2D Terrain Platform Toolkit for Unity 5!
polycounter
Some friends of mine have been working on a fantastic 2d terrain toolkit for Unity 5. Sam Sawyer and Michael Chugg as lead programmers, and myself as the artist.
[latest]
In a nutshell, with a specialized 2d tileset, these tools allow you to make complex terrain very similar to Rayman Legends.
The toolkit gives you a lot of control over variables, including per-point thickness control
There's a lot more features to come, including an entire lighting system what uses this same shape system to allow you to light large sections of scenes, or entire scenes, very quickly. No more tedious per-object lighting only!
For the 2d artists here, making the tilesheet is a little tough at first, but once you have the system down you can start pumping these out like crazy. Start with a 'block,' as everything else on the sheet is derived from it.
This block is already one section of your sheet.
When the tool is released, I will have a video tutorial on how I paint these whole sheets
Expect more updates later! Sam may come in and answer questions, and post updates with new features the tool has. Thanks for looking!
[latest]
In a nutshell, with a specialized 2d tileset, these tools allow you to make complex terrain very similar to Rayman Legends.
The toolkit gives you a lot of control over variables, including per-point thickness control
There's a lot more features to come, including an entire lighting system what uses this same shape system to allow you to light large sections of scenes, or entire scenes, very quickly. No more tedious per-object lighting only!
For the 2d artists here, making the tilesheet is a little tough at first, but once you have the system down you can start pumping these out like crazy. Start with a 'block,' as everything else on the sheet is derived from it.
This block is already one section of your sheet.
When the tool is released, I will have a video tutorial on how I paint these whole sheets
Expect more updates later! Sam may come in and answer questions, and post updates with new features the tool has. Thanks for looking!
Replies
(small orange dots are placed procedurally, if you move them to any custom position they turn red - right clicking sets them back)
Either way I'm sold already, looking forward to release!
Yes, the collision mesh is built at the same time. :thumbup:
So the actual arrangement of the tileset is now done away with, and replaced with something more elegant to set up. It'll also allow for more features for the tileset, like certain units and shapes that are currently hard to pull off. That's a big plus!
Are you guys going to sell this on the asset store? This is soooo cool!
Ferr has some great tools already, What will make yours different or better?
From what I can see, the biggest differences are the way we are doing the corners of the mesh, as well as the ability to warp the geometry at the control points to create more diverse platforms and break up the the repeating texture. That and the mesh-based lighting system of course.
Though they are similar, we're hoping to achieve a level of control that doesn't appear to be currently available.
How do you enjoy Ferr? I've never played with it myself. What about it do you like?
Having used a similar tool, do you have any advice for us on these tools? Features you hope it will have?
http://i.imgur.com/hW4ET2P.gifv
http://i.imgur.com/ItJRw2Q.gifv
Also, props. Unity's new sprite packing system makes them a breeze.
Do you guys happen to have a tileset blending feature in the works? Don't know if that's possible with an automated tiling system.
Dropshadows and platforms! Look at that juicy corner/point deformation.
Platform tools are similar to the larger shapes, but they can be used for a lot of things, such as fences, extra decoration, heck probably even waterfalls and rivers.
Thanks.
We just finished a game for the 2015 Indie Game Making Contest for Humble Bundle. You can see the tool used WITH the lighting system!
http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/412#.VchHaPmrRhH
Give the game a shot too, it's pretty great for just 24 days.
Ironbelly, that's out of my league to answer, but I think while it's possible, it seems to be out of the scope of this project for now.
Here's a video demo of our tools! So pretty.
[ame]
Looking forward to the video of you painting those sheets. Or anything, really
Ben convinced me to pick this project up again and finally finish it. Playing around with it again this week I can see it's still got a little ways to go, but I'll be sure to to post updates regularly.
10000% pumped for this to be finished.
ill have more later but hope this helps!
Can it? Yes, definitely. In fact, an earlier iteration used 3D colliders exclusively. It only does 2D currently though... I'll have to add that back in.
I have some ideas/plans for this, yes.
Scrolling textures would be hard because of the corner seams, but if you had no corners it would a simple matter of animating the texture channel offset values.
I don't have anything currently planned for that - but it's a cool idea for sure.
The custom lighting system has spec map channels per material for foreground and background "lights" respectively.
Mayyybe. I see where you're going with this, and it would be a fun way to add quick cheap customization. I'm already encoding data into the color channels though, so I'm not sure if that would be possible. There's actually a few other issues I can see people running into (like losing data when you modify the mesh control points for example).
Yes. Absolutely in the plans.
Thanks for all the suggestions, keep them coming!
You can now add platforms as layers in a list and easily reorder them in the inspector to manage their sorting. No more doing it manually!
(Seriously, that was the slowest and dumbest workflow during Mechanical Mansion, glad to see it gone forever.)
It also procedurally generates Sorting Layers so you can easily manage depth by groups. This allows you to get cool parallaxing effects for free by simply offsetting your groups from the perspective camera's Z axis.
Also, are they casting drop shadows?
The platforms are grouped by sorting layers, with each platform getting its own sort order. The z-depth rendering is completely managed in this way, preventing any weirdness.
Not casting drop shadows,
I'm refining the user experience for working with these layers, hoping for a very "photoshop" feel by the end. Getting close. Here's a pic from my tests today:
I really ought to paint more assets for this.
Could possibly use a single platform (like the column or fence) that is a soft ambient occlusion shadow for where the wall and platform meet.
The entire system is reduced to a single visible object in the Hierarchy. During "Mechanical Mansion" it was such a huge pain to manually keep track of all of the platform objects, I don't want anyone to have to go through that. This should streamline the process significantly. I'd like for it to feel a bit like a Photoshop document. With layers sorting from top to bottom, Layer locking, and visibility toggle all easily accessible from this panel. (not finished yet.)
So yeah, just trying to make things easier to use overall for any project people may throw at it.