Some technical questions about the engine and editor

[Abdaoui]

I have some questions about how the engine renders the models.
I wanted to know if models could occlude automatically the scene that you couldn't see behind the model.
Its mainly for performance reasons that I'm asking that.


Also ,regarding the new decal tech, I was wondering if it was working the same way as id tech's megatextures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture ) or inspired from it. Is it possible to create a seamless environments covered by decals without having a performance hit ?
I always though that decals duplicated the polygons that they covered.

Is there going to be a gui for material/shader editing ? (such as the material editor in unreal editor 4)

Some sort of gui for editing the xml files for models and textures for example with a preview window.



Unrealed's material editor.

[Phillip]

Hey Adaoui, welcome to the forums!

I wanted to know if models could occlude automatically the scene that you couldn't see behind the model.

Right now, this isn't supported. But it'd be a pretty cool optimization, and it's something we will consider.

Also ,regarding the new decal tech, I was wondering if it was working the same way as id tech's megatextures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture ) or inspired from it. Is it possible to create a seamless environments covered by decals without having a performance hit ?
I always though that decals duplicated the polygons that they covered.

The decals are treated as their own individual meshes, rather than as part of a megatexture. They do indeed duplicate the polygons they cover, and this does affect performance, but it's pretty light so far.

Is there going to be a gui for material/shader editing ? (such as the material editor in unreal editor 4)

Some sort of gui for editing the xml files for models and textures for example with a preview window.

Yeah, there will at least be a simple gui for editing the xml (just like in your example). Here's a blog post about a preliminary UI we are working on to handle this sort of stuff: http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/05/initial-inspector-ui/

[Abdaoui]

Thanks for the reply.

The decals are treated as their own individual meshes, rather than as part of a megatexture. They do indeed duplicate the polygons they cover, and this does affect performance, but it's pretty light so far.

Maybe a good LOD system would do the thing.(fade at a certain radius/occluded/texture compression)
Looking forward to some more GUI tools for the editor.

[SinKing]

How do you make XML files again? Could the thread that deals with the questions how to convert your own objects/meshes to usable in-game models be revived ot stickied, perhaps?

I'm always at loss when I'm looking for something in this forum. You made such comprehensible videos about everything else (e.g. to be seen on Moddb), why can't there be one about the entire importing, mesh-creating process?

[tokage]

How do you make XML files again? Could the thread that deals with the questions how to convert your own objects/meshes to usable in-game models be revived ot stickied, perhaps?

I'm always at loss when I'm looking for something in this forum. You made such comprehensible videos about everything else (e.g. to be seen on Moddb), why can't there be one about the entire importing, mesh-creating process?

I guess, you are searching for this one?
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4712&
It says, nothing much about the XML, though. Only to copy an existing one and edit the names and paths to match your own object.

[SinKing]

Excellent - that's what I was looking for. Thank you! Funny thing about this tutorial, is it also gives a quick and complete introduction to modelling, texturing and whatnot. Whoever wrote that guide got it all right, in a nutshell.
It also shows how you are making the XML(scroll down). Apparently you have to copy the XML-instructions of an existing file and use them for your own mesh (using notepad). Now that I see it, I remember it was actually dead easy and the only reason, why I failed to do it the last time, was because my object was lacking a texture.
Engines like Unreal fill in a default (checker) texture, which I think would be a nice idea for Phoenix Engine, too. Not only does it help you work with different textures for the same model, it also allows you to scope early on when you are stretching the mesh too much, resulting in a distortion.

Can we please, please collect all those instructions in one thread and perhaps not even allow anyone but the moderators to post in that thread? We could have a related thread, where people like you and I can discuss the problems we have and pose our questions.

[Eruditemoose]

I wanted to know if models could occlude automatically the scene that you couldn't see behind the model.

Right now, this isn't supported. But it'd be a pretty cool optimization, and it's something we will consider.

I think this is something you guys should strongly consider, as it would work brilliantly with Overgrowth's modular level system. Because every object will essentialy be made up of many smaller objects, you could occlude only the pieces that can't be seen while maintaining the impression that the mega-object is a single entity.

It may even be possible that this, in combination with some LOD for decals and vegetation, would be all the optimization the Pheonix engine would need (thus potentialy making massive cuts to your workload). I can't emphasize enough how well this would work, so please, REALLY consider it.