Hey 3dgs community!

Long time no see. It's been a good 4 or 5 years since i left 3dgs to pursue other ventures and other engines. Ive been through UDK, Unity, Leadwerks(great engine!) and now ive found a new home... Torque 3D(amazing). Just thought i'd stop in and show you guys what im up to . just a few screens from in the editor .

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w172/boberic/?action=view&current=screen6.jpg

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w172/boberic/?action=view&current=screen5.jpg

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w172/boberic/?action=view&current=screen4-1.jpg

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w172/boberic/?action=view&current=screen3-1.jpg

http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w172/boberic/?action=view&current=screen2-1.jpg

hope you enjoy

ummmm.... err... yeah, wrong forum buddy.

Why is this here?

Hi not_me,

you can easyly see - nothing has changed here (with the community, the developer (jcl) and with the engine) - nice pics.
maybe you can write a bit more detailed about Torque 3D - to give us a chance to compare and learn...

mercuryus

torque(not the old torque game engine advanced) is actually pretty powerful and has alot of realy cool features built right in. their lighting system is very in depth(with source code ofcourse) they have a few tools they call editors that are built into the world editor. Things like a road, river, path, particle, and forest editor. The workflow and graphics pipeline are so effortless it will BLOW YOUR MIND! unless your mind has been blown by some foxy woman in a red dress....in which case it will DECIMATE YOUR SKULL!

its templates serve to be a good basis to build up from. I remember in 3dgs the templates were cool...but not enough to make a game that was passable in the market.

The engine runs off of PhysX, and has some other plugins you can buy. Like Verve(not quite sure what it is but i know it has to do with cutscenes o_O?) and PureLight(awesome plugin, used it with Leadwerks)-for advanced light and shadow rendering/baking. it kinda replicates what unreal engine 3 does...combination of baked and realtime lighting to get the best light possible(except unreal takes forever to build on a single pc).

its not a suite like 3dgs so youll have to fend for yourself when it comes to model editors...but i think we all have our niche. mines cinema 4d. but as a perk getting your models into the engine is EXTREMELY effortless. just export as either .dae or.dts and make sure its saved in the folder/subfolders for your models and its in the engine instantly. It has an inhouse material editor thats not as extensive as say unreal or the mat editor in 3ds max, BUT it has support for alot of materials that can be made in 3ds max and c4d. so if you make it there and then import chances are the material will stick .

its got alot of cool widgets that you can just throw into the world...scatter sky(a mix of sun/clouds). a time controller for day and night - no more scratching our heads to make a day/night system. percipitation system. river/water editor that lets you manage the width of the water volume the depth and even the viscosity !

all-in-all...its amazing. im having a blast...and every now and then when i need something i look back into my old 3dgs folder and grab a few things...heck what brought me here was a model pack i'd seen a while back. A pack of cliffs. Wanted to use it in my current project...but cant seem to find it oh well

-cheers

what about the scripting programming side of the engine? i have both source and binary licenses of torque3d but i could not seem to find good docs for starting from ground up without using templates.

Well it's tool thread ! You should have named your post Torque3D i think.

Well Torque 3D is known for it's bugs and not easy C++ programming side.
I've seen a tutorial on 3D box collision detection in 3D space
by a ray cast, very complicated maths and big program :
I thought ok doing your own C++ is complicated and i hate complicated C++ environment to make simple things !

Well ...
-Is Scripting allowing to do anything as A8 allow ???
-What format can be imported for animated models for indie people that can't afford such high price thing like 3DSMAX ? (Blender, FBX, Collada ?)
-How to do or import easily a lightmap ? from what modeler ? Blender ?
-What is the lightening, does it have standard shaders and how do they interact with lightening of the scene ?

Well i would want to say, juts make some playable demo with
some GUI, PNC animated character, some duplicated ennemie
and shaders and tell us if it was easy or complicated !

Bring on a demo for us !

hmm good questions.

well as far as its scripting side i found every drop of source code almost immediately. when you open the torque toolbox there is a button that says "edit source"...or aside from that you can use torsion. when you click it it prompts you for visual studio 2005 or 2008 and then BAM ! all the source your heart can desire!

as far as documentation for the source...you might be on your own for that...i havent found any as well...BUT theres plenty of help and a realy responsive community(on par with 3dgs).

"-Is Scripting allowing to do anything as A8 allow laugh ???" - not sure...havent played with A8... but since it is a c++ based engine id assume everything and more :D(and torque script is pretty versatile).

"What format can be imported for animated models for indie people that can't afford such high price thing like 3DSMAX ? (Blender, FBX, Collada ?) " - it accepts collada and ive heard talk that it accepts blender(?) but dont quote me on it...no fbx though ...sad day.

"How to do or import easily a lightmap ? from what modeler ? Blender ? " hmm a lightmap? why would you want to ? lol just kidding. in the material editor there is a specific place for light maps. so a lightmap can be applied to a specific material . but for the most part the engine produsses realtime PSSM shadows...even for foliage(takes alittle extra tinkering).

"What is the lightening, does it have standard shaders and how do they interact with lightening of the scene ? " - standard shaders and more. SSAO, HDR, edge AA, Light Rays, and DoF(+other pp effects) are all standard and can be turned on from the beginning. everything interacts with the scene dynamicly and in real time. no shadows have to be baked ahead of time, but ofcourse you can do so ...and lights are updated automatically.

oh and you mentioned GUI...it has its own gui editor built in. its pretty nifty.and im working on a demo with all the things youve mentioned and its...i wont say way easy...but it is easy. lets put it this way. with 3dgs it would take atleast hmmm...2 times as long to finish what i have so far and get it to look the way it does.

-cheers

and keep the questions coming ill answer until i run out of answers

Well i'm not programmer oriented so i think i will not be interested as you on the source part of the engine.

For me importing easily 3D animated models without problems is one of the main things i consider on a 3D engine.
And I don't know but making all realtime can be very consuming
compared to detailled Lightmaps.
Well it's just my point of view.

What i think is that the main point that can make someone use Torque 3D is it's solid and powerfull multiplayer code
to make solid multiplayer games.


For my part i'm planning ot buy some Shiva license for all
it's mobile offer (publishing on Iphone, Android etc ...)

Well try to finish a little demo and tell us what was great
and what was problematic on programming or workflow !!

as far as shadows go...they are exclusive to each model. just like in 3dgs you can tell certain models not to cast shadows and use your shadow map instead...or do both. and i cant wait to finish up my demo and let you guys sink your teeth into it.

Wasn't the engine abandoned in November or something like that? Or did they find a new developer?

Yes, they also pulled price of the full source version from $1000 to $100 as their comeback. I guess the offer is still valid

I always wonder, why people dont make stress tests especially with bigger world and more textures. In that case the review of T3D would look a bit different.

First of all I also like their scripting language and I like their tools. DTS is easy to create and very powerful. The terrain system is great also.

But when you try to create some bigger worlds you will miss some serious scene management. The portal and zones system is buggy and does not work in T3D currently. They are aware of it though. Also the advanced lighting system is quite slow compared to similar renderers. And the pureLight integration is weak. You cannot render directional lightmaps, so you cant combine lightmaps with shaders in a smart way. Also there are no light cells or similar volumes to influence dynamic moving objects by the pre-calculated lightmaps.

So in the end everything is a bit weak implemented. Dont take me wrong, it is a great engine when you want to make a small game. But this applies to 3dgs also. For something bigger than a single room you need to look to alternatives like C4, UDK, Unity or Vision3d. While the last one has most performance it is also the most expensive. But all of them can handle bigger worlds better.