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Michael Betke

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Blog Entries posted by Michael Betke

  1. Michael Betke
    Thanks for the great responses to our new released project! After some considerations about the assets of the Kabul City it's now available for sale. The possibility to release such high-quality assets to the community is very rare because of the nature of contracts.
     
    There are 25 models in total - including 7 buildings and 18 props - for only 89,95 EUR. This is only 3,59 EUR for one model. The offer is limited until 10th of October so make sure to save your 40 EUR now because after this period the Afghan City Environment will be 129,95 EUR.
     

     
    Even if you think you won't need the model pack right now it's a "nice have" because even non-artists can evaluate new engines, code or whatever with AAA assets and advanced material setup to have compairsons.
     
     

  2. Michael Betke

    Kabul Street

    By Michael Betke,

    Maybe some of you have seen my work in progress thread for some while now but the final screenshots and work breakdown deserve an own Blog entry in my opinion.
     
    I think the snippet from my company website explains the project quite well:
     
    "The city environment of a sub-urb in Kabul was done for "serious gaming" purposes which simply means a simulation of trained tasks in a save environment - like a flight simulator. Our task was to develop seven buildings with complete additional props setup. The client will add vehicles and people with his simulation editor to fill the environment."
     
    Doing the project was pretty much straight forward. Collecting references, thinking about what buildings would make sense. Extracting textures - mostly for billbaords - from the references. Other textures are from CG-textures which is great source for an artists needs. I also used the decals from there which saved me a lot of time. After doing the assets all stuff has been added into Leadwerks Editor. Last thing was light setup and a small surrounding mountain terrain like Kabul has.
     
    Leadwerks did very well using the project. I get a decent performance around 40-50 fps on maximum details with an 1680px screen resolution. Most work was involved into modeling but Leadwerks handeld the polycount of the city well plus "ADN Shadereditor" was a real timesaver although I have some wishes for improvements in further versions. I'm now looking into new journeys with Pure3d like doing Arch-Viz based realtime work and a CG rendered job for the next months. Most of it is NDA'ed so I will only post some stuff via Twitter. Check the Pure3d Twitter (https://twitter.com/pure3d) channel also to get notice of the Kabul Street video which will be released the next view days.
     
    Enough writing, some screenshots:
     

     

     

     

     

     
    I'm not yet sure if I want to sell the models from this project plus the rural area together in a asset-pack because the last vegetation collection wasn't such a success I was hoping for although a lot of bushes are in which could be used in every project. Maybe I should have used another name or people don't need more vegetation.
  3. Michael Betke
    After more work the project has finally come to an end. It was very interesting to do a 4000x4000 tile 1 project with Leadwerks. Some things are running nicely with LE2.4 others gave me real pain. But Josh gave excellent customer support and reacted very quikly with engine updates to the problems and even improved things like the terrain scultping speed.
     

     
    Most projects will have no problems but placing 2.750.000 vegetation assets plus thousends of models on the landscape will push engines to the limit.
    So I'm very pleased how this project ended from a technical point of view. From an artists point of view I always would like to put more effort into art but you have to think economically too so the artists real showcase are his personal projects most time. Some arch-viz people (what I've read in several interviews) only show personal work on their portfolios or participate at contests to "relax" from the daily work. I wish I would have the time to do it do.
     

     
    Followers of the Blog may have noticed that I only had 4-6 weeks for this project and was starting from scratch.
    Next time I'll work with freelancers again...
     
    Doing things with Leadwerks in such a tight timeframe speaks for the engine and editor in my opinion. You don't just get lost in features or menues but stay focused.
     

     
    Another nice thing for other people is that Josh gets valuable feedback how the editor "feels" in commercial production of big projects and can improve things in Leadwerks 3.0.
     

     
    Finally beside hard work the project was also fun to do. So here are the final screenshots of the 16 square kilometer project.
     

  4. Michael Betke
    Pure3d is happy to release another game-asset pack to the community. It's named "Afghan Vegetation 1.x" and features an all-round package reaching from small ground plants to lots (!)of bushes this time and some trees. All in all there are around 24 models in the collection.
     
    Just check out the catalog here)(.pdf).
     
    Price is again 22,- Euros, game-ready for Leadwerks plus lots of additional file formats.
     

     
     
    Check http://www.pure3d.de for other fine asset packs too!
  5. Michael Betke
    After one more weeek of work the project is progressing nice. More and more models are placed on the combat zone and at least there are 21 vegetation layers now. Maybe all 30 will be used at the end. For such big projects its neccesary to place some props with the vegetation system too. Mostly rubble and rocks.
     

     
    The project seems to push the engine really to it's limit but most things are sorted out or will be solved very soon. It's giving me headaches some time but such large scale projects help the engine developer to track down things which would never be obvious if you just use "coder-art" on a small 128x128 level.
     

     
    While the level grows and grows the deadline is approaching soon and a lot of work needs to be done like placing all roads and polishing things up. Lighting hasn't be done in any way and there is another pass needed on some buildings too.
     

