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Tech Artist - What are you working on: FOREVER Edition!

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  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Crossposting from P&P WAYWO:

    Early stages of a ProcBuilding thingie for Unity:
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBXa-8HeZ1Y"]Unity ProcBuilding - early days - YouTube[/ame]
  • arrangemonk
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    arrangemonk polycounter lvl 17
    @osman
    Dont use winforms
    its so inconvenient to convert them to wpf
  • osman
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    osman polycounter lvl 18
    @arrangemonk
    The real point of this experiment is the connection between unity and whatever external GUI you want, so I might as well have used WPF.
    Out of curiosity: is there a reason why one would always want to switch to WPF? I've used it before, but not for very long.
  • commander_keen
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    commander_keen polycounter lvl 18
    I have been working on an IRC client for about a week.
    Its written in C#/WPF and has theme support and a plugin system.

    4ee71e7725d8a.png
  • osman
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    osman polycounter lvl 18
    Keen, do you have 32 hour days or something? Good stuff.
  • Miguelito
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    Miguelito polycounter lvl 18
    @mLichy

    Is it possible that Turbotools is somehow able to screw up your whole Windows? I installed it, closed Max and wanted to reopen it. However I got a license error 41.
    Our admin made some more investigation and found out that the whole Windows is screwed up. Like the search functions does not work properly anymore and many important System folders are just not there anymore (!) etc.
    Maybe something made its way into mzp somehow? Broken *dlls or so?

    But probably it is just a very very bad conincident...

    Anyway, could you please check that?

    Thx
  • commander_keen
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    commander_keen polycounter lvl 18
    osman, thanks being unemployed and single doesnt hurt :)
  • mLichy
    @ Miguelito

    I don't use any kind of licenses or anything for my toolbar. I've never seen that before either.

    I've tested installing/un-installing the toolbar on my laptop, outside of my normal machine, and all was fine. This was on Windows 7 32bit. I can double check again, but the only folder that is set to remove anything is specifically set to the max Scripts directory.


    A quick search, I found this.

    http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Installation-Licensing/License-Error-41/td-p/2828705



    Edit: Yeah, I tested again on my laptop, downloading the MZP from my site, did un-install/reinstall and works just fine.

    I can try on another machine tomorrow, but I really do think its something else.
  • Miguelito
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    Miguelito polycounter lvl 18
    I have win7 64bit. One thing that might be unusual on our machines is that we have 4 installations of Max. 2010 32bit,64bit and 2011 32bit,64bit. Dont ask why :). COuld that lead to a problem?
    But anyway somehow I doubt it that a maxscript screws up my whole Windows. It is just the last thing I did on my machine. Very bad luck I guess :)
    Thx for checking though.
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    (turboTools runs fine on my win7 64 'puter - Max 2010, 2011, 2012)

    ..sounds like a virus you picked up somewhere?
  • Miguelito
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    Miguelito polycounter lvl 18
    Admin didnt find anything. Strange :). I will give it a try at home again...
  • mLichy
    Added a Bitmap/Vertex Color Placing option to my Object Placer tool.

    http://matthewlichy.com/bitmapPlacer/bitmapPlacer.html
  • Trent Fry
    I'm making a plugin so you can use a graphics tablet as input in 3d Max. Here's a demo of what I've made so far, just to to see if anyone's interested and what people think.

    http://vimeo.com/34397857
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    osman, thanks being unemployed and single doesnt hurt :)

    What? WHAT!? You shit out some of the coolest most impressivest shit in this thread, and you're unemployed? ...did you even ask for a job anywhere?
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    ...oh, we're still on the 2010 edition thread? well, happy new year then! :)
  • dpaynter26
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    dpaynter26 polycounter lvl 11
    Norman3D wrote: »
    That's awesome mLichy! It would be very useful in combination with another script I'm working on.

    UDK Sync is kind of an experiment. I'm trying to bring 3dsMax and UDK closer together.

    I think I already posted this video some time ago:
    UDK Sync 0.2 - YouTube

    To sum it up. You can take advantage of all kinds of placement tools in 3dsMax. :)

    In that video I had both windows side by side, which was a bit inconvenient. So here is my attempt at fixing that:

    UDK Sync 0.3 Preview - YouTube


    Here I'm experimenting with replacing a 3dsMax viewport with an UDK viewport in order to be able to check the changes in realtime between 3dsmax and UDK.

    Thanks to the MaxScript sub-forum at CGTalk, there are a ton of useful bits of code that I have learnt from!

