a demotool

[ikam]

Hi

I've started this new project since 2 month now.

It's a demotool, like werkkzeug, where you stack operators to generate procedural contents (texture, mesh, scenes, animators, shaders, materials, ...) and create animations.

I've worked on werkkzeug4 many month since it's opensource to add new features and fix some bugs, and now I've decided to try to craete a demotool using the irrlicht engine and some parts of code of werkkzeug, principally the texture and mesh generation.


So the project consits to create :
- a procedural editor (using Qt framework)
- addons to extends irrlicht engine (procedural generators + customs scenes nodes)
- a demo player

What I've planed to integrate :

- a physics engine (maybe bullet)
- a scripting language
- particles engine (sparks or my own ??)
..


For now I'm coding the editor interface and the procedural engine, the werkkzeug procedural texture generation is integrated to 95%.
here, samples screeshots

[chronologicaldot]

... Sorry to ask, but what's going on in the pictures?

[ikam]

ok I'm agree it' not easy to see without tested similar tools.

I'll try to give more explanations :

Each button on 2d grid is called an operator, it contains some piece of code with parameters (like a function and arguments)
when you stack operators, you stack functions, and the result depends of all stacked operators above in the tree, it's like a visual coding tool where you stack functions.

example to generate a texture :



I've rendered images of all intemediate steps to see how is generated the result texture, you can see in the top-right window the parameter window where you control each parameter of the current edited operator.
What is cool is that you can edit parameters of all operators above the current examined one (seen in the viewport window) and see how it affect the final result in real time.

So an entire scene (texture, mesh, scenes...) can be generated procedurally like this in the editor. It's like a node editor in 3d modleing soft, but instead of connect nodes with wires, you connect by stacking.

On 2th screenshots in first post I generate a terrain from a procedural texture in the editor (perlin operator above) so heightmap can be edited on the fly (with textures operators) and the result directly affect the terrain mesh.