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Textures and Decals: Giving the users more visual creativity

by 0xDEADCODE 28. October 2011 06:33

In many existing virtual world platforms, users are given the ability to decorate their regions to make their personal or business space that much more unique. In our legacy software we added to it the World Texture Editor, which was an exciting project for me because of the increased flexibility and creativity it gave the users as well as increasing the program's overall performance now that people would no longer have to "wallpaper" their regions through the prop editor to change the look and feel. You may be wondering why I bought up all that old stuff when this is a blog on the new system. Well here's why:

With the amount of time and effort many of you have spent on your regions, it was must  that all your hard work would be directly transferable to the new client with no additional work on your side. (This is where that converter from the earlier blog came into play.) So now you are in your Zaby and everything looks just as it did in the old client. Wouldn't it be nice though to make your region even more unique? Why does your couch have to look exactly like everybody else's couch? Why does that concrete have to be in pristine condition? These are two basic examples of the features I am currently working on; Texture layering, material manipulation and decals.

With these new features you will be able to customize your props by replacing and/or layering textures, painting, as well as changing material properties, like making the prop look smooth and shiny. Decals will allow you to add details like cracks in that oh so perfect concrete wall, or add oil stains to a road to give it a more weathered look. Decals help hide the repetitive look of the base textures on objects as well as make those objects look less like they are straight off the factory line.

Anyhow, that's my sneak peak of the things that I am working on. As these systems become more fleshed out I'll put up images of some possible uses. Until then, enjoy the blogs!

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Road map to THE FUTURE!

by Ian 20. October 2011 12:37

Hey Everyone,

The Client Development team has been hard at work planning and working on a whole ton of new technology and ideas that we're going to use to make our virtual worlds more interesting and interactive. The biggest change is going to be putting the power of building in your hands in ways we've never done before. Driving all of it will be a scripting engine known the world over as being reliable, fast, and a game-changer when it comes to what you'll be able to do with the whole experience, from game world to your screen. We're using Google's JavaScript V8 engine to give everyone the tools to change the world in new and interesting ways.

JavaScript was an obvious choice for us because it is proven technology and a well-known language used by millions of developers worldwide. Rather than forcing everyone to use the same user interface and the same scripts on props, users will be able to customize rooms, props and the tools they use to access the world in ways that we never would have been able to do before. Scripters will have access to a wide range of functionality through easy-to-use functions that will let them develop AIs for bots, game systems that spawn one or more rooms, and custom user interface that could show anything from a scoreboard to a map of their game world.

Oh, and please forgive the developer art.

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Screenshots: Old Regions inside New Client

by Dallas 14. October 2011 10:02

The 3D Art Team has been working with Client Dev on creating a tool for converting regions used in the old virtual worlds into Unity scenes. Below are a few screen shots that compare old regions with the exported regions.  There is also a zip file with many more comparison screenshots of the old regions converted to Unity.

The tool essentially converted the old maps, duplicated the lights and created collision. The lighting for all the old maps needed adjustments so we went in to the new editor and started to modify the lights brightness so you can see region. Lighting in the new client is far superior and we haven't even put on Reflection, Bump Maps/Normal Maps, directional lights and dynamic shadows. In the Zaby Lobby photos you can see the new floor has a normal map/bump map attached to it which creates that bump in the texture to pop out.
   

High Resolution Images in Zip File

screenshots.zip (7.55 mb)

 

Sample Preview  Images

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Welcome to the VWW Team Blog!

by Admin 13. October 2011 06:51

Welcome! If you're here, you must be excited to learn more about the groundbreaking new technology under development by the Virtual World Web Inc. This blog will be maintained by our development teams as we build the next generation of our 3D world software. You'll hear voices from the client (viewer) team, the server & network infrastructure team, the art team, and more as we go forward.

We are excited to share our development experience with you, so please stay tuned!

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