[Bf-gamedev] BGE to visual Presentation and Blender for easier usage for other gamengines.

Matt Three ragingelbows at gmail.com
Fri Sep 27 01:17:25 CEST 2013


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuS_F0ZKX-zTdGxKOEMtRmI2Tno4UUlPZzVfNXB6RHc#gid=0

is pretty much the canonical document for what is missing. For a modern
workflow the big ones are:

Editable vertex normals with proper export support for smoothing groups.
 This is partially implemented in the new FBX/.obj exporters, however, as
edit mode recalculates vertex normals every time you enter it, it's a huge
problem.
http://wiki.polycount.net/VertexNormal?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=TreeMakerScript_plus_NormalThiefScript.gif
is
an example of why we need editable vertex normals.  For low poly objects it
is extremely important to be able to control shading, and a primary way to
do this is through editing normals and setting hard/soft edges.  Not to
mention that without proper normals your bakes will not work right.

Cage baking and baking with AA (normally we get around this with X-normal).
 Proper support for cage baking would mean that we wouldn't need to use a
third party app to get proper bakes that work in game engines.

I think these are the two big ones.  Support for edited normals is
important for getting data out of Blender that game engines understand.
Right now there are some work arounds but it is really difficult to do
certain things, such as foliage, without edited vertex normals.  Cage
baking is what would be needed to make Blender a one stop app for creating
game assets.  Right now we're almost required to use Xnormal and Handplane
to get our meshes looking right in engines like UDK.

I'm sure other artists (Andy Davies, feel free to chime in here) would need
other features, but those two seem to be the common consensus as far as
basic feature completeness.

I would add the ability to bake global illumination (i.e. Cycles baking)
 and the ability to bake displacement maps as two other features that are
notably absent in blender.  However, they aren't show stoppers like the
vertex normal and baking support are.



On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 4:02 PM, Jason Wilkins <jason.a.wilkins at gmail.com>wrote:

> To begin to address missing features, is there a list of things that are
> missing that somebody could look at and start getting ideas of where to
> begin?  If not one could start by creating concrete list of things Blender
> can't do (or can't do easily) that missing and what one thinks would be
> needed to make Blender "feature complete".
>
> My area is computer graphics and programming language research, so I need
> to be pointed in the right direction ;-)
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Matt Three <ragingelbows at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I honestly wouldn't worry about another language at the moment...I'm not
>> sure what it would really add for game art creation.  I think a lot of tech
>> artists are proficient in Python as it is used in Maya and Max scripting.
>>  The big issue for most of us who use Blender for game projects on 3rd
>> party engines is the missing features. Right now Blender is feature
>> incomplete for game art creation when stacked up against Maya or 3ds Max.
>> In my opinion this is the first thing that this list and effort should
>> address.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Jason Wilkins <jason.a.wilkins at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> I'll admit adding Lua or other language support to Blender is
>>> hypothetical, but I was thinking this list would be a good place gauge
>>> interest.  It actually made me much more interested in adding Mono support
>>> since I think having a strongly typed language would be much more
>>> appreciated than adding yet another scripting language.
>>>
>>> Of course there will be a lot of "bike shedding" when the topic of
>>> programming languages is raised, but I have a nice threaded mail reader so
>>> it doesn't matter if the number next to the thread is [2] or [40], it isn't
>>> "drowning out" anything.  I'll try to keep in mind that other people might
>>> get more annoyed by the size of these numbers than me ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Jacob Merrill <
>>> blueprintrandom1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ok, thank you sir...
>>>> On Sep 26, 2013 1:09 PM, "Brecht Van Lommel" <
>>>> brechtvanlommel at pandora.be> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If developers of the Blender game engine want to communicate with
>>>>> users over this list I don't have a problem with that. This is a new
>>>>> mailing list and we still have to see how it works out.
>>>>>
>>>>> But if we get long discussions about hypothetical projects that drown
>>>>> out the discussions on actual development work that is being done,
>>>>> then people who can provide good feedback will ignore the list or
>>>>> unsubscribe. And I think we are in danger of that happening, so I just
>>>>> want to remind people to try to avoid it.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Jacob Merrill
>>>>> <blueprintrandom1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> > Ok,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Very professional,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > BF-GameDev-
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I guess I thought it was about game development,
>>>>> > Sorry....
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I guess I should maybe think about moving to another engine....
>>>>> >
>>>>> > what of the unpaid devs?
>>>>> > Kupoman -etc?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > is there a list that I should be posting to about game development?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Android ports?
>>>>> >
>>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>>> > Bf-gamedev mailing list
>>>>> > Bf-gamedev at blender.org
>>>>> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-gamedev
>>>>> >
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
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