[Terrain design]

What matters is, what is best for us?

[Terrain design]

This change would allow us to get vegetation working sooner, with fewer bugs and ongoing problems.

[Release Notes]

0.9.6

• Added right-click on file "Convert File to XXX..." menu item for all converters in asset browser.
• Added right-click on folder "Batch Conversion" menu item in asset browser.

[DCL Ultra Engine ?]

Yeah, I am actually looking into some stuff like that now...

[Terrain design]

Doing that would require two things.

With really big worlds, you need a terrain system that recursively subdivides, because normal terrain LOD isn't big enough. With a normal terrain LOD system where the terrain is divided into patches, eventually you can zoom out so far that each patch is just one pixel big. So you need a different way of handling that.

You also need a way to warp the terrain to a sphere, and have it affect physics, raycasting, culling, as well as the rendering.

I plan on doing stuff like this in the future, but not with our standard terrain system.

[Terrain design]

Yeah, but that will require an entirely separate terrain system, and it's not something important to worry about right now.

[Terrain design]

How do terrains make a sphere anyways?

[Terrain design]

I am considering moving terrain back to work the way it did in Leadwerks, where it was always centered around the origin and did not respond to rotation or positioning. This would simplify vegetation system quite a lot because I can handle all coordinates in world space. Otherwise, you have to do a lot of transformations and it is hard to get things to line up correctly. I think it also makes a better experience in the editor. Movable terrains can be prone to accidental movements, and having them selectable degrades the performance because the outline effect is quite expensive since it requires rendering the object twice.

[Ultra model file format]

Can you get the local rotation as a quaternion?

You might look at the old Leadwerks exporter and see what the author did there.

[Release Notes]

• Temporarily removed drag to select area, since it was interfering with some mouse tools.
• Added terrain texture size field in creation parameters box

[Ultra model file format]

There is nothing like bone.local_position or bone.position?

[Ultra model file format]

So blender only gives you a bone's orientation in global space? You have to multiply that by the inverse of the parent's 4x4 matrix to get the local orientation.

[Adjust foliage normals]

This extension can help eliminate the planar appearance of a lot of trees and plants. You can adjust the minimum Y normal to get the effect you want.

Foliage Normals.lua

Tested with this model:
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/tree_057-519628

Before:

After:

[Failed to create a new project]

Can you post a screenshot that shows the error you are getting or the problem, please?

[Release Notes]

0.9.6

• Added Delete option when you right-click on a mesh in the asset editor.
• Probably fixed bindless texture sampler uniforms.
• Exposed Object:AddHook to Lua (experimental!).
• Added some string functions for Lua.
• Component updates now happen after animation is updated.

[Game not launching.]

Perhaps a dumb question, but have you been here?: https://www.nvidia.com/download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

[Some thumbnails not rendering]

Standalone or Steam? Standalone is a little ahead right now.

[Some thumbnails not rendering]

Is it just the animated models?

[Outline shader bugs]

I don't know what that image means. I found some logical errors that were causing the outlines in the editor to be the wrong color. Now they work correctly in the editor.

[Release Notes]

0.9.6

• Fixed bug in editor where animated models would not appear the first frame, in the first viewport.
• All directional light shadow cascades now render each frame in editor.
• Fixed some glitches in the outline post effect.

[Problem Laptop]

Have you installed Nvidia's current driver?

[Game not launching.]

Hi, I just tried the following with a GEForce 1080 and the latest driver 552.12.

• Deleted the file "C:\ProgramData\Ultra Engine\settings.json" to reset all settings.
• Launched Ultra Engine Pro on Steam, default branch (0.9.5)
• Created a new project.
• Opened the Visual Studio solution and compiled for debug and release.
• Ran the game, and the start.map game opened and ran.

Questions:

• Are you launching from the editor or from Visual Studio?
• If you are in the editor, do you have the start.map scene open in the editor when you launch?
• This is a new project, right, not an old project that was previously created with the Vulkan build of Ultra?

It sounds like maybe the program is not loading the starting map, so there is no camera and just a black screen.

[String commands]

The Ultra string classes are not exposed in Lua. Ultra uses wide strings, which do not work well with Lua strings. However, all command interfaces between C++ and Lua that pass strings convert UTF8 (Lua) to wide strings (C++) and back.

I have added the string methods as functions that can be used like this:

s = "test"
s = Right(s, 1)
s = Trim(s)

I also added Len(s), which is like Ultra's GetSize() method for the string class.

This will be available in the next build.

[Random()]

I tried these in the editor console and they worked.

[Entity::Pivot]

Fixed for next build, tested in editor console.