Juliette Foucaut - 23 Aug 2014
Doug has recently made some changes to the visuals and the editing tool in Avoyd. On top of performance improvements, he added a spherical brush and started experimenting with procedural texture patterns.
(click to enlarge) Saturated colours in the distance, Spheres and texture patterns. Notice how the patterns are affected by the specular lighting.
We want to use texture patterns to show different properties of the materials in-game, such as health, culture (*), etc. as well as give a better idea of the scale of the world. At the moment we're playing with the patterns' shapes, colours, scale, periodicity and animation.
(* Note: the culture is related to a team's territory / area of influence).
(click to enlarge) Texture patterns (in light blue) help convey a sense of scale.
(click to enlarge) Moving along a surface feels faster when there are details on it. Specular lighting is affected by texture patterns.
(click to enlarge) Three different scales of texture patterns on flat surfaces.
Until recently we only had a cubical brush to edit in-game. The new spherical brush really gives an organic feeling to the worlds. Just for fun, Doug's added a random colour selector, hence the giant piƱata spaghetti. He's also implemented a better sampling method for materials in the distance, so we no longer need to desaturate the colours.
(click to enlarge) This screenshot and the ones above show more saturated, vivid colours in the distance.
(click to enlarge) This screenshot and the ones below were made prior to the sampling improvements: colours needed to be desaturated much closer to the viewer to ensure a good enough performance in large worlds.
(click to enlarge) Playing with the spherical brush.
(click to enlarge) Playing with the spherical brush - adding and subtracting.
(click to enlarge) First time using the spherical brush.