I have been trying to figure out a system for making trees that will work. I wanted a skinny, branchy sapling looking thing, such as you find in a shopping mall planter. This seems to do the job.
I have modeled this strange tree thing. It is from another shopping mall I have once flown, but I kind of liked it.
I tried this level out in Godot. It was really bad. It looks fine in Unreal Engine, but I am trying to avoid using Unreal Engine. I am trying to keep fully open source. As such I have been trying to get o3de engine working. That engine is not faring too well thus far though, even with the great help I am getting from other o3de devs. It gives me a real trepidation for the whole open source thing for making a successful sim.
You might want to give the dev. builds of version 4 a shot. There are a few things not working well yet, but it is more than stable enough now to make walkthroughs with the help of the SFDGI and the improved sky shader. Current builds also have a new tonemapper that is identical to Unreal’s.
Thanks for the comment. I looked into it. My take on it was something like this. Godot. The engine is a compromise, built from the ground-up as a 2d-first system. It is completely untested for 3d. There is not a single high quality 3d game level in Godot that I can find. Everyone is showing off the tech in isolated and tiny scale examples. The devs have a probably good attitude of essentially ignoring the community (probably good for their sanity) and the community is totally useless when it comes to addressing 3d issues. Great community for code related questions or 2d related questions. I sought assistance on both the forum, the facebook group, and on discord. Nothing.
o3de is not even in alpha, and has to be built from binaries. But it is essentially a Crytek engine with multiple published games on it and a proven 3d legacy. The o3de community helped me build the engine going step by step with me on discord. I guess the advantage of a smaller community.
If I see an uptick in Godot’s 3d action and an uptick in quality from it, I might revisit it in the future, but as it currently stands it is wholly unsuitable for a larger outdoor urban level design that is not cartoon style. I do really hope I am wrong, but I cannot see Godot making headway over their competition in the 3d sphere. Very few of us actually want to make a wholly open source project, so most 3d guys will opt for Unreal or Unity. I don’t know if o3de will survive, but it might fare better than Godot 3d. But we will see. I shouldn’t complain. We are so lucky to have all these wonderful options, and I do hope for the best for Godot.
Hi, I am sure that the people working on the new engine appreciate your willingness to test-drive it, good luck.
Just to note though, the idea that Godot is some meme engine for very small scale demos is a myth. If you look at the videos on this channel, you will find that the year over year advancement of the engine is actually superior to Blender (that being a comparison to how Blender was doing at its age as a FOSS project, not version 2.80 and beyond).
I agree that Godot is not a “meme engine”. It is doing great for it’s age, and It rightly deserved the Mega-Grant it got.
I was actually around when Blender was that young, and yea, it was terrible. I was using 3dsMax 7 back then, before Autodesk bought it. Blender today is a beast, but still not without it’s quirks.
Software takes time to mature, and not all software goes as planned. I have seen any number of the videos you have linked to. They all share one thing in common: An art style that is targeted at not exceeding the very limited rendering capabilities of Godot Engine, cartoony style, low levels of detail, hard line shadows etc. While that is fine for those looking for that, it is totally not my style.
Software also tends to fall victim to their own users. A software that has a large userbase doing 2d or stylized 3d, and very few users trying to do the more traditional type of 3d with more realism might have a hard time staying on track against the louder wants and needs of their existing users.
For me, personally I hate cartoony stuff. I never play 2d or cartoony kinds of games. I don’t watch anime. The whole aesthetic is not at all for me. But I totally get it that in this I am unusual.
