# 43 – November 7, 2021
From news this week: Godot 3.4 released, Raylib 4, Character Creator 4, the open source Luau programming language from Roblox has been released.
Of interest: a talk about the combat system of the new God Of War, an attempt to create a game using real geographic data, tips for optimizing the game on Unity for the console.
Updates / releases / news
Godot 3.4 arrived
Although the team is currently focusing on the 4.0 release, users need a stable and evolving 3.x branch for their current projects. Godot 3.4 is compatible with 3.3.x projects, so it is recommended to upgrade.
The list of changes is quite long. Better read blog article whether there are changes that are important to you personally.
Alterations to the animation system in Godot 4.0
Developers toldwhat improvements await users in the upcoming major version of the engine. The main direction was in changing the approach to working with animation data.
Shaders and visual editor improvements in Godot 4.0
A member of the Godot team who has been working on improving the shader language for Godot 4.0 for the past 18 months, told about changes in the editor, shader language and visual shader editor.
Raylib 4 released
An open source cross-platform C framework got important update… This is the first major update since the release of 3.7 in April.
The Event Automation System appeared, Odin and Zig were added to the available programming language bindings, a bunch of other improvements.
Released Character Creator 4
There is support not only for humanoid creatures, a new set of facial expressions, became available import of assets, editing props, optimization with InstaLOD.
Luau Open Source Programming Language by Roblox
Roblox is one of the most successful games of all time, a key success feature is allowing users to create their own worlds. Previously, scripts could be written in Lua. Over time, Roblox has made several changes and improvements to Lua. As a result, the Luau language was just open under the MIT license. Luau is a derivative of the Lua 5.1 programming language with the addition of several game development oriented features.
Golaem 8.0 added the ability to interact with simulations inside the Unreal Engine in real time
Other changes include includes the ability to render character shading options directly in the Maya viewport, as well as new crowd compositing tools.
IClone 8 first look
New features renewaldue out this spring includes Motion Director, a new system for semi-automatic character animation using game-style controls.
The release also adds a new HumanIK-based control rig, Pose Mixer, an animation layer editor, an integrated curve editor and new options for mixing and looping clips.
System Metrics Mali Package brought out new counters
System Metrics Mali provides a simple and extensible interface for reading GPU hardware counters on GPU Arm. These metrics can provide insight into the impact of your hardware changes.
In this version, the size of the binar has been reduced, brought new meters outside…
Adobe released Character Animator 22.0
Update adds Body Tracker, a new system that tracks a performer’s arms, torso and legs, allowing them to perform full-body animation for a digital character in real time.
Portable and efficient access to advanced 3D rendering engines
Khronos Group announced release of the preliminary open standard ANARI 1.0 API for scalable 3D data visualization. ANARI allows users to create a scene description for generating images, rather than specifying the details of the rendering process, providing simplified development of rendering applications and cross-vendor portability to various rendering engines.
New IRIS game engine
As the author wrote on Reddit, the engine has been in development for several years.
Perhaps it will be interesting for someone to dig deeper source codes for study purposes.
Interesting articles / videos
Evolution of God of War combat with a new perspective
Speaking at GDC in 2019, Mihir Sheth of Sony Santa Monica Studio shared how they worked on the combat system to provide a new gaming experience. The video talks about working with a camera, a lox system, an auto target, a system of priorities and the level of aggression of opponents.
Creating a serene scene in 3ds Max, Substance Painter and UE4
Abhishek Sharma told about the nuances of the project “Dock” created by UE4, discussed the process of creating assets and showed how shaders were created for projects.
When art meets magic: creating a fantasy world Lost in Random
The Kingdom of Random is a ghostly fantasy world where danger and excitement lie in wait around every corner. Unity Team discussed with Environment Artist Leo Brinilsson, Creative Director Olov Redmalm, Art Director Viktor Becker and 3D Artist Junona Johan Holm to dive deep into the development process and stunning art design that composes Lost in Random.
