now that we have the automobile. In other words, if game engines were completely unified, as in the case of blender, people's sheer curiosity, spurred onward by the orgasmic quality of having so much awesomeness at the fingertips would cause these traditional roles to begin to blur. I mean, if you are an animator and you see an issue with the UV and the UV window is right there in front of you, why not tweak it? If you are a programmer, and the animation is 20 frames too long, why not reduce the frames yourself? People would learn if the tools were more advanced. Why not move the character's ears up, or merge a few verts? Even if you aren't a pro there are some things anyone on the team could do when it comes to modeling. These things would become more apparent if other editors were more like blender's.

 

3. Once again, as far as a Leadwerks plugin for blender. You have the right to redo the ENTIRE interface. While keeping all of the power that lies within it. It is open source. You do not have to ask permission.

 

 

4. That page is years old. It's a horrible example of what blender's feature are. The features grow so quickly and are so rock solid it's no surprise they don't keep up on the publicity end. I can vouch for the engine. It has every feature Leadwerks has AND you can port it to Iphone (by my understanding...but...just don't try to sell what you made though). Well the only features it doesn't have is I don't think it allows the GPU to handle character skinning like LE does (I think) it doesn't have vegetation optimization to the extreme level of LE, and it doesn't have the unified lighting system of the deferred renderer (But not many other engines have these things either). It has literally everything else that I'm aware of and it is more than capable of achieving the graphics quality of a Red Dead Redemption or a Mass Effect 2. Not Crysis though.

[wailingmonkey]

Everyone can do such workflow with leadwerks. All Josh needs to do is a simple function which allows to turn selected models into a group.

Without a grouping feature it would be a bit tricky to select the building as one. decals are done by quite some forum members now. maybe

they even can be done be displayed on geometry

sorry to quote you again, Michael, but you seem to be dismissing what appears to be a valid example of a few feature

requests as if they already ship with the engine. It may be possible to emulate what's going on in that video currently with

LW and a good bit of custom programming, but the toolset to do it is not currently in existence...hence the OP's request

I'd imagine.

 

Why would an artist/level-builder not want such a toolset at their disposal?

[Michael Betke]

Why would an artist/level-builder not want such a toolset at their disposal?

Because it's more time consuming for an artist to assemble a building from dozents of small parts into one building.

This is the job of an environment artist. He got the concepts and builds up the buildings.

One set conists of 20-25 buildings for example.

The level designer uses them but does not build them up himself with hundrets of small parts which are mostly in the hands of the env-artist. Using a lot of such small elements in thier asset-explorer is also time consuming. The level designer is busy with bowsing for stuff instead of setting up the level.

They just exported a toolkit to the engine and promote it as a "cool" way to build up assets in a free way.

Most env-artists have such a toolkit (like a set of pipes, decals, attachments) to build up new assets in a modular and reusable way.

 

This video is no ground breaking feature. They just transfered the build up part into thier editor.

I'll put together a video in a few days which shows this kind of workflow and you will see its already in LE.

 

But I aggree on having the ability to group small models and save them as prefabs plus a better asset explorer is a nice and valid request.

[wailingmonkey]

excellent!...so you've already got a vertex-painting GUI and a pre-fab manager implemented into LW...sweet!

[Rick]

Blender is open source. If a game engine wants to write a plugin and say do something like make use of blender's abilities you have the right to completely change the interface. Because it's open source. Therefore, the whole argument of horrible interface is null and void.

 

Not really. For some things most programmers find it easier to start from scratch with your own design than to have to use someone elses. And I mean the programming interface that Josh would have to use to modify Blender. It would probably take him more time to learn all that than to just make his own.

 

(besides that it's interface is actually quite brilliant, Ton Roosendal the guy in charge, says that learning blender is like learning a musical instrument. Knowing to play a guitar does not mean that you will know how to play the drums automatically. But once you learn an instrument it becomes like second nature. Blender's interface may be more difficult to master, but it IS a brilliant interface once you do take the time...no other interface feels so organic and second nature as blender's... once you learn it... but that's besides the point)

 

I'd say it's not brilliant. To me a brilliant interface doesn't scare you off when you first look at it. It has nothing to do with it being new either. There are many programs out there that are very inviting and powerful. Blender is powerful but not inviting. 2 for 2 is the only way the word brilliant should be used.

 

 

As tools advance so does the behavior of mankind. I think that once people used to right horses and wagons and that their travel habits were much different than they are today now that we have the automobile. In other words, if game engines were completely unified, as in the case of blender, people's sheer curiosity, spurred onward by the orgasmic quality of having so much awesomeness at the fingertips would cause these traditional roles to begin to blur. I mean, if you are an animator and you see an issue with the UV and the UV window is right there in front of you, why not tweak it? If you are a programmer, and the animation is 20 frames too long, why not reduce the frames yourself? People would learn if the tools were more advanced. Why not move the character's ears up, or merge a few verts? Even if you aren't a pro there are some things anyone on the team could do when it comes to modeling. These things would become more apparent if other editors were more like blender's.

 

Because humans are complex. Sure as a programmer I can tweak an animation, but then the animator hears about it and now he's pissed. Also, I doubt it's ever as easy as just removing 10 frames. I'm going to need to know certain things about animation, but I spend all my time perfecting my programming skill so I don't know much about animation. So in a AAA game studio, would you want a programmer making those changes? No. You would want your animator doing that because that's his skill and there might be more things to think about than just taking 10 frames out.

