Shady Things
Hello again everyone!
I've been toying with all sorts of things this week to try and pin down my tool chain and lay some groundwork for future projects.
I've used Google Blocks VR for modelling in loads of gamejams and to a very minor extent in Minimancer. I love it, it lets people without the know-how to use Max, Maya or Blender to start creating models very quickly. The trade off is the cap on complexity and simplistic style, but I actually quite enjoy those limitations. It reminds me of working on Minecraft icons and working details into that 16x16 sprite.
The exported .obj models from Blocks are really easy to use but, while jamming on BeetHoven, I started to experiment with custom materials and shaders. While fun, the massive pitfall I happened into while doing this was that I had no way to automatically apply those materials, and so I ended up dragging and dropping a material onto every bit of every model. Oof.
So last Thursday I put together a custom model importer, uv-remapper and shader script for processing my Blocks imports at speed. It even automatically grabs them out of My Documents and renders a preview so I can figure out what "bt5xs0pe" is (thanks Blocks for really informative names). The major feature I'm most excited about is that it uses a single material for every model and has a built in palette swap option. I'll show you what I mean;
Today, I've been picking through some of the debris from last Monday and cleaning out messy code, prefabs, textures and all sorts from the jam project. Making a playable game in 10 straight hours does not leave behind a clean code-base, as it turns out.
With that in a much tidier state and looking more ready to push forwards, I also took some time to play with shaders. I don't really know what I'm doing here, I've played with shaders before, but I generally tend to start fiddling and see what happens rather than doing any of the actual maths beforehand. Anyway, this is what I came up with;
1) Oops, I don't think this is going to be useful for anything
2) Oooh, wibbly. This one could potentially be useful for grass or underwater effects. Actually, don't look at it too long, it can't be good for you.
3) Now this one, I like! I'm definitely going to use this at some point. Rare items and shinies are going to look really good in this.
These are all great fun, but they aren't going to work for my default shader. I guess I'll put them down for now and have another go at shaders another time.
And since we're talking so much about shaders, I thought I'd finish up with some cat tax; my catfish Swim Shady!
I've been toying with all sorts of things this week to try and pin down my tool chain and lay some groundwork for future projects.
I've used Google Blocks VR for modelling in loads of gamejams and to a very minor extent in Minimancer. I love it, it lets people without the know-how to use Max, Maya or Blender to start creating models very quickly. The trade off is the cap on complexity and simplistic style, but I actually quite enjoy those limitations. It reminds me of working on Minecraft icons and working details into that 16x16 sprite.
The exported .obj models from Blocks are really easy to use but, while jamming on BeetHoven, I started to experiment with custom materials and shaders. While fun, the massive pitfall I happened into while doing this was that I had no way to automatically apply those materials, and so I ended up dragging and dropping a material onto every bit of every model. Oof.
So last Thursday I put together a custom model importer, uv-remapper and shader script for processing my Blocks imports at speed. It even automatically grabs them out of My Documents and renders a preview so I can figure out what "bt5xs0pe" is (thanks Blocks for really informative names). The major feature I'm most excited about is that it uses a single material for every model and has a built in palette swap option. I'll show you what I mean;
Today, I've been picking through some of the debris from last Monday and cleaning out messy code, prefabs, textures and all sorts from the jam project. Making a playable game in 10 straight hours does not leave behind a clean code-base, as it turns out.
With that in a much tidier state and looking more ready to push forwards, I also took some time to play with shaders. I don't really know what I'm doing here, I've played with shaders before, but I generally tend to start fiddling and see what happens rather than doing any of the actual maths beforehand. Anyway, this is what I came up with;
1) Oops, I don't think this is going to be useful for anything
2) Oooh, wibbly. This one could potentially be useful for grass or underwater effects. Actually, don't look at it too long, it can't be good for you.
3) Now this one, I like! I'm definitely going to use this at some point. Rare items and shinies are going to look really good in this.
These are all great fun, but they aren't going to work for my default shader. I guess I'll put them down for now and have another go at shaders another time.
And since we're talking so much about shaders, I thought I'd finish up with some cat tax; my catfish Swim Shady!
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