learning the ropes of skyline :)

[lordalmighty1]

so 1st night after getting skyline engine and I have been toying with it some what all night lol..
this is a what I managed to do after various bits have been learned
the scene is abit empty right now, but I hope to populate it later on tomorrow..



its a very good software from my first impressions of it after a night of using this software and have been surprised with the features so far that I have tested
I can see myself getting right into this engine now for games and with all the features and such to follow which I now cant wait for lol.. this should be a well liked and popular games engine!.

nice work team skyline keep it coming

[SolarPortal]

wow, very nice for first night well done! its very atmostpheric.
Have you tried the auto painting option on the terrain editor. It paints your entire terrain in seconds

Looking forward to seeing what happens next

[lordalmighty1]

yeah I did see an auto paint feature, didn't try it yet though. was to busy having fun hand painting terrain and blending textures

the above is just me testing some models seeing how they import ect. they don't quite match each other but its not a serious map or anything just learning stuff mainly lol.

I did try to put trees from skylines library into the scene but they seem to fall out the sky last night when doing it and testing the scene lmao, user error no doubt!!.

just a quick question is there away to darken the environment?, by changing ambience lvls or something, its night time but still quite visible I would like to darken the general space around player abit you see, so I can add fires and torches ect for light sources?.

[lordalmighty1]

ah I found what I am looking for it was in rendering so no worries

[SolarPortal]

cool, skyline is quite simple once you get used to it
nighttime scenes look better with a slightly blue color as well.

Note: The terrain currently is not multi-light(only works with one light.), but it is due for an upgrade soon and will start supporting it then. It will also get IBL lighting as well.

Q> How would you rate the import procedure?

[lordalmighty1]

its fast to import a lot of models and use them str8 away
though some of the .x models I have wont accept their textures/materials so are just unusable right now but.. I haven't learned everything for this im just winging it so, perhaps its more user error than engine issue which is why I not bug reported this just yet.. also for some reason just now when I tested game in player not editor models show in above screenshot are textureless again, more user error most likely lol but perhaps you can shed some light on this please?.


no lightning in screenshot but it is their rather nicely loving the software.
been dabbling with the rain snow and fire particles systems abit adding light sources for the torches ect.

[SolarPortal]

we are glad you are enjoying skyline.
i have just noticed you haven't upgraded your materials yet either. i put some images up on TattieBoJangles thread showing how to upgrade your materials. It will make them per pixel, rather than per vertex which looks way better with lighting.
Thread: http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=773

For the .x and other similar format .dae, .lwo, .obj all use the Assimp Converter, which is not as good as the FBX conversion inside skyline at the moment. We consider fbx our main asset import routine now.

For the textures not showing in the player, this could be due to resources. The same link as above has some resource tips at the bottom. In the Win32_Release folder, there are several logs that will help in identifying where the problem is.
For the editor: use the "Skyline.log"
For the player: use the "SkylineEXE.log"

Hope this helps

[lordalmighty1]

thanks, I am understanding more each hour
here is a small mess about after adding some alternate textures for terrain painting.

[SolarPortal]

looks very snowy would look even better in a large mountainscape shot
Keep it up!

[lordalmighty1]

yeah it is, I did have a full terrain but I did something wrong somewhere and it crashed the editor I think while importing a texture to terrain paint with. so lost that as I should learn to save more often lol..

I blended the new blue ice and rock texture with your snow to get the above mix.

[SolarPortal]

we have plans to have a drop down on the terrain editor, with some preset textures for different environments, so users can quickly come in and paint any type of terrain for example, islands, forests, snow, deserts, canyons etc...

Tip: you can drag textures onto the terrain paint icons to change them, rather than using the dialog to find them.
this is great when using the asset manager or even windows explorer.

[lordalmighty1]

oh right, will have to try that thanks for the info

[lordalmighty1]

the cobble stones area in front is for a medieval town area which is not placed yet..


this is a higher view of the mountains in the scene as you can see
just something I am working on for fun lol, but will see how far I can take it for screenshots ect

[SolarPortal]

excellent, it good to see you developing again after todays efforts
look forward to seeing the finished level.

Its actually great to see a hand painted terrain. To be honest, we are a bit lazy when it comes to painting terrains, we end using the auto paint feature alot, and seeing as we only get a few moments to play and then back to code, we have to move as quick as pos.

Keep up the great work

[lordalmighty1]

thanks
im sure you will get plenty of time when t he project is closer to finished then you can put us all to shame a..

[StarFire]

We do look forward to the day where we can just mong out to some deep creative Skyline doodling

Translated: We will be happy when we can spend quality time playing with the cool Skyline toolset

btw Nice new image, keep up the good work!

[lordalmighty1]

thanks I will try wot..

here is the startings of the town so far..




not to much to see yet, had a few mistakes and errors happen forcing a restart of the engine ..
silly bones on objects again I think when copying an entity issue..lol
so now im not copying models just selecting them from the asset library over and over lmao.. time comsuming but safer tbh..

[SolarPortal]

Starting to look like a game world.
As for the bones issue. That pm with the updated skyline editor.exe had those fixes , don't worry because the next update will still work. just take a backup of the current exe before overwrite

[StarFire]

coming along nicely

[lordalmighty1]

thanks both yeah it starting to take form abit.

[SolarPortal]

Hint: Since, you are starting to get something that is looking good, remember to make incremental backups:
http://www.chi-ad.com/Skyline/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=817

[lordalmighty1]

yeah just read the forum post on this, also I have about 8 or 9 saves at various stages of the map .

[SolarPortal]

cool We are still in BETA, so there is always the off chance of something breaking.

[lordalmighty1]

am starting to notice a lot of performance drain now, with the ocean being active while adding entities so have turned it off for this purpose and will now only add it back for screenshots ect. is there away to limit the oceans size?, as it stretches out along ways past my terrain borders?.

[SolarPortal]

wow, looking like a town
and aah, as we thought. This is the next performance upgrade for skyline, as everything is currently individual; we can start to static batch all the houses and objects.
We have had similar problems with scenes we have made.

Here are some performance enhances that will happen over the next few month:

• Skyline will use hardware instancing and static batching most objects by default, much like frostbite 3 engine.
  This technique reduces the draw call on the GFX card, by passing more vertexs and material data through in single chunks rather than rendering each thing individually as it is now.
• We have the basics of an occlusion culling system in place like those of umbra 3, which will only show the entities you can see at that moment in time.
• 64 bit, for memory purposes of large scenes.

As for the ocean, it renders as far as the far clipping plane, which can be adjusted in the scene setting panel.
The ocean does have a "complexity" level property that can be lowered in favor of performance, rather than quality.

Q> What sort of frames are you running at now.
Press the clock symbol on the main toobar to activate metrics, which displays FPS.