    WHY CANT THIS BE FOR MAYA!?!??!?! :(:( lol
  • Norman3D
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    Norman3D polycounter lvl 14
    dpaynter26 wrote: »
    WHY CANT THIS BE FOR MAYA!?!??!?! :(:( lol

    Cause I'm not a Maya user, that's why :poly124:
  • mLichy
    Plus Mel isn't documented well at all, from what I saw while trying to learn, and I couldn't find really any good reference online :P
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    mLichy wrote: »
    Plus Mel isn't documented well at all, from what I saw while trying to learn, and I couldn't find really any good reference online :P
    Well, for basic things you get a lot of tutorials you know ! :)
    (For example : http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/Commands/ or http://xyz2.net/mel/ )
    But for a thing such advanced as making an UDK viewport in maya it's gonna be a bit hard I think.
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    mLichy wrote: »
    Plus Mel isn't documented well at all, from what I saw while trying to learn, and I couldn't find really any good reference online :P

    Python!
  • mLichy
    ^ Yeah. Thats what I always hear. But don't you need to know Mel somewhat to use Python?
  • haiddasalami
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    haiddasalami polycounter lvl 14
    mLichy wrote: »
    ^ Yeah. Thats what I always hear. But don't you need to know Mel somewhat to use Python?

    Mel helps somewhat but usually the python documentation is well documented and the mel knowledge helps when converting maya commands to pythonic terms.
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    some progress with my sprite hull packing tool

    pack_results_angryBirds.jpg

    clusters are not yet rotated 90 degree step wise, otherwise I think I can get even more efficiency out of it. Mesh clusters will be generated as well hence why I can pack the sprites like this and not using bounding volumes like most other solutions.
  • Maph
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    Maph polycounter lvl 8
    That is deliciously efficient, renderhjs!
    How do you control the point of origin for each sprite btw? If you're willing to share ofcourse.
  • mLichy
    Awesome! I wish 3DS Max could pack that well! .... :(
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    renderhjs - you've got the kings' crowns overlapping other sprites a few time, that can't be good. Some other overlaps too, but the crowns are very obvious.

    What kind of processing overhead does it give to cut out all sprites for use again?
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    Snader wrote: »
    What kind of processing overhead does it give to cut out all sprites for use again?

    How would one approach this? Could you do it with basic nodes in UDK, no custom code?



    On a slightly related note, I have been looking into learning to code in Cg, now that eat3d has a DVD.

    I was reading some tech papers on engines that use deffered shading and I noticed that they are very limited in the type of shader you can use, usually a very limited phong. I think Cryengine 3 mostly uses a variation of the illum shader for most assets because of this. Either way, they don't have a node based editor like UDK, but instead use their uber-shaders. I didn't see any option to make your own shaders.

    What if you need extra functions? Is it possible to extend the functionality with one of these shading languages? As we move into the deffered future, would this kind of a job be done by a tech artist, or would they designate this job to engine coders? (Which I definitely am not)
  • CrazyButcher
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    CrazyButcher polycounter lvl 20
    there is more or less two popular ways to go about "deferred" rendering

    * classic deferred shading: e.g. collect all attributes for full shading in g-buffers (albedo, normal...): means fat framebuffers and rather limited ways to go about material diversity, as you must have all attributes in said g-buffers.

    * light pre-pass: this becomes increasingly popular, and is afaik used by crytek, dice and a bunch of others (at least in variations). You render a g-buffer only with attributes you need for collecting light information. I.e. you get a sort of a light-map in screenspace. Then you render the scene with "material shaders", in those you can fetch more additional attributes (textures) and do more diversity in how you process that screenspace lightmap.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    From what I have read, Deffered Lighting (Or lighting-prepass as we have been calling it before) has some downsides, especially if you are doing multiplatform games because of the double geometry pass with PS3.

    Cryengine uses a mix of techniques, but it renders out all the Gbuffers as in Deffered shading and your stuck with a basic phong. BF3 uses deffered shading. DX11 UDK does aswell. it is very limited too:
    Restrictions

    Material is opaque, uses the Phong lighting model, does not use subsurface scattering
    The mesh uses one of the supported lighting channels (Dynamic, Cinematic 1-3)
    The light is a movable point, spot or directional light using one of the supported lighting channels (Dynamic, Cinematic 1-3)
    Additionally, material properties are restricted when lit with deferred shading:

    Material diffuse values are clamped between 0 and 1
    Material specular values are clamped between 0 and 1
    Material specular power is clamped between 0 and 500

    I would imagine Cryengine, Frostbite and UDK, are only going to get more poular as time goes on, so are tech artists that work with these deferred shading engines going to get less access to writing custom shaders?
  • SpeCter
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    SpeCter polycounter lvl 14
    So far i could use every shader i wanted with deferred shading.
  • commander_keen
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    commander_keen polycounter lvl 18
    You can mix deferred and forward rendering. It would be pretty silly for an engine not to do both or you wouldnt be able to have any blended surfaces, or custom lighting.
  • SpeCter
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    SpeCter polycounter lvl 14
    You can mix deferred and forward rendering. It would be pretty silly for an engine not to do both or you wouldnt be able to have any blended surfaces, or custom lighting.

