Topic

Game Development

The O3DE game engine has received a major update (24.09)

O3DE (Open 3D Engine) recently received a major update, described as "game-changing," marking a significant milestone for this free and open-source game engine. For those unfamiliar, O3DE is the direct successor to Amazon Lumberyard, which was originally built upon CryEngine. While it retains some features from its predecessors, O3DE is largely a new, modular engine designed for creating high-fidelity games, robotic simulations, and immersive 3D worlds.

Published: 14. Oct. 2024

News

Lazy Animation - A new animation add-on for Blender

Lazy Animation is a new add-on developed by artist and Blender tools creator MeiU, designed to simplify animation creation within Blender. It was created to help both beginners and professionals quickly set up keyframes for moving selected objects, allowing users to animate them along custom curve paths. In Lazy Animation, this process is seamless, with keyframes generated in just one click, eliminating the need for tedious setup steps.

Published: 23. Sep. 2024

News

Maxon Fall Release introduces ZBrush for iPad

The Maxon Fall Release brings updates to Maxon One and introduces ZBrush for iPad. ZBrush is a powerful tool renowned for creating highly detailed 3D models and is widely used in fields such as film and animation, video games, and concept art. According to Maxon, ZBrush for iPad delivers the full power of the popular 3D sculpting and painting software on the go, without sacrificing functionality. It features a fully reimagined interface and an advanced brush system. It also takes full advantage of the Apple Pencil capabilities, allowing users to sculpt, paint, and create in real time from anywhere.

Published: 16. Sep. 2024

News

ICity - A procedural city generator add-on for Blender

ICity is a recently released Blender add-on that enables users to effortlessly create detailed 3D cityscapes. Developed by technical artist Hothifa Smair, the add-on features procedural generation and includes a vast asset library, streamlining city creation workflows by facilitating quick prototyping and final delivery. It can be particularly useful for architects, game developers, and city-building enthusiasts.

Published: 2. Sep. 2024

General

The new music features in Godot 4.3 explained

Godot 4.3 brings exciting new features that make it easier to incorporate adaptive music into your games. In this article, I'll go over the new additions, explaining their functionality and how you can use them in your projects. The adaptive music capabilities come from three new audio stream types: AudioStreamInteractive, AudioStreamPlaylist, and AudioStreamSynchronized. These can be combined to create complex musical behaviors, offering functionality typically reserved for audio middleware solutions like Wwise, FMOD, or CRI ADX2.

Published: 26. Aug. 2024

News

Game UI Database 2.0 - A useful resource for designing better game UIs

The Game UI Database is a free online resource designed specifically for game UI/UX designers, but it can be equally useful for anyone looking to create better UIs for their games. Created by Edd Coates, a Lead UI/UX Designer at Radical Forge, it serves as a valuable tool for finding inspiration and quickly searching for reference materials. The database is one of the top resources in its field, featuring over a thousand games and more than 55,000 screenshots and videos. It offers references for various UI elements, including title screens, system menus, stage and level selection, stats, inventory, maps, controls, and more. Users can explore the catalog by game genre, theme, aesthetic, and camera perspective.

Published: 12. Aug. 2024

News

RapidPipeline - A new tool for streamlining 3D workflows

RapidPipeline is a new 3D data preparation tool designed to simplify common, time-consuming tasks for all 3D creators. It functions as a batch processing tool for 3D models, offering an automated pipeline with customizable workflows. Users can adjust file formats, optimization methods, and target resolutions. Additional tasks include baking normal maps, compressing geometry and textures, generating LODs (Levels of Detail), and more. This flexibility ensures that 3D assets can be prepared quickly and efficiently for use in various applications and target devices.

Published: 5. Aug. 2024

News

Evergine 2024 has been released

Evergine, formerly known as Wave Engine, is a multi-purpose game engine designed for fields such as entertainment and engineering. It is C#-based with a component-based architecture similar to engines like Unity. Evergine is free for commercial use and supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and the Web. However, the tooling is Windows-only, with the latest release requiring Visual Studio 2022 for development.

Published: 29. Jul. 2024

News

Rig Creator - A free Blender add-on for creating character rigs

Rig Creator is a new Blender add-on developed by Edward Ureña, a 3D digital artist and illustrator. The add-on is currently in beta and is designed for creating rigs for various characters, including facial rigs. It provides a base rig that allows users to position bones to match a character's body, with the add-on automatically applying the necessary weights. The latest update introduced several additional features, including Bone Generators with default options such as Deformation Generator, Forward Kinematics (FK), Fingers, and Inverse Kinematics (IK). Another addition was a list-based Constraint Panel, which provides a more intuitive and efficient way to manage constraints.

Published: 22. Jul. 2024

News

Zed code editor now available on Linux

Zed is a relatively new entry in the code editor space, designed as a high-performance text editor written in the Rust programming language. It is made by the creators of Atom, Tree-sitter, and the Electron software platform. Zed is an open source project created as an alternative to existing code editors like Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text. One of its major selling points is its performance, enabling developers to launch the editor instantly, load files quickly, and receive immediate responses to keystrokes. According to the developers, this performance is achieved by leveraging every CPU core using Rust's unique features and by utilizing Zed's own GPUI framework. This framework renders the entire window on the GPU, similarly to how graphics are processed in a 3D video game.

Published: 15. Jul. 2024

News

The Bevy game engine has received a major update

Bevy has recently been updated to version 0.14. For those unfamiliar, this free and open-source data-driven game engine is currently one of the best options for game development using the Rust programming language. While it lacks a visual editor and functions more as a game framework, its design can benefit developers who prefer a code-driven approach and seek greater control, performance, and customization for their projects. With its comprehensive and constantly expanding feature set, Bevy is helping Rust become an increasingly viable option for game development.

Published: 8. Jul. 2024

News

Rizom UV 2024 Released - The Most Significant Update in Years

Rizom-Lab has released RizomUV 2024, calling it the biggest upgrade since 2018. RizomUV is a comprehensive UV mapping application designed to integrate seamlessly with 3D content creation tools like Blender and Maya. It offers a fast workflow, significantly reducing the time typically spent on UV mapping in other applications. The latest update introduces a range of innovative features designed to enhance the user experience and streamline the UV mapping process. One of the standout features is the improved user interface (UI), which now supports HDPI with variable DPI on all platforms, ensuring sharp UI elements. The update also includes full UI scaling and zoom, allowing users to customize their workspace to their preference.

Published: 1. Jul. 2024