#metaball

[imperotenebre]

Metaball PS5 gameplay 4K - prime impressioni

No no no

[ultra-nohai]

2024 has come to an end…

[7goodangel]

Why did I decide to attempt to create a 3D character model with a character that doesn't have a completely solid form? AKA - how in the world am I supposed to use normal planes and meshes in tandem with metaballs?

[wauzmons]

So, this is apparently an official Spore wallpaper...

[jureverc]

Built a metaball-like effect from scratch in Cavalry, since the software doesn’t include this feature. Synth-generated audio gives it extra depth. I’ll share how I made the sound soon.

[xmrchat]

Using Metaballs for simulating chiral bonds

[doomfox]

this is better than like every disaster movie made in the last two decades

[humansbgone]

More health problems, so I took some more days off. On top of that, more of my fancy experimental new set-ups kept exploding. This was also a scene where the camera needed to move with the characters walking at points, and do some intensive panning over backgrounds...so, still not finished with this first one. (Luckily, no complicated camera work on any other scenes!)

A reminder that I'll be streaming work on the new episode at 3pm PDT today (May 17)!

Last time, some people made guesses as to what Clef was, and one person actually guessed the genus! So, I'll reveal it here: Claviger testaceus, a myrmecophile (properly known as an inquiline)! Five points if you came as close as guessing the family or lifestyle, and another five if you do some research on your own now!

Over the weekend, I'll finish fixing up what broke and try to finish up the rest of it. Hopefully, the hard stuff should be just about out of the way for this scene now. Next week, there will be some metaball trickery to set up for the next two scenes, and a little painting, but I'll hold off on more walk cycles for now. Not going to lie, the fourth scene then is going to be a LOT of set-up for all the ants. Apart from kitbashing, though, it should all be much simpler after that.

So, let's say another 2-3 weeks for background prep, since I really don't want to push it with health issues right now. I'll still say three months for animation. So, guess we're pushing ahead to September. Nine months of work. A full baby! One thing is for sure: I am definitely not spending this much time on the next episode. Until next time!

[randomsporefacts]

heres one of the spore prototypes that hasnt been released to the public, which is called "Skinproto". Chris Hecker also refers to it as a "3d paint prototype"

all of the images come from Chris Hecker's site, from the pages My Liner Notes for Spore and Advanced Prototyping (in the latter; specifically the images in the slides)

heres the first slides with Skinproto, showing the metaball system covered in the first linked page

you can see a bunch of options to the right

theres options for rendering, lighting, textures, "skin" which has a creature subsection (mostly related to like bones and stuff), and effects which are likely for the skinpaints themselves (the one currently set is test_perf_findclosest). theres also things you could do with right click? you could save a creature (the path here is, at least whats been shown of it, data\creatures\default_s) and theres what seems to be an autosave option. and you can load creatures quickly even theres also a bar in the lower left for some reason?

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more screenshots. this one shows a rigged creature, lighting options, and the effect here is skin_bongo

heres the same creature but with actual textures, and some more with the same panel on the right. it shows brushes at the top, a lot of them are still in final in some form, if simplified in final (for example tripod_chevrons and leopard_skin)! theres also a bunch of texturing options

theres also the colored version of the avatar from gonzagogl

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this is the same creature again with big spikes that seem to just be the axis of random points on its surface? the effect here turns out is skin_leopard

theres also this additional screenie that focuses on some brush parameter options

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in the liner notes for spore page, theres not much more screenshots but theres a few with the debug squid. theres tesselation options and also you can tell it was rigged too

another screenshot actual frog textures

and a few more creatures that havent been shown in these textures. apparently all these creatures with the nice looking textures were done by John Cimino!

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this is unrelated but this was also in advanced prototyping and im so obsessed with it i have to show it to more people

[ultra-nohai]

wetopia

[argumate]

if you have a bunch of 2D points you can just plot them to get a sense of how they are distributed (a scatter plot), but that only shows you how x and y broadly relate to each other, it doesn't show you where the values are more dense as the points will simply overlap.

maybe you could do something where instead of plotting points you plot discs with a radius that overlap with opacity, or blobs / metaballs where the radius increases based on how many points are nearby?

because I think this gets even worse if you have a bunch of 1D points, single numeric values, as then you're compelled to bin them into a histogram and the exact choice of bins can create very different and occasionally misleading impressions of the distribution! don't like that

[wauzmons]

The hut editor will be the first editor that uses Elysian Mesh, our own tool for procedurally generating 3D models. All the different parts for huts, like roofs or windows, will be made in this tool.

It basically allows us to create highly customizable models directly in the engine, without needing any external tools. A pillar like the ones in the picture can for example be created by just pulling a few sliders, which is pretty cool. It's also much faster than the metaballs, that are used in the microbe and creature editors.

Right now I'm just writing lots of math, so the tool is able to generate complex shapes like arches or tree branches.

Elysian Mesh will not only be used inside Elysian Eclipse, but will also be ported over to the Quaxel Engine, so it can be used as level design tool there. Quaxel itself has made a lot of progress too and I'll be able to share some updates on it in my next post.

[keyfabe]

stupit fucking metaball…

[somerandev]

🌈 Day 23 of Game Dev for 🫱Teleport Man🫲

Also oversaturated my pause/settings menu cause I'm not a coward.

+ Custom cursors + Fun metaball outlines for control config

[menacingmecha]

little metaball fella