Previously I described how I was able to save the voxel data into a sparse octree and correctly lookup the right voxel in a shader. This shot shows that each triangle is being rasterized separately, i.e. the triangle bounding box is being correctly trimmed to avoid a lot of overlapping voxels:
Calculating direct lighting using the sparse octree was very difficult, and took me several days of debugging. I'm not 100% sure what the problem was, other than it seems GLSL code is not quite
My initial implementation of mesh voxelization for ray tracing used this code. It was good for testing, but has some problems:
It's slow, using an unnecessary and expensive x * y * z loop
No support for per-voxel color based on a texture lookup
There are mathematical mistakes that cause inaccuracy, and the math has to be perfect
My solution addresses these problems and only uses an x * y loop to generate the voxels. It does this by identifying the major (largest magn
Previously I noted that since Voxel global illumination involves calculation of direct lighting, it would actually be possible to do away with shadow maps altogether, and use voxels for direct and global illumination. This can eliminate the problems of image-based shadows like shadow acne and adjusting the shadow map size. I also believe this method will turn out a lot faster than shadow map rendering, and you know how I like fast performance.
The sparse voxel octree node structure consume
Hello
Debuting 2022 with a very first try of a level design for my offroad game project I try to construct with Leadwerks 4.6
The map needs a lot more improvements.
There are a few bugs (like swimming) and some collisions problems, but this how it could look like, with the challenge for the player to find his way through the world - like a puzzle driving game - without getting stucked (like me in this showcase) or have your car destroyed. So I will add an
This is an update on my progress of our voxel raytracing system. VXRT is designed to provide all the reflection information that PBR materials use. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this counts as a 5000 word article.
Direct lighting:
Global illumination:
Specular reflection:
Skybox component:
Final combined image:
Cyclone was shaping up visually, but I was getting feedback about the sound implementation not being so good. I previously created a script system that defined all my sounds under profiles. This was a step in the right direction and made it easier to tweak sounds without recompiling code. However, no matter how much I played with variables, I never was able to satisfy the complaints.
After I showcased my first gameplay trailer, I decided to finally sit down and really understand FMOD. I wa
The Ultra Engine editor is designed to be expandable and modifiable. Lua script is integrated into the editor and can be used to write editor extensions and even modify the scene or the editor itself in real-time.
We can create a scene object entirely in code and make it appear in the scene browser tree:
box = CreateBox(editor.world)
box.name = "box01"
o = CreateSceneObject(box) --make editor recognize the entity and add it to the scene browser
o:SetSelected(true)
We can even
This an entry for a new completed feature:
Wheels can leave a trace on the ground using decals.
Here is a bit code on how to make that work.
Here is how it returns ingame:
Edit 19.01.2022
First visual mud effect:
TEMP 2022-01-19 12-53-14.mp4
Enjoy!
Hello, fellow noobs. Hope you're doing well.
I have a few extra shaders I had wanted to get out to you earlier but couldn't because they weren't complete or they were a bit off-track. I have some more extras I want to add but here's a few for now.
