Monday, November 11, 2013

I'm a Material Boy

Sorry for the lengthy period with no tool show off. Blogging confident takes time :P

Here's the HPL Material Editor, our newest addition to the tool suite. This is what we use to create, edit and preview supplies with. In a nutshell, a material is what is gonna figure out how an object is going to look like in the engine. As of now, we have three basic varieties of supplies:
- SolidDiffuse, which we use to model solid surfaces. Take a bit of a bump map, and an additional bit of a heightmap and you will have a far more than convincing rock like material for example :)
- Translucent, to create a "glass like" appear - Windows, ice... transparent stuff falls in this material sort.
- Water, the most bleeding edge function in the engine correct now, utilized to simulate "liquid objects". Just like water in Penumbra, but now with a lot more Reflection(tm).

Of course, it would not be a HPL2 tool if it hadn't a realtime preview window, which is what genuinely tends to make the tool worth it. In the excellent old Penumbra days, 1 would have to edit the material making use of the HPLHelper app, but then testing how the material looked meant possessing to commence an independent viewer system, a bit of a discomfort if you ask me. The preview window characteristics cubemapped and flat colored background, diverse preview models (ie cube, cylinder, sphere and plane), and lighting with customizable colors.

And final, but not least, here's a tiny video showing the Material Editor in action, in standalone mode (yeah it is also integrated in the other editors)



By the way, that "blackness" artifact at the edges of the water plane are brought on by the present preview window setup. Looks like I am gonna need to have to repair that... :P

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