[InfinityPBR.com] Mystery Package Preview....

This is very much a work in progress. I'll release more info as I go along, but since it's currently being built, and anything can change at any time, I don't want to over promise too much.

Subscribe to this thread to stay up to date!

 

Yay mystery package!

 

PBR Water Retrieval Pack incoming!

 

Does the well come with a PBR Timmy complete with falling animation?

 

I suppose the Mummy could be Timmy if Anubis is the dog?

 

So the mystery pack is... a town building pack‽

 

A paintball course?

 

Haha well... I mean, that could be cool. Procedurally generated paintball splatters?

 

Looks pretty cool, my guess is a medieval town construction kit.

Have thought of having paypal in your site ? (My card would get automatically rejected).

 

I actually tried paypal before stripe and ran into other issues with it. (Aside from my personal distaste of paypal, as they once locked my account with $4500 in it for 5 years before randomly one day just unlocking it for no apparent reason)

 

Paypal is a bully for sure - I've had similar issues with them. I use them now for my occasional eBay sale and that's it. I would never use them for anything where a business was in place.

 

Slide between "New" and "Old".

 

Textures are looking great. I would love (LOVE) to see some curvature on structures, like georgian arches on the doors and windows, corbels, and cornices.

 

Are you at liberty to discuss whether this is exteriors only or exteriors and interiors? Interior walls are easily faked by just flipping around outer walls so I'm not worried about that, but stuff like roof beams and some props are more with what I'm curious about.

 

It wouldn't be a mystery if I told you too much!

But I can say this, breaking it all: Yes, eventually, but not at the start. It'll be exteriors, and an interior add-on to follow if all goes well. Due to the cost of production, I'm trying to be very very specific about what I have made and how. Right now I'm focusing on the buildings, but ensuring that the actual modeling is high quality and modern -- you may notice the corners of the buildings are nicely curved, rather than straight boxes with smoothing groups.

Once we get this round of building stuff done -- which is close, I think -- we will do a 2nd round to flesh them out, adding things like lanterns. Then we'll do a 3rd round with more general things for the environment, at which point I should be able to release it, and add more later, hopefully will input from the community.

While there will likely only be two door types at the start, eventually there will be more. The holes allow for frames and then doors, so I can easily have a 2nd frame type created, which would support different door shapes. Same with windows.

There will be some mesh morphing possible as well, less on the structures. The well has a lot available. The goal is to allow for slight variations when possible and larger deliberate ones when its needed for any particular project. Textures you see are all custom created. It'll work with other pre-made textures like the Dungeon pack currently does, but will feature unique custom things I'm making by default.

There are plenty of reference photos i"ve been using, but this one is my main image. Everything is a 4x4 grid with 6x6 (And 4x6 etc) options.

 

Wow, I really like the art style of this

 

Same here. Mesh morphing could be very interesting for architecture - warping on a roof, cracked or broken beams and supports, damaged archways...

The reference image is absolutely awesome.

 

Cracking etc is a bit more problematic -- UV maps are much more difficult to do when there is all the extra faces that would include. However, I do try to include a lot of "Damage" in the normal map of the textures, so that may help. At some point I would also love to produce specifically "damaged" buildings etc. But that would be much further down the line.

 

I imagine you could do some similar things to the gelatinous cube where you can bow in the sides for a more cartoony look. God knows that style is popular. I'm really excited for the possibility of making subtle changes to window and door arches. I'm also jazzed about seeing the Dungeon Pack get a similar treatment. This is a use for this technology that we have never seen before, so I don't even want to limit the possibilities by suggesting.

The great thing about mesh morphing a static structure is that you don't have to be mindful of the constraints of the bones, just the uv maps.

 

That's why I tried to narrow it down so you could vaguely say maybe I totally get that it is much safer for you to do one set first and then expand on it if it is financially worth it, and like everyone above I'm interested to see how the mesh morphing works too. Mesh morphing I think will be what makes your packages stand out from the rest (well, in addition to the crazy material customization you offer.)

 

Totally. There are other PBR creatures out there, many quite good, but mesh morphing is very special. Especially done at spawn time with some constraints. These little things are what make good games great.

 

Have you thought of partnering up with GeNa developer Adam Goodrich? Seems like a perfect fit. I'll bet you could both show off some really cool features with GeNa randomizing blend shapes and smartly placing props in scenes.