[ConradAlistair]

even after all of what you guys have said, i still believe that the features in the video would be a great addition to the editor. however the statement about modelers and level designers having very different jobs makes sense.

[Pancakes]

Not really. For some things most programmers find it easier to start from scratch with your own design than to have to use someone elses. And I mean the programming interface that Josh would have to use to modify Blender. It would probably take him more time to learn all that than to just make his own.

 

To make his own what?

 

1. Real time texture painting, projection painting with tablet support and material nodes and rendering nodes etc

2. Modeling

3. Sculpting

4. Animating

5. UV unwrapping

6. Sound processing

7. All sorts of rendering abilities

8. Physics, Volumetrics, Lighting etc.

 

 

 

Of course it would take work. But sometimes the end does justify the means.

 

 

I'd say it's not brilliant. To me a brilliant interface doesn't scare you off when you first look at it. It has nothing to do with it being new either. There are many programs out there that are very inviting and powerful. Blender is powerful but not inviting. 2 for 2 is the only way the word brilliant should be used.

 

I don't understand why people get "scared" when they see blender's interface for the first time. When I first saw it I thought, "Oooh, what does this button do" And I started clicking around and had a fun time. I don't know, that's just my general attitude about most CG/game engine related things.

 

 

Because humans are complex. Sure as a programmer I can tweak an animation, but then the animator hears about it and now he's pissed. Also, I doubt it's ever as easy as just removing 10 frames. I'm going to need to know certain things about animation, but I spend all my time perfecting my programming skill so I don't know much about animation. So in a AAA game studio, would you want a programmer making those changes? No. You would want your animator doing that because that's his skill and there might be more things to think about than just taking 10 frames out.

 

Or, he could give his cool programmer a high five and say, "thanks for taking care of that, you're the best"

 

And the rest of what you say is just personal choice. Some teams will have members who are curious about the entire process. Some will not. I remember the lead character designer of Crysis being asked in an interview what was the game about. And he laughed and said that he didn't have any idea "I'm just the art lead" That may be the way that things are done much of the time, but I find that kind of situation quite undesirable personally. And I don't think that I'm the only one. Tools like blender help teams of people who would tend to have my attitude that even an art lead may want to comment on the scripting, while the programmer may have a level design contribution. Then without leaving his scripting console, programming environement, he can throw a few cubes into the map, adjust some assets and submit his idea to his colleagues. I mean but this is just conjecture. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

 

Of course you don't want people stepping on each other's toes. But that's more of a relationship issue and having the ability to cooperate with others type of question. Rather than what software are you using.

[Rick]

Hey, I'm just giving you reasons as to why people are not going head over heals for Blender as a game engine and instead love things like Crytek. If Blender doesn't accept these reasons, then it explains why they aren't looked at as a major game engine by most people. Software vendors don't last very long if they ignore the reality even if to them the reality doesn't make sense.

 

 

When I first saw it I thought, "Oooh, what does this button do"

 

Congrats, you have time to burn. Most people, however, are looking for certain things when they open an editor and when they are presented with something completely different, they realize that learning this piece of software will probably be a big chore and choose another piece of software.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that Blender can do everything very well and can be used as a game engine, but much like a book, if the first few pages don't get your attention you aren't going to read it. If a person can't do something simple in the first 30 mins without reading docs, they probably aren't going to bother. I think Josh knows this which is why in LE getting a rotating cube on screen is fast and simple and most everyone gets there in 30 mins or less. Obviously a rotating cube is pretty worthless, but it's something and it's quick and easy and it keeps you coming back for more.

 

Here is my first experience with Blender.

 

1) Open it up. I see a square on the screen. My first thought is, "I thought this was a 3D modeling program. Where is the 3D view? I'm expecting to see Top/Left/Front/3D view of this cube"

2) Change the view to 3D. Right click to try and rotate the camera, something that is pretty standard in game engine editors, but doesn't work that way in Blender. Left click, use wsad keys. Nothing. Well wtf. I have to read docs to figure out how to move the camera around this cube? Very lame.

3) I want to select this cube in 3D. I left click it but some sight is moving around. Left click and drag and it makes a line but doesn't look like it's highlighting the cube.

 

I'd continue but I have to make some food. *sigh*

[Josh]

I would like to hear more about specific features and workflow you guys want, instead of the merits and problems of specific software. I will be basing the version 3.0 workflow heavily on user input, and a good discussion of what you want will help me a lot. Thanks!

[Rick]

1. Being able to drag many different model formats into the editor and having it automatically convert to gmf behind the scenes would be nice.

 

2. Being able to create prefabs.

 

3. Being able to have multiple scripts attached to game objects.

 

4. Not having to shut down the editor to see new things.

[ArBuZ]

1. Being able to drag many different model formats into the editor and having it automatically convert to gmf behind the scenes would be nice.

 

Converting models is a such specific process. If you want to get really nice quality you have to work on each asset you want to see in the scene. Adjust materials number of surfaces, animations etc. I wouldnt leave this to default scene converter. But this is my opinion

 

I'd really like to have Material editor in LE Editor. Ability to assign and adjust all materials of the models in the scene in real time.