Leadwerks Sandbox

Community Forums/Developer Stations/Leadwerks Sandbox

JoshK(Posted 2008) [#1]
Leadwerks Sandbox is a new editor from the makers of 3D World Studio. Sandbox features real-time soft shadows, real-time physics editing, and terrain editing with up to 33 million poly terrains.

Here's a preview video of the physics editing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz9jPmSnMiw


plash(Posted 2008) [#2]
Looks cool, will it be free with the leadwerks engine?


Gabriel(Posted 2008) [#3]
Remind me, is the Leadwerks Engine scripted or is it something you can use via BlitzMax? ( Or possibly, both. )


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#4]
Both scripted and pure BlitzMax module. It is also available as a dll.


squareiris(Posted 2008) [#5]
Does it come free with the engine?


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#6]
No.


squareiris(Posted 2008) [#7]
Ok, that means I can delete leadwerks.com from my favs ^^


Amon(Posted 2008) [#8]
Cool!

As I understand from reading the Leadwerks forums I get a free upgrade to LWE 2.0 but how much extra would I have to payt for the sandbox?


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#9]
I don't know yet.


Doggie(Posted 2008) [#10]
Ok. Some people are into oil drums. Understood.
This reminds me of Garys' Mod. You really ought to consider making a movie maker kit. Lots of people looking for one that works well and easy to use. Just an idea.


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#11]
I want to hold a contest for a Rube Goldberg device at some point in the future. It should be a lot easier to work with than gmod.

I have been testing cards, and Leadwerks Engine 2.0 works great with ATI graphics cards. :D


Mustang(Posted 2008) [#12]

Leadwerks Engine 2.0 works great with ATI graphics cards



I guess there have to be first time for everything :)


squareiris(Posted 2008) [#13]
Ok, so basically Sandbox is an object placement editor that has less features than 3D World Studio (no CSG modelling etc.). It's a thing that comes free with other engines but for Leadwerks Sandbox one must pay? So in order to have the complete package one must purchase the Leadwerks Engine, 3D World Studio and Leadwerks Sandbox... I guess everybody is better off with waiting for Flow which is build on "battle-tested" technology (OGRE) and comes with FlowED which basically is an object placement editor like Leadwerks Sandbox and is platform independend.

Josh actually reminds me of Ant... Ok, he kind of finishes things but his support is terrible and he likes to overstate things. Leadwerks Engine 2.0 is gonna be better than Unreal Engine 3? Yeah, shure... He got his engine working on an ATi 2400 and now it works great on ATi cards? Well, I guess you don't need to test it on other graphic cards to be sure, 2400 will be enough... A few weeks ago I really thought LE2.0 could be the definitve 3D solution for BlitzMax but now it seems it will be just a "tied wo Windows" and largely untested OpenGL rendering engine with 2 editors that you need to pay extra for. That's not the same league like C4 or Torque, not to speak of Unreal Engine 3, id Tech 5 or Source...


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#14]
Boy, someone didn't get the answer they wanted.

ATI came out with some new drivers recently that fixed a lot of the GLSL problems they had. There were some serious errors, like built-in light uniforms not even returning values, but it looks like they have cleaned it all up. I'm pretty happy about that. They actually tested the old version of LE out for me so I can't complain too much about their developer support.

There are two main sets of drivers that ATI cards use, so if it works on one card, it is likely to work the same on them all. They sent me an SM 3.0 card, too, so I will try that out next. I already tested on an NVidia SM 3.0 and 4.0 cards, so I am hoping I won't even have to make any changes for the next one.

And I can tell you right now LE 2.0 is much better than Unreal Engine 3, in terms of rendering technology. I do not understand why people think UE3 is a high-tech engine, other than for the fact they have the name "Unreal". UE3 uses an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to lighting, with lightmaps, stencil shadows, projected shadows, vertex colors, etc, while I am using one unified system on everything, with dynamic soft shadows. I'm using ambient occlusion maps as well, so if you really wanted to there's no reason you can't use lightmaps.

But you have said you would be happier using OGRE, so I think you should do that.


Robert Cummings(Posted 2008) [#15]
Looks fun and impressive. I love the lighting. I would really dig this for my little dungeon ideas.


