FXGen Implementation

by Julius on 09/13/2007 19:56, 28 messages, last message: 11/02/2007 06:17, 11159 views, last view: 05/05/2024 03:23

http://www.fxgen.org/

FXGen is a open-source procedural texture generation tool & library, and their main coder would be interested in implemeting it into Sauerbraten if there was a artist/mapper interested in creating a demonstration map:
http://www.fxgen.org/node/67
(see last post).

I am a bit swamped with work right now (and my Sauerbraten mapping skills are rather bad), but there is probably someone with great mapping skills who would be interested, right?

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#9: Re: ..

by Drakas on 09/14/2007 08:32, refers to #3

o_O

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#10: Re: ..

by Johann Nadalutti on 09/14/2007 09:11, refers to #8

Yes, the editor is not cross-platform for the moment, I work on it in order to have an opengl GUI.
But FxGen Library is cross-platform and we work on GCC compiler adaptation.
Artists could work with the current windows only editor to produce textures files and we could use it in sauerbraten engine with fxgen v0.5 library integration.
That help us to grow fxgen a lot mature.

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#11: ..

by geartrooper^2 on 09/14/2007 14:05

holy crap dude. this would rock.

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#12: Re: ..

by a baby rabbit on 09/14/2007 15:26, refers to #11

Hmmm... cant find any docs on the website, lol. If it outputs the whole package - height map, normal map, and color map then the idea is interesting. Sadly, not being crossplatform kills it for me...

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#13: Re: ..

by shadow,516 on 09/14/2007 15:28, refers to #10

at the end of the day, nobody is going to learn a new program just to make textures for sauer. They don't pay us enough for that.

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#14: Re: ..

by a baby rabbit on 09/14/2007 16:00, refers to #13

Well, if the fxGen folk did a quick mod to patch their library into the texture load. Then donated a whole heap of free textures, and showed us the results, then opinions might change?

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#15: ..

by Julius on 09/14/2007 17:09

Yeah, that is the basic idea: Have colormap, normalmap etc easily from one source file. It needs a bit of tweaking though and it is not a "make art button" :)

And once there is a considerable base of texture source files it will be much easier to learn since you can just open one file and manipulate only certain step or combing a few thus creating new textures (which is not possible with normal pictures).

But I doubt the "fxgen folks" really have the rescources to do it all themselves so that you can just reap the benefits. Some colaboration and combined efford to get this up and running will be needed.

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#16: ..

by Julius on 09/14/2007 17:15

oh and here is a quick "getting started" tutorial:
http://www.fxgen.org/node/64

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#17: ..

by Julius on 09/14/2007 17:22

For those further interested in this topic:
http://www.werkkzeug.com/examples/texture_gallery

Werkkzeug is a commercial program very similar to FxGen and it shows of what is possible with such tools.
But FXGen is not quite at the same level yet :p

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#18: Re: ..

by shadow516(isatschool) on 09/14/2007 18:59, refers to #17

I've used werkkzeug 2.0 before, it's quite a nice tool, and so is ProFX. Unfortunately, each one has a different work flow, and each has to be learned from scratch.

The major downside, I think, for procedural textures, is that they have to be either generated on map load (takes a LONG time) or hires versions have to be generated at install (initially takes a long time, and takes up just as much HDD space as regular textures anyways)

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#19: ..

by Alex Trujillo on 09/14/2007 20:47

Shadow516 has a good point, and I'm curious as to see what Johann and the Sauerbrauten team work up in order to solve that problem. I think the ideal solution that Johann wants, however, is to do this in relative real-time, as the editor is real-time. Perhaps it could be done with a separate core, who knows.

At any rate, the biggest problem I foresee-- and this may not be a large problem for levels-- would be how to 'knit' the textures together so they flow over the model correctly. For now, FxGen creates only one texture in its output, and AFAIK, it doesn't have the ability yet to piece them together. But, now that I think more about it, we do have layers, and if we could import other texture files into another... And we've got a few VERY creative artists... And UV maps could do the rest.