     
    Next time the final project will be presented. So check back on first week of September.
  6. Michael Betke
    Over at Pure3d Visualizations we are working hard on our current project "Lashkar Gah". It will be a 4x4 km² realtime landscape viz for virtual training. Google a bit about "virtual training" to get an idea about that stuff. Basically marines are sitting in front of a computer and train combat - observed by an instructor. We did such solutions before but this time we are allowed to show the work plus even sell some of the assets after finishing the project.
     
    We were given the Afghanistan based city of "Lashkar Gah" located in Helmand province. It's an interesting spot to visualize because of the river and mix of nature. We have stony desert there but also green landscape with trees.
     
    Like in all projects the first step is to assembe the "combat area" out of Google Maps to get the satellite data. the combat area will be center of the map which decreasing detail reaching to the borders. This will give a intense and realistic feeling for the training people. Plus the coders can design missions while the artist works on the outer regions.
     

     
    This image will be the color map in the editor to get the idea where villages, infrastructure and vegetation has to be located.
    Now a lot of time goes into research of the area or similar areas. Afghanistan isn't New York so photos are limited. Especially on certain vegetation.
     

     
    The landscape can be split basically in rural and village like territory.
     

     
    Modeling wise this project could end up costing a million dollars rebuilding this city 1:1 but we have a budget for 15 buildings, one vegetation and one props set. This isn't bad because modularity is the key for such projects. Some buildings could be stuck into each other to get the impression of a long building. We also need plenty of mud walls to seperate the borders. After blocking out some buildings with just cubes as placeholders we decided to make "sectors" which consist of several buildings and wall parts. All those parts can be rotated or placed near each other. So areas are filled up quickly while taking the main-streets in account. The city doensn't need to fit the satellite map 100%.
     

     
    Talking about Leadwerks 2.4 we had to use "infinite" view distance because "far" isn't very far and buildings just pop up on a fly through. The ability to define the area of "farness", maybe between 500-1000 meters would be handy.
    While using "sectors" a feature to make groups would be very helpfully. Just selecting a group out of 12 buildings and walls would be a lot easier as selecting each manually over and over again.
    Otherwise the engine does a great job for now and duplicating hundereds of buildings and walls at once is stable and fast.
     
    At the moment there isn't much to see because modeling and placing the rural buildings consumes most time. For texturing the buildings a mix of vertex painting and decals are used to break up the monotounous tiling of mud on rural areas.
     
    In the next chapter you will read about terrain modifications, texturing and the first vegetation pass and props pass.
     

  7. Michael Betke
    The interactive and playable version of our GDC 2010 Technology Demonstration is available now.
    This version differs a bit from the video version because of it's interactive nature. A video doesn't need to be optimized and game-play doesn't matter too.
    So this version is made more compact and fun to walk around. There are no area restrictions like invisible barriers so everything can be explored.
     
    Furthermore all four game-asset packs can be test-drived before buying too. The "Holodeck" sample levels show off small scenes with our current shop items.
     
    All this is made possible with our brand new visualization application devloped by Leadwerks Corporation based on their cutting-edge technology. Our front-end solution for clients, which usually demand full interactivity, to showcase their visions in an interactive manner. No matter if distributing via WWW or just a demonstration in meetings.
    It's possible to load up several projects within the application, define settings and walk or fly around while presenting or exploring their product. Last but not least everyone will keep the overview with the integrated minimap functionality.
    A manual is also included.
     
    Follow up links:
    Pure3d.de
    GDC 2010 Technology Demo
    Game Asset Preview Application at our Shop
  8. Michael Betke
    Sometimes you need a break from work and do simple other stuff to get fresh in your mind or just relax a bit. While waiting for my new workstation which I exspect next week plus organizing some work, I had the idea for an additional iconset. I'm a fan of coherent icons in a simple look. I also support the trend of dark UI elements which doesn't hurt the eye if you look at them for hours. Plus dark colors give some kind of a frame around your working canvas.
    I never was a big fan of the Leadwerks icons but they do their job and you get used to the generic windows looks very fast. So it's not pretty but effective.

    Unfortunatly all custom colors were locked with the introduction to 2.32. So I would need to do dark icons against the white background. The shot has been taken from 2.31 and has a slightly modified toolbar (.tlb) file. Icons are 32px in size which is a bit larger.
    My intention was to represent the new Leadwerks logo a bit. The grey colors for background, brighter colors for the icons or at least 1px white borders around the icons and a yellowish roll-over effect. For inspiration I took a look at other applications and how they were done.
    Maybe they will make it into Leadwerks at some point. I also have some plans for Entity icons but it's time to move on to new tasks for now.
  9. Michael Betke
    Finally I found some time to convert the four packages to additional formats.
    Now all Vegetation and Environment packs have those formats: .max (2010), .gmf, .3ds, .dae, .fbx (2009), .obj
    I feel comfortable with the formats now and can concentrate on new packs or make the existing packs "game-ready" for other engines.
    But Pure3d also has tons of work to do so it will take a while.
     
