Playpen Released
I've progressed with the Name Generator and Planet Texture Generator to a point where I can release it to the public for you guys to test, use and/or play with. This was done using Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) so you will need .Net Framework 4.0+ runtime installed on you computer, I'll link it below.
Continued below...
With the Name Generator you can create a rule set that will generate random names, you can look at the xml file in the .\XML\name directory for some idea on how it works, I've included both a rule set for star names and British place-names.
You can also load a text file with a single column list of names, using the Generate button, and the app will try to extract a rule set from it. Remember it does not do fancy pattern recognition so stuff like 'Tau' and 'Cen' prefixes and number designation postfixes for star names or 'burg', 'ton' or 'ville' postfixes for town names should be stripped when creating the list and can be added manually after rule set generation.
The Dump button will dump the name list to a single column text file in the .\Output directory.
Next we have the updated Planet Texture Generator, with this you can generate planet textures that will fit the spherical-box model. I'll explain how that works bellow. The sliders for the generation of the texture is mostly self explanatory, just keep in mind the second slider under each 'Height Map Variance' slider is the amount of variance that is going to be applied each time the Generate or + Save button is clicked. It is on 0 by default.
Regions are the coloured areas that you see on the textures and represent certain height range, so for example 0 - 155 on the height map represents water and will be coloured blue. New regions can be added and/or removed but be if you start getting weird coloured area make sure that all the ranges match ex. 0-155 Blue 155-160, Light Blue, 160-190 Yellow etc. Remember when you make a change click on the Update button, its the blue arrow icon pointing to the bottom right.
Splats are 'decals' that are blended into the heightmap and are grey-scale texture, like heightmaps. If the value in the splat image is 129 or above the value is added to the heightmap if below this value it is subtracted. Splat images need to be smaller then 64x64 but do not need to be standard power of two as with textures but try to keep their width and height the same. You can add extra splats in the .\Textures\splats directory and then to the rule set using the green plus button. Another facet is the distribution of the splats, it the other green button on the right side. :) It will open the following popup where you can use the sliders to set the likelihood of each splat being used in the generation.
Ok so the middle splat has a 56.1% chance of being used per splatting-cycle.
The 'Density' slider controls the amount of splats that the generator is going to try and add to the heightmap.
The + Save button will generate and write out the texture file as a PNG to the .\Output directory.
Ok back to the planet model, I've included both the 3DS file, which was used in the app, and the Blender source file in the .\Models directory. All I did was take a subdivided and textured cube that was of unit-size and then I normalized and projected outward each vertex to form the spherical planet in the app.
If I missed anything please ask in the comments section and if I get enough requests I'll do a Youtube tutorial. Also if you make a awesome rule set for the name or planet generator please share it. :D
Here are the downloads:
Playpen
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
With the Name Generator you can create a rule set that will generate random names, you can look at the xml file in the .\XML\name directory for some idea on how it works, I've included both a rule set for star names and British place-names.
You can also load a text file with a single column list of names, using the Generate button, and the app will try to extract a rule set from it. Remember it does not do fancy pattern recognition so stuff like 'Tau' and 'Cen' prefixes and number designation postfixes for star names or 'burg', 'ton' or 'ville' postfixes for town names should be stripped when creating the list and can be added manually after rule set generation.
The Dump button will dump the name list to a single column text file in the .\Output directory.
Next we have the updated Planet Texture Generator, with this you can generate planet textures that will fit the spherical-box model. I'll explain how that works bellow. The sliders for the generation of the texture is mostly self explanatory, just keep in mind the second slider under each 'Height Map Variance' slider is the amount of variance that is going to be applied each time the Generate or + Save button is clicked. It is on 0 by default.
Regions are the coloured areas that you see on the textures and represent certain height range, so for example 0 - 155 on the height map represents water and will be coloured blue. New regions can be added and/or removed but be if you start getting weird coloured area make sure that all the ranges match ex. 0-155 Blue 155-160, Light Blue, 160-190 Yellow etc. Remember when you make a change click on the Update button, its the blue arrow icon pointing to the bottom right.
Splats are 'decals' that are blended into the heightmap and are grey-scale texture, like heightmaps. If the value in the splat image is 129 or above the value is added to the heightmap if below this value it is subtracted. Splat images need to be smaller then 64x64 but do not need to be standard power of two as with textures but try to keep their width and height the same. You can add extra splats in the .\Textures\splats directory and then to the rule set using the green plus button. Another facet is the distribution of the splats, it the other green button on the right side. :) It will open the following popup where you can use the sliders to set the likelihood of each splat being used in the generation.
Ok so the middle splat has a 56.1% chance of being used per splatting-cycle.
The 'Density' slider controls the amount of splats that the generator is going to try and add to the heightmap.
The + Save button will generate and write out the texture file as a PNG to the .\Output directory.
Ok back to the planet model, I've included both the 3DS file, which was used in the app, and the Blender source file in the .\Models directory. All I did was take a subdivided and textured cube that was of unit-size and then I normalized and projected outward each vertex to form the spherical planet in the app.
If I missed anything please ask in the comments section and if I get enough requests I'll do a Youtube tutorial. Also if you make a awesome rule set for the name or planet generator please share it. :D
Here are the downloads:
Playpen
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
Posts
2 comments:
Hi there, just dropping in to let you know that you have been featured on Indie Game Blogs: http://indiegames.co.za/?p=502
Awesome thanks a lot. :D
Post a Comment