    Or have no transparency...
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    That is a good point. Do you guy think Cryengine will ever get a node based editor or support for custom coded shaders in their free versions?
  • mLichy
    Spent like 1hr quick on a Shrink Wrapper for fun. Might not finish it, idk yet. It works pretty good, but has some wonkiness yet.

    http://www.matthewlichy.com/wrapTest/wrapTest.html
  • mLichy
    I got the Edge Issues fixed now. It doesn't operate in Realtime, but is slightly delayed now, but it gives much better performance, and also doesn't go all crazy. :)

    Maybe I will keep working on this now :)
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    looking very promising :) ..looks like it could replace graphite's mildly annoying conform brush.
  • Pac_187
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    Pac_187 polycounter lvl 11
    Great! Would it be possible to wrap a spline around a cylinder with this + an offset value?
    Could be a big help with floating geo on non-planar shapes.
  • mLichy
    Yeah, Spline could prob work the same way. I was thinking about adding an offset slider.
    I'm going to work on it more today. Ill look into splines.

    The main issues I've had are/were just saying how to go about projecting verts. Right now I have it setup to only simulate on the start of the tool, then it only keeps working while the Modify Panel is open, or it works on whatever your sub-object you have selected.

    So if you select an edge loop, every second or maybe .5 I can change it to, it tries to find the best spot to move to. So you can drop in an Edge Loop now, and after u do so, if u wait that little bit, it snaps them all to the surface.

    More to come...
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    great! how'd it work on turbosmoothed/dense geometry, do you think?
  • mLichy
    I tested on a turboSmoothed mesh being projected onto, and its fine. At first it was sluggish, but since I changed how it works, its fine now. Of course, the more verts you try to project down at a time, the more processing time its going to take.

    I may allow for turboSmooth modifiers to be applied to the mesh being projected with, but other modifiers might cause issues/kill it. I need to test more.
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    looks very promising. you keep putting out great scripts, i'm ever so slightly aroused.
  • Novian
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    Novian polycounter lvl 12
    @mLichy: That looks awesome! I sincerely hope you plan on sharing a final version that works with Max 9 and above.. :)

    Cheers~

    P.S. Or if you need / want some Max 9 testing let me know.
  • mLichy
    Thanks. Yeah, it should work on Max 9. Im testing on 2012 right now. But I would assume/pretty sure it will have the same performance overall across all.
  • mLichy
    Here's an update since before,

    new features/fixes:

    - Caches Target Geo more efficiently
    - MUCH better results and faster than before when wrapping Geometry
    - Use custom Direction or Best Guess for Projection/Wrapping
    - Use Modifiers ontop of your Editable Poly Mesh
    - Use Soft Selection with Geo
    - Use Offset with Geo
    - Use Manual or Realtime Mode + Pause/Resume
    - ShrinkWap Splines now using the same settings (besides Offset/Soft Selection)


    If there appears to be lag, its from the capture mainly. The geo/splines update however every .5 seconds as u adjust things for performance sake.

    http://www.matthewlichy.com/wrapTest2/wrapTest2.html
  • leslievdb
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    leslievdb polycounter lvl 15
    that looks great , i've done something simular a few years back but this already looks 10x more usefull since you can just keep working on your model while having it in wrapmode
  • mLichy
    Thanks :D Yeah, that was my main focus. To try and let you work as normal, but be wrapping properly. Right now it wraps on start, but then after that unless you have a SubObject element selected, it doesnt simulate/waste CPU.

    So as soon as you select a vert/edge/face/border/element, it converts the selection and begins working.
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    turboTools is turning into a freight train of heavy metal maxscript smashery.

    yeah, i don't know what that means either.
  • mLichy
    I found a couple issues, so got some more things sorted.

    Also added new features:

    - Spline Offset now works.
    - Update speed: Change how often the tool updates (every 350ms to 5 seconds)
    - Splines now update on all Seperate Spline "Elements"


    - Just got spline "elements" working. I didn't think about that one. Tried to project a Text Spline and only the 1st letter worked. Now it all works fine, and you can add/remove spline "elements" in realtime and all is good.
  • mLichy
    Decided to Add Group/Multiple Object Support for the Target Mesh.

    So now instead of only using 1 Mesh, you can use the current selection (Groups, Meshes) and it creates a Target Mesh from that.

    Although, by doing this, there is a chance the tool could error if you change selections while in Preview Mode, and select one of those original meshes you used to create the Target.


    But I do allow you to switch selections while in preview mode so you can wrap other geo/splines without exiting the mode.
  • mLichy
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