This video demos some additions to the apricot branch of blender for snapping, library browsing and baking.
40 Responses
Campbell (ideasman42) | 
Development | 
05 29th, 2008
This video demos some additions to the apricot branch of blender for snapping, library browsing and baking.
Nice developements updates!!!
thanks for sharing!
Holy Bat-Fruits! you people rawk. O_o
Hey, these are some pretty nifty features! Nice work devs. 😀
OMFG! xD Totally awsome man!
Wow!
Dream’s come true! T_T
I dreaming for those features.
I hope the team consider the posibility to use .ogg files inside blender instead of .wav
Oh My Gold! That’s great! I remember seeing something similar on ID Tech5 features video. The only difference is that they replicated a normal mapped decal, so it seemed very detailed but it was only 2 polygons. Do you think that with this system we can also do something like that?
Very cool Campbell!
I’m a believer!
Great features guys 😀
Now we just need CSG and Blender will be a near complete level editor 😀
nice demos cam
Really nice, please keep updating the community of the work you do.
wow, this is indeed amazing. great job, guys! now to figure out how to do this stuff…
With regards using the outline veiw to add in linked assets, it would be cool to have the name replaced by ( or placed beside ) an icon representing the asset. Perhaps there could be some way of associating a thumbnail graphic with a .blend file?
Also, when you duplicate an object, it then enters auto-move mode, aligned with the screen. For game level editing, it might make more sense for an option to enter auto-move, where the constraint is the ground rather than the screen ( or maybe to toggle off aut-enter-move mode ).
I’m not sure if others would find those useful, with regards placement of a lot of objects ( and not just for filling out game scenes )
This will be very useful tools, thanks Campbell for this video 🙂
HI here
Congratulations on the mprovements, importing library was very nice for managing large sets of objects and allowed to build a collection of objects , grouped by theme , and then reuse it in a scene, but the import to empty was always a pita (first because it s a multistep process, you had no preview and there could be issues with the ui when the library had too much objects to choose from).
The realtime thing in blender comes also from very far, for having edited xml files after export, these manual changes you always losed them at a point and it was quite annoying and tedious, then the b2cs exporter was and now the realtime preview is.
Still there are a few things which would help to improve workflow:
For exemple i do not think the new library manager can handle textures, and making libraries only for managing textures and materials doesn’t seems very logical to me, anyhow not on the way we have to do it right now, i dont have the solution for that, but i think there s a clear issue around this.
There is something quite odd with unwrapped textures, they do not appear in the library manager or outliner, maybe that should be kept consistant as well with the other kinds of textures and materials.
And the last one and a quite annoying thing for me and i guess a lot of persons, the blender file manager, please just make something about it, either ditch it and replace it with native systeme dialog box or fix it so that you dont have to hide uselfull options with ctrl-click (i men after a time you get used to it, but it seems rather strange that you need to get used to simple thing like a file browser)
There s also something quite annoying i stumble upon quite frequently sometime it becomes a problem sometime not, transparent, semitransparent materials aren t transparent in the viewport (transparent part becomes either pink or take rainbow colors) and thus block view to other object we should see and doesn’t allow to get the real feeling of the final scene.
Else, keep doing good work and feed us with screenies and video and the world will keep spinning (you dont want that the planet stop spinning, isn’t it?)
(ps: because i know you like when i complain, here s one more, name and mail are hard to read in the comment thing because it s white on bright yellow)
great work so far, looking forward to more updates as they come. my Peach DVD just came in!!! yipee!!!! your efforts are appreciated.
cool… Is there a way to bake multiple textures at once?
for example I have a map that has textures divided into four 1000x1000px images.(So I don’t have a huge 2000x2000image) Every time I try to bake all the faces to the four images Blender tries to bake all the texturing to one image.
I also have a question about the normal mapping…
How would a person script a normalmap shader that disables/enables normalmap shading in response to the players location?
