Rise of Dagon : Week of Sept 20, 2014

This week was my CAKE DAY!  Good times indeed.

I did short 5 minute video with commentary on the upates for the editor and Substance Painter quick demo this week you can watch on Youtube here:

For my birthday I was able to budget out an upgrade to Unity Pro 5.0 !  This was huge for me - I really want to use the PBR (Physically Based Rendering) feature for The Rise of Dagon and budgeting this out was a major goal for me. I'm really hyped that I will be able to use this more advanced shading/lighting model for this game!

First I'll go over the changelog , then I'll discuss what some of those line items mean and then finally I want to discuss Mudbox 2015.

Level Editor shaping up nicely!

ChangeLog Week of Sept 20:

• added new EditorMouse class
• added mouse wheel zooming  EditorMouse class
• added right click panning to  EditorMouse class 
• created new OverlayAction class
• added new 'overlay' quad primitive and gameobject , which uses OverlayAction
• Added methods to OverlayAction that help track what dungeon grid/square you are referring to when you click on it
• wired in the "NEW" Button to instantiate a level that is as big as your level sliders have been set to, currently supporting levels that are up to 3 layers deep, and 50x50 squares wide, and tall accordingly.
• added HitReceived method/listener in the EditorInputHandler that receives hit info from OverlayActions
• Added tool detection methods to HitReceived and branching decisions on what to do based on current tool
• Implemented first two methods for level editing "carve" and "solid block" so you can now carve out areas of a level, and you can fill them back in with solid rock.
• Added GUI toggle boxes for choosing which layer of the level you want to view/edidt
• Added SetLevelView method that toggle boxes call, setting the selected level layer active, and the others inactive

So this work is largely control based for navigating around and making selections in the level editor. This work was needed to lay the foundation for actually editing the dungeon itself which is up for the first pass of work next week.

New Skulls in a Scene

Next I wanted to talk about Mudbox 2015. 

I have been really working hard to use Blender 3D for my sculpting tool but the longer I use it the more I realise while it is technically capable; its really not as smooth and productive for me as either ZBrush or Mudbox could be.  I don't want to make this about tearing down Blender 3D as I do in fact use it for many things and appreciate the free software, its actually great for a lot of things! I do all of my animation in Blender 3D.

I have used both ZBrush and  Mudbox on student licenses in the past so I'm familiar with them, but I can't use a student license to produce my commercial game!

So ZBrush was my #1 choice , but its very pricey at essentially $800 US dollars.  

The last time I checked Mudbox was also about $800 US dollars, and while I do think its a very competent product - lets be honest ZBrush is a pretty clear leader in the industry

Skull in Mudbox

Skull painted in Substance Painter

and if your going to be paying the same price then which are you going to pick? 

However since I had been able to afford Unity Pro I set my next goal of attempting to finance ZBrush, but in doing so I did a round of research for pricing just to make sure that there was no "indie" pricing or leasing options available and much to my surprise Autodesk now offers Mudbox 2015 subscription at a monthly rate of $10.00 a month!

That adds up to $120.00 a year, and they typically update their products once a year. This means for about 1/7th of the price of the stand alone product  I can stay perpetually up to date! 

Needless to say I double checked ZBrush did not have a similar deal (they do not) and I plunked down my $10.00 a month right away!