    The updates on the formats are free of course and all clients will get a mail within 24h from now on.
  10. Michael Betke

    Photo Safari

    By Michael Betke,

    Today I took a break from the current pure3d game-art job and enjoyed the weekend. But I also took my magic blue carpet and camera with me to make shots for upcoming vegetation sets. A friend at Crytek showed me this photograph technique some time ago (they do it in a more professional manner). I just take a small branch with leaves from the bush/tree place it on my blue carpet and take a picture. Cloudy days are best because you get a nice ambient color without shadows. The middle photo was taken with shadows on and is very bright. For editing it's best to have a neutral color tone. After getting this 4MP pic onto my computer I can select colors and masking. With this source I can either use it to do a mesh for texture rendering in 3ds max or simply do my texture in Photoshop. All of my textures are done this way.
     

     
    So in most cases you won't find the same texture anywhere else and this makes the Pure3d Asset packs unique.
    Speaking of asset packs: From beginning May the packs will be converted to other formats/engines. There's also another Leadwerks project to be done. So stay tuned...
  11. Michael Betke
    After a busy week we are happy to announce the release of our first environment model pack "Rocks and Stones 1.0". It's a huge pack with over 300 MB download size.
    Beside the 21 rocky and stony models I included all baked AO (Ambient Occlusion) textures, Photoshop and 3ds max (2010) files to this pack so it's easy to do new textures based on them.the models themselfs are made with Mudbox and weight around 6 million polygones before baking the normalmap from them.
    All textures got unique 2048px skin mehes which can be downscaled if needed. Get the models from our enviornment shop for only 22,-€ on www.pure3d.de again!
     

     
    Don't miss the cataloge: http://pure3d.de/english-version/pure3d-gameart-division/pdf/Rocks_n_Stones_v1.pdf
    There is a small "Making-Off" located in the forums: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/topic/1575-pure%C2%B3d-game-development-division/page__st__20__gopid__15675entry15675
  12. Michael Betke
    Welcome to the first Pure3d blog here on Leadwerks.
    I decided to do one so everyone can keep track of our projects done with Leadwerks.
    First of all we released the third vegetation game model pack. This time there are 15 different pine models available. Like our previous released packs (Birches and Ground Plants) they are game-ready for Leadwerks and offer source files in 3ds max format too.
     
    The latest .pdf can be viewed here: http://pure3d.de/english-version/pure3d-gameart-division/pdf/Pine_Trees_v1.pdf
     

     
    I also like to mention our support. If something is wrong with a model or you have suggestions for improvements or new content-packs just drop us some lines. We'll put the issue on our list and fix it asap. All other clients will be mailed with the fix too.
    We have still three or four vegetation/environment packs in our pipeline to cover most vegetation art which is needed in a game.
     
    Pure3d is also working on a downloadable tech-demo based on the the GDC 2010 level. It'll be optimized for "walk-througs" and performance of course. The video scene was build for movie creations so other things counted there.
    With the new Leadwerks 2.32 we got room to deliver more effects and visuals because we gained a 67% fps increase on such a big game level scene with the new code!
    Stay tuned for first screenshots and additional blog entries here.
  13. Michael Betke
    People are not only doing games with Leadwerks. A good number of users also do architectural visualizations with it. This is what I also did in 2011 mostly at Pure3d Visualizations. Leadwerks supports me to present real-time experience to my clients with a stand-alone and let them play themselfs with models, placement and enhance decision-making processes with my help. I got a bit derailed by new solutions like Lumion3D which offers good movie-making but lack of other stuff game-engines support since 2006 and makes clients happy but not me who is used to performant brush based editing and vegetation plcement. it seems you can't have all you need in one great tool.
     
    One thing which is also difficult is to find proper 3d models if you need to finish a project quickly. There are a lot of sites around which let you buy high-quality 3d furniture models to do - lets call it the level design - within the project. But what I found out is that I wasn't able to find good low-poly furniture. If I want a bed or plant I only get a bed with 50.000 triangles. It's not that bad because you don't have to populate a vast space with furniture and its okay to push polycounts a bit higher in realtime arch-viz as in game-dev. But the lack of low-poly geometry with a proper material setup plus a nice normalmap can be time-consuming to do.

    So I got the idea to help myself and do a pack of specialized real-time furniture using famous designers as inspiration which can be used in a wide space of engines and even within the shiney new GPU renderer out there (like Octane) which also need optimized geometry and slick material setups to fit into vRam.
    Beside five different model formats I did 2048px textures and a focus on clear naming, good geometry and own Lightmap channels to bake a complete solution just on the fly. But I find it difficult in Leadwerks to offer game-ready material setups when it somes to glass and reflective surfaces.
     
    Should I just put placeholders on it and the let the end-user use his own code for cubemaps or translucent surfaces? What would be best setup to bring those models to Leadwerk users as well? I need you opinions as artists and maybe coders on how to do the most valuable setup.
     
    Get to my shop to see some finished models (not Leadwerks ready at the moment): http://shop.pure3d.de/14-real-time-furniture
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