I made a whole bunch of normal maps for a game and it looks great but it slows down my computer so much I would like to optimize the shader(for some decent frame rates).
I think the improvements from Apricot are going to be the best of all open projects. It is introducing tons of the stuff that works the way I want it too, But I still think it will take quite sometime to learn to use effectively and properly.
hate to ask this, but what are the system requirements for Apricot? i wanna play it, but i’m not sure if my comp is up to par…
Just want to say that your work looks as is it may change the way games are made. I have been working with another engine in the development of a game and it is a real pain to get from blender to the engine, too many hoops to jump through.
I look forward to testing CS with Blender, is there anything I can do not to get going in the right direction now?
wow! to me these updates are sensational! 🙂
keep up the good work, people! 🙂
wow some good tools getting developed there..
Cool. This will be very useful tools. Great job!
That’s what I like to see. Great work. The grouping duplicates library switcharoo is going to be so handy!
Cheers!
Snap and align to face is enough to make me weep for joy.
Hey,
if you need someone who composes the Music for the game, you may contact me.
For listening to my music have a look at:
http://www.markus-fiedler.de/filmmusik.html
The site is in german speech, but anyway you will find the music examples. And all the hifi-stuff is in open source ogg-vorbis format. 😉
Cheers!
Awesome work! I’m so looking forward to make use of all the new tools. It’s great to see Blender moving from “we have kind of a workaround for props in games” to a quick, scalable tool that removes many of the common restrictions often put on the artist in other game editors.
A bit OT: What application did you use to make the movie?
Tip: you must try the Gears of War pc version. It contains the Unreal Editor. You can load all levels in the editor. Excelent example of:
-level building with modular elements based on the in-editor-modeled level-basis
-on-demand loading system of the level parts
-using of lights, baked lights and re-baking of the modified level parts
-using decals
-and so on, amazing…
Dont forget: Unreal Engine is the most used engine. It works on consoles too. For example this GoW with its excellent and very detailed graphics is works on X360 that has 512megs of memory… incredible…
I worked on a company where we developed an engine that has similar parts and systems that UE has (for example: modular system, decals etc). Here are some shots from our game: http://www.etyekfilm.hu/mweworks/
And here is a shot from GoW+Unreal Editor, good example of the modulary:
http://www.etyekfilm.hu/u3editor_shot.jpg
This is a cellar. You can see the modules, I have selected some. They modeled a simple base with the editor-modeling tools and they uses many modules: rails, trimmings, steps, ceiling cross-beams, pillars, decals, ruins, furnitures etc… Many small elements!
And the lights: this is a small room but it has 20+ baked lamps…
Sorry for my bad english.
This snap-thingy will work on regular modelling also? Coolness. And should have been implemented years ago.
The game is also getting along nicely.
Could you stay in Blender Foundation a year after the game is out and write a tutorial that basically teaches everything you do?
I personally have always find the game engine the most intimidating part of Blender. And I think I’m not alone with this.
Awesome! Thank you very much for that video Campbell.
Its nice to see different aspects of your tecnic and art 🙂
Hay nice work, looks SWEET!
1 thing, how do u get that extra snap to grid stuff down the bottom?? probly will look around at forums thanks 😀 GJ
looks great! is baking antialiased now?
Jimmy Volatile: we are using ‘recordmydesktop’ linux application.
And what about baking normals? I’m just having troubles with non organic models using edge split.
How are you solving that? I still trying.
And by the way, the progress looks so nice, good work!!
and what about baking this one bounce approximate GI brecht talked about a while ago? that would be cool! 🙂
Great work!
How about LOD? How do you manage it? Is there any generic solution for hand made level of detail models?
Ubuntuist: No, we have custom LOD manager in the blender2crystal. We parenting objects and tag them with lod:0 lod:1 etc.
That is the coolest thing I have ever seen…
Thanks Campbell!!!
The new Snap and new options on the Outliner are just wonderfull. I really hope it gets into the main Blender. 🙂
nice development