 

I haven't checked out GeNa, but now I need to. I've spent HOURS now literally just scripting the blendshapes from gelatinous cubes to perform runtime "animations". The first one was my "Melty Gel" that is always fully melted whenever the player isn't nearby. It starts that way, and is almost entirely clear, so you can accidentally just run up on it before it congeals and attacks. After that I started working on some mixtures of blendshape mods and transform changes so that a cube could kind of ooze out of a pipe, plop on the ground, then congeal into it's normal self. That got shelved temporarily because I'm trying to do some interesting scripted blendshape stuff when a gel cube gets hit with different types of attacks.

Really, @sfbaystudios packages are awesome, and they've saved me tons of money on custom assets, but now they are costing me hours and hours (and hours (and hours)) of time playing with options and making them do new things. I'll just add a year to my dev schedule...

 

Have you started using the latest update? It's got more blend shapes -- not a lot more, but some options. The Cube has better options that the sphere, which really only has one option to make it fat or skinny. But the cube has some interesting things going on with it.

 

Oh that I have. At first I thought I'd broke my script because there were suddenly these six extra blendshapes in the editor. Actually, at first I didn't even see that because it was minimized, but my array of blendshapes wasn't the size I expected, lol.

I DO have a question, though, speaking of that. When I pull in the blend shapes, I was making them friendly by parsing only the end of the string, so the code was like: rend.SetBlendShapeWeight(blendShapeObjects["MELT"], meltiness);

Now, the shortest of the new ones is 11 characters (if I scrape off everything prior to the last underscore). I get having SFB_ prefixes on stuff, but sometimes they're a real pain

Any chance in the future, you could use shorter blendshape names? I mean, I can work around it, but... it sure would be nice. Renaming them also is a bit kludgy because if I ever need to get the raw value from the skinned mesh, I have to remember what it's actually called.

 

I try to use the human readable names so that it's easier to manage large sets. The Devil, for instance, has 350+ shapes. Many are "matched" shapes. Heres the naming convention I use:

SFB_BS_[PrimaryName][Plus|Minus]
SFB_BSM_[MatchName]_[PrimaryName][Plus|Minus]

The first part, "SFB" just keeps things unique and specific.

Next, "BS" stands for "Blend Shape" and "BSM" is "Blend Shape Match". The "BS" shapes will be visible in my inspector script. The BSM shapes will be linked.

The third section on the BS is the Primary Name & an optional Plus & Minus. Note that if there is a Plus version, there must be a Minus version. If the shape only goes one direction, then it should include neither Plus nor Minus.

For Match shapes, the 3rd section is actually ignored, but we name it to keep things readable. The script will match it with the "[PrimaryName][Plus|Minus]", if there is one.

However, this is only for the shapes we want to be user defined. Animations often have other blend shapes, and those have different names, but by default any animation you run will override any changes you make (unless you're scripting it in a way that removes that?)

 

Hmmm, the blendshapes don't seem to show up/look the same on the devils as they do on the gelcubes (in the editor).

 

Make sure you have the most up to date "SFB_BlendShapes" scripts (two of them -- one is the editor variant). I've changed them multiple times, and if you've got different projects, perhaps they have different versions? (Copy the new one over the old one in your desktop, and Unity won't have any issues updating it, and you won't have to re-link anything)

Or, if that's not it, can you share a screenshot?

 

Oh, actually... the issue is that they are just missing. I just went through to make sure I had imported the latest version (I downloaded it from the site on 11/16). There are only blendshapes listed for the heads (snarl, frown, blink). The tail, body, horns don't have blendshapes listed in the skinned mesh renderer. I'm re-downloading the package entirely - seems excessive, but maybe there's an issue there somehow.

Edit: As a side note, this is a brand new project, created just a couple of hours ago, with only the devils pack imported.

 

OK, so... it looks like pulling a new download fixed it right up. There's a ton of them. But just to make sure it's all good - there aren't blendshapes on the Devil_Body_Combined_Devil_Body skinned mesh?

Edit: Nope, the skinned mesh renderer was missing the mesh object. When I attached it manually, things went... well let's just say these meshes would've worked excellent for a horror movie, so long as biology and movement weren't necessary. I scrapped it all and reimported the entire refreshed package from scratch. So far so good.

 

Unity -- I've found this out from working w/ the Animator in the past -- sometimes will not delete everything when you delete stuff, and will not update everything when you update to new versions of things. It's really a shame.

I'd like to one day get to the point where I can wait to publish a character for the blend shapes to be done.. I may get there soon, but as of now, not yet . That'd avoid this issue of having to update and perhaps finding things not going as smooth.

