kHED 1.0 Beta - a new low poly 3D modeling editor

jdphu

Hi, everyone!

Let me introduce my fresh software:)

It is designed specialy for creating polygonal models with low polygon counts for computer games.

Here you can see the basic kHED features

• A simple, convenient and user-friendly interface, that is great for the beginers.
• A powerfull tool to create triangles and polygons, including polygons with holes.
• A variety of tools for creating primitives: Plane, Box, Chamfer Box, Sphere/GeoSphere, Cylinder, Chamfer Cylinder, Tube and Torus.
• Different primitive creation modes to avoid the need of aligning primitives after creating them.
• A Lathe Tool to create rotational objects by an outline.
• A multi-purpose Loft Tool, that extrudes a 2D object along path.
• Tools to modify model geometry with ease: Move, Rotate, Scale, Extrude, Bevel and Inset.
• Precise object selection in any viewport.
• A planar, cylindrical and sphere texture mapping.
• Automatic unwrap of complex meshes (Unfold and Flatten algorythm).
• A powerfull Texture Coordinates Editor (UV Editor), that can handle elements, weld/unweld element parts and has handy 3D selection window.
• Automatic Smoothing Group assigning by maximum angle between triangles and unlimited number of Smoothing Groups.
• Two 3D control modes: arount center and first-person (with arrow keys navigation).
• Exporting and Importing:
  • Wavefront Object (*.OBJ)
  • MilkShape 3D Binary (*.MS3D)
  • Half-Life SMD (*.SMD)
  • Half-Life Model (*.MDL)
• Customizable user interface.
• Complete user manual.

Screenshots:





Official website:
http://khed.ho.ua/

Download page:
http://khed.ho.ua/index.php?page=download

Don't forget to post your comments at forum:
http://khed.ho.ua/forum/index.php

Thanks for your attention:)

renderhjs

looks nice so far

some crits (hopefully in a usefull way)

GUI
- refine GUI, maybe consider using dockable toolbars instead of side panels
- to me most of the icons are hard to read that is also because they differ so much in style
- some darkness slider just like in AfterEffects 7+ would be nice so that one can adjust the darkness/brightness of the GUI theme with a single slider.

will give it a shot this week to really get into it and perhaps give you other hints or suggestions you might add/change.

but nice effort so far,- keep it up

jdphu

renderhjs, all the toolbars excepting "Materials Panel" are dockable. Or that doesn't work?

arrangemonk

great tool
i would consider replacing the select tools woth "work on" tools
so that clicking outside the model deselects everything,
moving cursor clicked over the model selects the parts in the rectangle and moving mouse starting to klick on a selected part does the selected operation on the selection

and a more advanced material editor (simple hlsl shader with selectable maps)
edit:
are you implementing an edge mode by any chance?

jdphu

yes, that's in my plans.

renderhjs

I found the bevel/extrude,.. command very unintuitive almost like as bad as in maya. It would be nice if one could slide the bevel amount out of the object instead of having to type the value each time and try/error if it works.
A behaviour more like max, silo, modo or any other modern modeling tool would be nice where one can just drag and slide the mouse to define the extude amount and preview it all in realtime.
In general it would be nice if the selection could be kind of set on hold while you modify things on it - so one does not have to go constantly back in history. I noticed the same with the plane/patch tool - once created I wanted to change the intersections but instead I was forced to draw another one.

Another con is that the software seems to operate on triangles as a base - and not unlike most moderling packages support quads or ngons. Selection can be tricky because of that - if one is used to select quads while it instead selects tris.

pior

I think it's a fantastic idea. A fresh, simple modelling program taking user feedback seriously.

-So the obvious first thing is : if you really want to make it a kickass app, stick around here on polycount and listen to what people have to say :P You'll turn your program into gold! (see the xnormal feedback pages)

As for feedback about the program itself :

-You need Ngons support,
-a simple, one button press preview for subdivision smoothing,
-extreme flexibility for viewport navigation controls,
-elegant viewport based selection (I think Silo is one of the only app out there doing this properly...),
-powerful shortcut editor (UI customization is a nice bonus, but not necessary)

And :

-you also need to consider how far you want to push the app. I see 3 possible levels :

>levelA : pure polygon modelling. Just raw geometry interaction (=wings 3D)
>levelB : same as A + the ability to deform the meshes in a destructive manner, with bends, lofts and so on (=Silo, Maya)
>level3 : same as B + non destructive parametric editing based on a modifier stack (=3DSMax) I think this would be extremely complex to achieve, but if done right, this is fantastic.

Maybe something level A and B are a good goal for now?

Good luck,

renderhjs

back to icons and GUI,- maybe have some look at some of the blender icon sets- under certain conditions most of them be even free for you to use,

some examples:

http://sites.google.com/site/androcto/Home/meta-s-blender-icons



http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1317386



http://blender.keenix.net/2008/12/replacing-blenders-horrible-icons/



http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=23

also as a general advise: have a look at silo and modo as those 2 are the crown of productivity in modeling workflow. Esspecially silo pwerfull way of quickly assigning new shortcuts where and when you need them. Modo is a very good reference in terms of GUI design,- the colors and the symbols of the icons are the best I know of a 3d package - very thoughfull there.

arrangemonk

@pior

a simple modifier stack isnt that hard do code
mostly it safes the end result of all its inputs (in this case the recent model)
wehn you add a new modifier, the model saves the state and you work on
and deleting the modifier delets the last model in the stack and picks the latest of the previous versions

the simplest solution is to implement just the saving so that people can add a psedo modifier to save the dcurrent step when theyre triing something

but this was just a way to bypass the undo system so that you can acces things that could fall out of the undo stack

pior

Hi Monk!

I don't know if this fits with your description of a stack : what I meant is not only the "stackable" nature of the modifiers, but also and more importantly the non-linear, "browsable" aspect of their connections.

I mean, I really love and rely a lot on Max's ability to let me go back the very lower layer of a modifiers stack (say, Editpoly stage), edit it at will (removing faces, pulling/pushing vertices, welding edges) and then go back all the way up and see the consequences of the changes through the upper levels of modifiers. And even, see all that moving and updating in realtime thanks to the Show End Result button.

This supposes that the modifiers stacked on top are smart enough to be either "per component" or "per object" depending on what is currently active below them at the time they are applied - in order to not rely too much on vertex numbers (since this order is modified when deleting faces, merging edges, you name it).

In my experience Max is fantastic for that and extremely flexible ; on the other hand even tho Maya seems to have a similar structure (even more complex actually since its node based and can branch in more complex ways) the downside is that everything in Maya seems to based on component manipulation, making it impossible to edit the lower layers of the stack/node graph without breaking the end result after reconnecting the node.
(Try that on a simple extrude of a 3*3 grid plane : i am pretty sure that if a face is removed, then the extrude node reconnected, the result is messed up)

That's why I thought that coding a good stack system is huge task (Max has it, Maya somehow has it but the history is too polluted and sadly seems component-restricted, Silo users have been asking for it for a long time and it never saw it happen...)

Fascinating stuff really!
Hope to see all that in kHed one day!!!

jdphu

Yes, probably the modifier stack is a great feature, but i think it is too early to talk about it now. I think i should at least fix all known bugs and make evevything to run perfectly. Then add support for skeletal animation, more file formats, ability to work with quads/polygons/edges and so on.