Torque 3D Development - River & Road Editors
by Brett Seyler · 04/24/2009 (12:56 am) · 124 comments
It's been more than two weeks since the last Torque 3D blog, and I know you guys are antsy to get some hands on time with the Torque 3D beta. We had planned that for this week and we're QA'ing a build over the weekend that may be good to go next week, but I didn't want to wait until then to get you guys some more Torque 3D goodness. I'm sorry I've kept you waiting this long... Okay then, on that note, let's introduce Lara!
Lara's Bio
"I co-founded Prairie Games in 2004 and shipped Minions of Mirth the following year. At Prairie Games, I designed, produced, handled PR/Marketing, ran the office and did whatever else needed doing. In June of this year, I began working at GarageGames. I'm anxiously awaiting the spring release of Gauntlet for the DS. I love buffalo and Buffy the Vampire Slayer!"
"I'm currently working on a series of video tutorials for Torque 3D. The first of this series focuses on the new River and Road Editors. Next I'll be working on tutorials for the Material Editor, and Live Asset Updates."
If you've been watching the GarageGames Vimeo channel, you've probably noticed the fantastic work Lara Engebretson has done to create high quality video tutorials to demonstrate Terrain Editing, using the Collada Loader, and Creating Objects in Torque. Lara's now turning her attention to Torque 3D, and even thought we don't have a beta out yet, we do have two great tutorials to share for using the new River and Road Editors available with the Professional license.
Let's have a look!
The next time I blog, I will be pointing all of you Torque 3D owners to a BETA DOWNLOAD!
More development blogs to come. This is post #17.
Torque 3D development blogs:
- Post #1 - Kickoff
- Post #2 - Apparatus and Warrior Camp
- Post #3 - Luma's racing kit
- Post #4 - Josh Engebretson and Web Publishing
- Post #5 - Pricing and Licensing
- Post #6 - Pricing and Licensing CONTINUED
- Post #7 - Wetness & Precipitation
- Post #8 - Screeen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Post #9 - Matt Langley and the Torque Launcher
- Post #10 - Chris Robertson and Collada
- Post #11 - Depth of Field
- Post #12 - Advanced Lighting
- Post #13 - Soft Particles
- Post #14 - World Editor
- Post #15 - Pricing and Licensing ANNOUNCED!
- Post #16 - GDC Live Edition
- Post #17 - River & Road Editors
- Post #18 - Beta is UP!
- Post #19 - Light Rays, Undercity, Material Editor
- Post #20 - Mass Market Hardware
- Post #21 - Beta: Part Deux
- Post #22 - Marching Towards Beta 3
- Post #23 - pureLIGHT
- Post #24 - Lighting, Terrain, and Cloth
- Post #25 - Beta 3!
- Post #26 - Coming Soon!
About the author
Since 2007, I've done my best to steer Torque's development and brand toward the best opportunities in games middleware.
#22
Beats me why the videos are still packed with non-standard stuff though (forest pack), anyways -it's cool stuff!
04/24/2009 (5:53 am)
very nice videos, the River Editor one finally answered my questions about the riwers 'block & behaviour'.Beats me why the videos are still packed with non-standard stuff though (forest pack), anyways -it's cool stuff!
#23
04/24/2009 (5:54 am)
The river tool is impressive, but the fact it knows when water doesn't extend far enough in any direction is very impressive. 
#24
04/24/2009 (5:56 am)
what if you have a river branch? 
#25
Based on what I saw in the video, and assuming there isn't something in the editor to account for it, I would think that for that you'd want to just place your node in the middle of the river's junction and widen that node to cover the entire junction. After that you could start a new river where the branch is.
Now I'm going to have to try that when I get T3D to see how it looks.
04/24/2009 (6:04 am)
@AssociaBased on what I saw in the video, and assuming there isn't something in the editor to account for it, I would think that for that you'd want to just place your node in the middle of the river's junction and widen that node to cover the entire junction. After that you could start a new river where the branch is.
Now I'm going to have to try that when I get T3D to see how it looks.
#26
Nice vids, nice to see it all looks user friendly and ergonomic.
Also, Lara's voice should be on an spaceship computer when it's time to suggest bailing out of your burning X-wing!
04/24/2009 (6:10 am)
Ah, river has a z axis, so technically, you could have a river flowing above you ... adds fiendish plot to level design.Nice vids, nice to see it all looks user friendly and ergonomic.
Also, Lara's voice should be on an spaceship computer when it's time to suggest bailing out of your burning X-wing!
#27
04/24/2009 (6:16 am)
Awesome tutorials! 
#28
Great videos - it's good to see how we'll be able to use all this nice functionality.
04/24/2009 (8:23 am)
Quote:Ah, river has a z axis, so technically, you could have a river flowing above you ... adds fiendish plot to level design.Can you say Thief? :D
Great videos - it's good to see how we'll be able to use all this nice functionality.
#29
04/24/2009 (8:47 am)
Great Job guys. Excellent addition to the tool set and very intuitive. 
#31
04/24/2009 (9:09 am)
Excellent work, Lara. You certainly have a a gift for this kind of thing. 
#32
04/24/2009 (9:22 am)
These videos are beautifully done! 
#33
04/24/2009 (9:28 am)
Can someone at GG (if it hasn't been done yet) run the south pacific demo on a standard computer.. 8000 - 9000 series Nvidia Graphics card and tell what fps they get? 
#35
04/24/2009 (9:51 am)
@Andrew Brady: Right now we are working on the first beta getting out, there have been some performance improvements but there is a lot of work still yet to do (as there typically is when entering a first beta). A lot of us do primary dev on laptops. Matt F. and I dev on the exact same model of laptop with a Ge-force 8600M GT so you can rest assured that we aren't ignorant to running on machines with that series of video cards. Like I said we still have some work to do with performance, but that's typically one of the big purposes of beta, to improve things like that :)
#36
That's very much reassuring Matthew. Just tryin to guage things and plan for the future.
04/24/2009 (10:36 am)
Quote:att F. and I dev on the exact same model of laptop with a Ge-force 8600M GT so you can...
That's very much reassuring Matthew. Just tryin to guage things and plan for the future.
#37
Holy.. almost wet my pants of excitement when i saw that :)
Excellent video's, good high quality as we like it ;), now i have something new to watch 2-300 times :P
04/24/2009 (11:15 am)
The next time I blog, I will be pointing all of you Torque 3D owners to a BETA DOWNLOAD!Holy.. almost wet my pants of excitement when i saw that :)
Excellent video's, good high quality as we like it ;), now i have something new to watch 2-300 times :P
#38
04/24/2009 (11:47 am)
Very impressive. Great work everyone. Anxiously awaiting! 
#40
04/24/2009 (1:09 pm)
Lara's made of awesome. Truly. Josh sure married up! :)
Torque Owner Brian "Cybore" Smith
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