I've spoken with the Collaborate team, and they like the idea of having the asset store be some sort of similar system, where instead of downloading a single package, you sort of subscribe to the main files that I control. So when I update one file, you can update only that one file. And hopefully all my shared files, like the blend shapes, would be constantly the most recent.

We'll see what happens...nothing soon, I'm sure. But it's a nice idea.

 

I was wrong...



No bodies... and when I DO add the mesh:



I'm fairly certain this isn't the correct geometry...

 

Hmm. Thats 5.5.x right? Based not he outlines. I'm loading it into a 5.5.0f2 project, a new one, and I'll see if I can make the same thing happen. I'll reply, though, on the Devils thread: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/i...oncept-art-customzation-mesh-morphing.433158/

 

Is this asset going to have the same/similar workflow of the dungeon one ?
Will they compliment each other ?

Also +10 to the georgian arches idea.

Any ETA ?

 

This is currently my #1 priority. Everything else is still going forward, as they're being worked on by different artists, but I'm very eager to release this package, to complete it to a point where I can release it, and add to it from there.

After, the Dungeon+ Pack will get a complete overhaul. Much of the way we're doing the modeling here is better than the current Dungeon package. It doesn't make sense to me to simply start adding higher quality models, when the basic primitives aren't as high quality as they could be. We'd be adding blend shapes to the dungeon as well -- so things like stone floor borders, pillars etc would have some variety to them.

There is also a "Caves+" pack I'm working on, although that's not getting as much attention as this, and then the Dungeon.

 

I LOVE the caves pack idea, though I do have a thought on it. The sample art you put in that thread was sweet, but it would be cool to also just have seamless "cavern" walls without the top (at least for my game lol), and the option of the cave top for first-person stuff.

But it looks like I'm getting one of everything eventually, so just keep on keepin' on.

 

Top down is important -- my first game was top down and I had to hire someone to cut the tops off of the caves from Manufactura4k for it.

Most likely it'll be 1st person to start, with a top down variant after.

 

Random stuff, random ideas, a new texture or two and a giant tree. My first tree. It's based...not off of anything in this world.

 

...and of course each individual piece is modular (this is actually two of the lower stair groups back to back), so it's completely customizable -- remove some planks to make players jump, or to make it impassible. Create catwalks, raised platforms, use the beams over muddy ground, or create fences....

 

Do you happen to have anything to show regarding mesh morphing? I'm so anxious to see what's possible!

 

Not quite yet. There may be less than you'd like, as most things won't have it. The door/window frames have it, for depth, but most things don't make too much sense, esp since a lot of the texturing, like for the walls, isn't through the mesh.

The well has a lot of it, and some of the props will have options for sizing. There will be a wooden sign board, kind of put together with three planks, which will have a width, height & "pointless" shapes, for instance.

There will be a chimney with similar blend shapes to the well, made of stone specifically, so we can have that option, the ability to keep it somewhat smooth/new or to disorder the stones a bit.

The wood pieces above will have options for length/depth, but that's not much different from basic scaling. I think. Maybe they'll e a bit more non-uniform.

I'm just starting for the trees/bushes, and the whole speed tree system is new to me. I'm making my own custom procedural textures for it, and if all goes as planned I *should* be able to have a sort of "Growing" leaf system, where a procedural material can be used (made for run time) on the trees so that the leaves can grow over time, for calendar systems, and change color slowly, or even disappear one by one. This is all very much new and I'm not sure how to accomplish all of it yet...but hopefully it'll work out! I do plan on having very very nice looking trees and bushes, as I think that'll be a huge help to making the whole pack look great.

And, if I can figure it out, vines and other things that cover the buildings.

Andrew

 

Yeah, unevenness and points, and, to a lesser degree, scaling are exactly the kind of utility I would imagine to be possible with blend shapes for static objects. I know it can be tricky if you want to make things modular allowing un-modular mesh distortion.

 

Yep, you can't really change the grid. We have 5 planks to begin with, so that *should* be plenty for any level, but hopefully the shapes will, for those, make them a bit more old looking, so combined with old wood vs. new wood texture, would increase the value.

 

Are you planning on doing anything Viking/darkage at all, I'm asumming they will look a lot more old and weather warn when finished hopfully with interiors, comming form game such as the Elder Scrolls series I need to beable to enter place's lol. Sadly there not a lot of assets of that style or area