Trying to create a game using real geographic data
The sources are still available only for subscribers of the author on Patreon, but later this month they will become available to everyone.
Armor Games developers shared the results of the experiment on the transition to a 4-day
While everything is positive decided to extend this regime until the end of the year. Some key points:
With Friday, everything is complicated, because the whole world is still working, so part of the team had to switch a little to work that day.
I had to revise the work of QA.
Productivity either remained the same or improved slightly.
More time for rest, self-study, etc., which ultimately has a positive effect on all aspects of both life in general and work.
Developer Curious Expedition has updated their article on game sales. There is information on sales from 2014 to 2020
The author also told about various experiments. For example, according to him, there was not much return from adding mod support.
In general, there is quite a lot of useful first-hand information about the experience of colleagues in the shop.
How to use pools correctly in Unity
The video describes how to work with pools to manage objects. Including implementation on new ObjectPool…
Enhancing visuals with Unity HDRP
Lighting can be critical in setting the right mood in a game. V tutorial explains the basic principles of working with HDRP in Unity, which focuses on realistic graphics and allows you to customize rendering and post-processing using C #.
Elitism in game development?
Came across discussion threads in a recent post on Reddit. The opinions, which is logical, were divided. Someone writes about similar observations, someone says that they did not notice such a problem.
In general, a rather amusing thread, which, kmk, would not have appeared if this problem had not existed.
Recreating weird affine texture mapping from PS1 using Unity shaders
PlayStation 1 games suffered from strange graphical artifacts. One of these is called affine texture warping, in which the textures of the walls and floor appear wobbly. This tutorial looks at how the modern graphics pipeline avoids this effect, and then provides an implementation to get this effect in Unity.
Tips for optimizing your Unity console game
The Unity team this time told about optimizing high quality graphics on consoles. We shared tips on how to reduce the number of batches, which shaders to avoid, rendering parameters, and much more.
Creating an abandoned tunnel in Maya, Substance and UE5
Emil Slegers shared with an article about working on the Abandoned Tunnel project, talked about the process of creating assets and explained why Unreal Engine 5 was chosen for this project.
Creating an indicator for the enemy in Unreal Engine
The tutorial shows how to implement an indicator that will point to the enemy who was the last to damage the player.
Shadow Outline Tutorial
In this tutorial shownHow to sample the shadow maps of the main light, create a Lambert cartoon lighting model, and draw outlines around the shadows.
Creating a 3d character in Three.js
In this tutorial reviewed Create a 3D character with Three.js by adding simple yet effective animations and a generative color palette.
True 3D clouds with HDRP in Unity 2021.2
For decades, flat skyboxes and HDRIs have been the primary solutions for rendering sky and clouds. Nowthanks to the completely new volumetric clouds in HDRP, it is possible to fill the world with dynamic clouds. In the first iteration of this system, the Unity team focused on performance and ease of use, so you can create beautiful visuals in a couple of clicks and with low GPU load.
THE EYE: CALANTHEK Explores Real-Time Filmmaking In Unreal Engine 5 Early Access
THE EYE: CALANTHEK is a mysterious and immersive short film from Aaron Sims Creative (ASC), created in just six weeks using Unreal Engine 5 Early Access, MetaHuman Creator and a small team of artists. It premiered on October 28 at Shortnitemares, a virtual short film festival.
Epic Games Team talked with the authors of the film.
Why curves are so useful for animation in Unity
The video describes how you can apply curves in Unity not only for animations, but also, for example, for adjusting the balance and some kind of game configs.
Miscellaneous
Lowpoly tank T-72A
Created in 2016-2017 full model of the interior of the T-72A tank…
ADOPT Algorithm Code Released
ADOP examines a set of photographs and turns them into a 3D scene that can be explored. Efficient rasterization allows you to use arbitrary camera models and display scenes with over 100 million points in real time.
And now you can see for yourself algorithm…