However, we don't have to tackle all textures at once, as we'd just replace old textures with procedural ones as soon as we have the ability to.

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#20: ..

by Julius on 09/15/2007 00:10

I don't see the problem with them beeing created once and then stored on the HD.
IMHO the small filesize is very nice for downloads, but isn't really needed on the HD, and besides the real benefits of procedural textures are not (only) the small file sizes.

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#21: the issue

by Aardappel_ on 09/15/2007 01:33

This is neat tech... and certainly something that would be cool for sauer, if it can be made to fit right.

The main issue I see when I browse the sample textures is that you're not going to make a pretty map with this, because the textures do not form a "set". If you look at some of the best texture sets that come with sauer, the reason they make maps pretty is because they all fit together. Once you have a particular style, you need doors, trims, tiles, panels etc, all fitting well together.

Probably fxgen can do this... it be good to see an example.

As for integration... the code is out there... integrate it, show its cool, and we'll consider it for the main branch.

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#22: Re: the issue

by Quin on 09/15/2007 03:55, refers to #21

Yeah it would be really cool, wouldn't it?

When this thread was bumped I took another look at the website. From what I gather, they suggest you can create textures from 'base textures' (one example was using fxgen in a quake engine to retexture the levels in higher quality).

So maybe this isn't such an absurd idea? Tempted to play with it myself, but the whole cross platform issue needs to be addressed first.

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#23: ..

by Acord on 09/15/2007 04:59

If it's not cross platform, it's going to be a bad fit. But if it can be made to be cross platform(and what can't, really?) it's a good idea that will give texture artists a good tool and will really decrease the download sizes.

I'm really used to texture maker, which cost a good chunk of change(not really - like $100?) and does an incredible job once you learn it, so I'll see if I can get some free time to fool around with this and see what can be done. Chances are, that whole community will start to hate me for my long suggestion lists.

The most important thing that can be implemented is cross platform.

After that, the engine needs the ability to build textures based on multiple sources. The best way to do this sort of thing without creating textures that look too clean is to generate a mix-map, a couple of basic diffuse/color textures to mix(usually some perlin noise variant based on a seed algorithm so the seed value can be stored and called up to create a consistant texture), and a heightmap from which is generated the heightmap and normal map, and which is used to apply light shading to the end result diffuse texture so it doesn't look flat to people with no shaders.

The interface looks similar to the one used to "program" in blender, which is a good choice for this community.

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#24: Re: ..

by Quin on 09/15/2007 12:02, refers to #23

Excellent to hear, as a multi-skilled artist you'd know better than most what kind of things would be needed, I'm sure they'll go easy on you :P

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#25: Re: ..

by a baby rabbit on 09/18/2007 15:34, refers to #10

"..FxGen Library is cross-platform and we work on GCC compiler adaptation" - Johann Nadalutti wrote

Sorry, I checked out the code out of SVN with the intent of fooling around - but the core FxGen library (not the editor) doesn't like gcc and has a few window-isms in it, also I suspect it would have endianness issues... A pity.

I have subscribed to fxGen's forum with the intent of following progress, especially if/when cross platform issues are addressed.

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#26: ..

by Julius on 10/30/2007 23:16

http://www.fxgen.org/

Version 0.5alpha released, with vector graphics support and much closer to beeing linux compatible :)

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#27: ..

by JadeMatrix on 10/31/2007 21:38

Yes, cross-platform incapatability would be a problem. However, the idea as a whole sounds good. This could be built as a tech demo, try it out. If it works for windows users, start porting fxgen to Linux and Mac.

But isn't that just what everyone's already said?

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#28: ..

by Acord on 11/02/2007 06:17

Art tools are about the only thing that FXgen was missing for me to seriously consider using it. I'll have to play with it again once this stuff gets implemented.

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