HeadClot Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Hey everyone,I have been working in blender for the past day making various modular environmental art pieces.This all started when I saw a talk by two people from Bethesda Games Studios talk about their level design process of fallout 4 on the GDC youtube channel.The talk is called and you should watch it. Lots of good stuff and examples on how they use prefabs and the like.Anyway - I have been working on some modular environment pieces. Which I am super happy with so far however nothing is textured yet. http://i.imgur.com/HiRLMW4.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/obBeYh5.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/lCw19zD.pngMy end goal is to make a series of Modular kits for my game. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukasPJ Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 So, one of the drawbacks of modular environments is that they take more drawcalls (as 1 simple house that could be just 1 drawcall, is now 1 for the door, each wall, the roof etc.)Do you know how much of an effect that has?Is it possible to compile a prefab into "a single model" that could be drawn in fewer drawcalls? Does anyone know if it even matters?Just asking because I love the concept of modular design kits, and would love to hear more about your ventures! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duion Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Many static shapes can impact performance negatively in Torque, I don't know how far instancing, prefabbing etc is to counter that.It also depends how large your scenes going to be, if you want to build an open world MMO then you will have to invest in developing technology to improve performance with the modules, but on small levels it does not matter much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azaezel Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 So, one of the drawbacks of modular environments is that they take more drawcalls (as 1 simple house that could be just 1 drawcall, is now 1 for the door, each wall, the roof etc.)Do you know how much of an effect that has?Is it possible to compile a prefab into "a single model" that could be drawn in fewer drawcalls? Does anyone know if it even matters?Just asking because I love the concept of modular design kits, and would love to hear more about your ventures! Yeah, that's *exactly* the issue we hit prior to cooking up that workflow (Thanks again Jeff and John for the tools). Jumped the resultant fps from 20s looking across the map to 100s plus. Do note at time of writing, re-exporting a collection of meshes drops lods and animations off the side though, so it's still more of a blockout tool at present. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RasterRon Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Looking good! Reminds me of Haupt's work also with Blender.Keep it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffR Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Most excellent. Keep up the good work! :)And yeah, there's a built-in utility method for baking meshes together. As Az mentioned, we need to get LODs and probably animations working at least. Also want to get an option in there for baking the textures into an atlas as well for further cut down of drawcalls, but that's less critical comparitively. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duion Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Did he post any screenshots of his work? I can't see any. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Razer Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Is there a way to snap these pieces to create some house, and tell T3D to merge them as one model ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duion Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 No. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadClot Posted January 11, 2017 Author Share Posted January 11, 2017 Did he post any screenshots of his work? I can't see any. I posted some on imgur and linked them here. I am not sure why you are not sure why you are not able to see them. :\ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johxz Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Is there a way to snap these pieces to create some house, and tell T3D to merge them as one model ?No. As Az and JeffR said LODs and animations feature is missing.Still you can used, you can use modular static shapes, select all the meshes and then export to collada and re-import to the engine as one mesh (A) or you can use a tool to "merge the meshes" (B) is the same as A but in one step.(A)http://i.imgur.com/EGE8gEP.png(B)http://i.imgur.com/Cijicuj.png Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duion Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Ah now I see them, I had a blocker on.Regarding the merging thing, I would just use the modules in blender, combine them there and then export as one mesh, would be the best solution, since blender offers better snapping tools etc and you will have a truly merged model.Modular level design is most often used in big teams, where artists and level designers work independendly, so the level designers can build levels and the artist model elements at the same time.But if you do not have a team, you could just merge it in blender already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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