I had wanted to do a multiple lights + alpha shader but it turned out to be a little trickier than I anticipated. I finally got it, though. Haven't tried this out in various situations but I doubt there will be any problem using this for what
A while back I wrote enthusiastically about Basis Universal super compression. KTX2 is a texture file format from Khronos, makers of the Vulkan and glTF specifications. Like DDS files, KTX2 can store multiple mipmaps, as well as memory-compressed texture formats like DXT5 and BC7. However, KTX2 now supports Basis compressed data as well, which makes it the all-in-one universal texture format. glTF has an official extension for KTX2 textures in glTF files, so it can be combined with Draco mesh co
Google Draco is a library that aims to do for mesh data what MP3 and OGG did for music. It does not reduce memory usage once a mesh is loaded, but it could reduce file sizes and improve download times. Although mesh data does not tend to use much disk space, I am always interested in optimization. Furthermore, some of the NASA models I work with are very high-poly, and do take up significant disk space. Google offers a very compelling chart showing a compression ratio of about 95%:
Ho
The glTF importer took a very long time to develop, but it much easier to write a glTF save routine. In one day I got an exporter working with support for everything except skinning and animation. To save a model in glTF format, just call Model::Save("mymodel.gltf") and it will work! Entire scenes can also be saved in glTF format.Here is a model that was loaded from Leadwerks MDL, MAT, and TEX files and saved as glTF. The textures are converted to PNG files. (Microsoft has an official extension
Since I started doing shaders I've begun to stare a lot at things. I stare at the ground. I stare at walls. I stare at rocks...and when autumn hit I started staring at fog...puddles....mud... This week I've been working on puddles and fog in keeping with that spooky October/November vibe. I worked out a pretty good mud puddle shader which I'll post next but I figured this one is done and I've tweaked the **** out of it so I need to stop at some point and know when it's done. This shader is made
In Leadwerks, required files were always a slightly awkward issue. The engine requires a BFN texture and a folder of shaders, in order to display anything. One of my goals is to make the Ultra Engine editor flexible enough to work with any game. It should be able to load the folder of an existing game, even if it doesn't use Ultra Engine, and display all the models and scenes with some accuracy. Of course the Quake game directory isn't going to include a bunch of Ultra Engine shaders, so what to
A few years ago, some folks at NASA asked for my help with some VR projects they were working on. They had switched to Leadwerks and were getting better performance with that, but it still wasn't fast enough for what they were trying to do. I flew from California out to Goddard Space Flight Center to meet with them. When I saw what NASA was doing with my software, my jaw hit the floor.
Goddard Space Flight Center
Rendering performance in VR is critical because if the framerate dr
The new editor is being designed to be flexible enough to work with any game, so it can be used for modding as well as game development with our new 3D engine. Each project has configurable settings that can be used to handle what the editor actually does when you run the game. In the case of a game like Quake, this will involve running a few executables to first compile the map you are working on into a BSP structure, then perform lightmaps and pre-calculate visibility.
You can also
Many games store 3D models, textures, and other game files in some type of compressed package format. These can be anything from a simple ZIP file to a custom multi-file archive system. This has the benefit of making the install size of the game smaller, and can prevent users from accessing the raw files. Often times undocumented proprietary file formats are used to optimize loading time, although with DDS and glTF this is not such a problem anymore.
Leadwerks uses built-in support for encr
At last I have been able to work the plugin system into the new editor and realize my dreams.
The editor automatically detects supported file formats and generates thumbnails for them. (Thumbnails are currently compatible with the Leadwerks system, so Leadwerks can read these thumbnail files and vice-versa.) If no support for a file format is found, the program just defaults to the whatever icon or thumbnail Windows shows.
The options dialog includes a tab where you can examine each pl
I've been wracking my brain trying to decide what I want to show at the upcoming conference, and decided I should get the new editor in a semi-workable state. I started laying out the interface two days ago. To my surprise, the whole process went very fast and I discovered some cool design features along the way.
With the freedom and control I have with the new user interface system, I was able to make the side panel extend all the way to the top and bottom of the window client area. This g
Ultra App Kit 1.2 is now available on our site and on Steam. This is a bug fix update that resolves numerous small issues reported in the bug reports forum.
To download the latest version, see My Purchases.
One of my goals in Ultra Engine is to avoid "black box" file formats and leave all game assets in common file formats that can be easily read in a variety of programs. For this reason, I put a lot of effort into the Pixmap class and the DDS load and save capabilities.
In Ultra Engine animated textures can be stored in a volume texture. To play the animation, the W component of the UVW texcoord is scrolled. The fragment shader will sample the volume texture between the nearest two slices on
Back in the summer of 2017, I started experimenting with the idea of a puzzle game by placing launch pads on surfaces. The first build was very sloppy, and there wasn't any wall launching at this time. This build however was the first step of the experimenting process. Only one map was ever made and I just reused old Vectronic assets.
I shelved this concept until Winter of 2020 asI developed an itch to work on something and I wanted to get familiar with GIMP. This build again
Ok so I didn't quite do one shader a week but I got to 52. I wasn't sure I could pull it off but hopefully the shaders are diverse enough to give something to work with for most occasions. I tried to keep the language consistent throughout and organize them sort of from easy to hard. I threw in all kinds of links because I don't know a lot of the technical terminology. I don't know how Ultra is going to be but I get the impression it's not going to be too much different. From what I understand,
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