Vorderman(Posted 2008) [#16]
LE 2.0 is much better than Unreal Engine 3, in terms of rendering technology


That's quite a claim - I work for a UE3 licencee so I know it very well - I'd be interested to see your engine replicate the various UE3 tech demos.


Wayne(Posted 2008) [#17]
I like the feel of the 3d sandbox, it gives the user good feedback, and placing objects using physics can be very helpful at times.

I really like the idea of Leadworks creating 3d tools.
We need more guys like Josh who make a business of it, and continue to offer new tools and solutions.

I wish BRL had the same kind of determination as far as 3d.

I look forward to purchasing LE in the future.

Keep up the good work LW!


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#18]
Vorderman, UE3 just uses the same technology everyone else has access to, so it's not like there is some magic they have that no one else can access. The materials system I wrote is open-ended, so you can add your own shaders. It's pretty simple to do parallax mapping and other effects.

For me, the big change was the lighting system. Once I moved to a unified shadowmap system, everything became much easier. It simplifies the renderer so much that hardware testing and adding new features is ten times easier than before, when I was using four different kinds of lighting. In fact, the source code for LE 2.0 is less than half the size of the source code of the previous version.

I don't have the same art resources, but there's nothing magic about their renderer, no matter how much money they spend trying to convince you otherwise. It is admirable that it runs on so many platforms, and they present their product well, but don't let Epic trick you into thinking they have some special shaders that no one else can write.


slenkar(Posted 2008) [#19]
its a nice demo, but id like to see room creation


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#20]
It's not really for building a room from scratch. It's more like the Crysis editor...you make a building in 3D World Studio, 3ds max (it doesn't matter what), and load it in the editor and place it. There's no lightmapping to worry about, so there's no reason BSP geometry is needed.

You can still use 3D World Studio if you want to, but there is no difference between loading a building from that or 3ds max.

The lighting changes the workflow a bit...just think of everything as a regular mesh, just like you would do if you didn't have any lighting at all.


GaryV(Posted 2008) [#21]
I am a 2d guy, not a 3d guy, but I must say Leadwerks stuff looks awesome.


Mortiis(Posted 2008) [#22]
Is it going to be possible to use it with blitz3d with physics etc. or is it just tinkered for LE 2.0?


Beaker(Posted 2008) [#23]
What graphics card do you need for LE2 and the Sandbox?


JoshK(Posted 2008) [#24]
I suppose you could use the physics commands with Blitz3D, though I am not sure why you would.

LE2 requires an SM 3.0 card. It is possible it might work on SM 2.0 cards, but I am not going to test those.


Snarkbait(Posted 2008) [#25]
Impressive as always.


Mortiis(Posted 2008) [#26]
Too bad it requires a SM 3.0 card :( not for casual game devs.


Gabriel(Posted 2008) [#27]
Too bad it requires a SM 3.0 card :( not for casual game devs.

Right, because people would have been falling over themselves to buy Leadwerks engine to make a 2D match-three or hidden object game.


Mortiis(Posted 2008) [#28]
Personally if I buy a RAD tool, I prefer it to be as compatible as possible with old systems. Not only casual games, but indie games need to run on lower systems too. It's important for the sales IMO.

Anyway it's my opinion Gabriel, you don't have to express how "genius" you are. If you don't have a problem with compability go buy LE and stop being a mr.know-it-all against me.


squareiris(Posted 2008) [#29]
I agree with Mortiis.
by the way: the Indie game genre bandwith is broader than just "2D match-three or hidden object" games...


Litobyte(Posted 2008) [#30]
Hey!

I like the barrels game! :-P

By the god, what is a SM3.0 card ?

A vertex/pixel shader 3.0 compliant video card ?

If I hade such a system (quad proc + geforce 9800) I would buy a brand new copy of Crysis, and play with that SandBox BTW!

Bye!


GfK(Posted 2008) [#31]
SM = Shader Model.


Litobyte(Posted 2008) [#32]
Oh, all these acronyms....


BTW, jokes a part, look at some cool video about SandBox 2 ;-)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eVVrZTfdIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cMUSW2WHzQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h533uOMKqww

And what not!