Suggestions for Editors

[Killer.Penguin]

Ok, we recently moved from CryEngine and Unity Editor to Unigine and we really like it. In our opinion however, Unigine Editor is still somewhat unorganized for any big projects. Here's some suggestions we like to see happening.

 

- All important shell script should be included in your editor. For example, it will save a lot of time if you can convert images into DDS format right from your editor. (Right now we have to bind shell commands to window's right click menu. That doesn't provide us with good command option though.) Unity's image conversion would be a good example for this.

 

- FBX (and I would assume all other importing plugins) really have bad interface and functionality. Right now we have to open it as a standalone program to import one animation at a time in a separated folder, because we just cannot rename the import file or edit any animations in it. The imported object always get saved as the model name. So if we import the same model with different animation, they will just override the old files.

 

- Multi-frame windows layout will be *really really* helpful.

 

All in all, I respect your work. But we only wish you make it friendlier to game developers. This would not just benefit artists but also programmer as well.

 

:)

[demostenes]

I must agree. Asset import pipeline is very slow. It took us 1/2 year to import cca 1/2 of out assets into Unigine (even with some custom scripts to speed up the process). We hate Unity3d (slow, crashing, buggy...), but this asset import would take there not 1/2 year, but 1/2 day. Drag textures into project, drag mesh, materials are created automatically and automatically assigned to appropriate surface. Matters of seconds to import and start using mesh even with 100 surfaces. I think each engine on the market should take inspiration there, because this is something, which Unity does very well (unfortunately it is only thing which Unity does well, but this is different story).

 

But there is even bigger problem. There is NO asset browser. We have now cca 2000 unique meshes and artists (world builders) dont know, what they can use, what they have in library (import was done by different people). They asking me to provide them assets (please we need bridge, which looks like this....), which we already have in library. And we are still adding new and new items. This cant be solved only by directory structure and node names. Each artist need tool to visualy crawl through repository, to find most appropriate asset (flower, rock, log, chair, house....) for his scene. Without it is absolutelly impossible to use asset library effectively.

 

2Unigine team: If you dont believe me this is problem, I can provide you remote access to our library and give you simple task. Find rock, which fullfills some criteria (size, shape, color....). With asset browser matter of one minute (you can visually check all rocks in few seconds), without it can take one hour and still you are not sure, you checked all possibilities. Unigine is very friendly to procedural world building, which is indeed great (I really like how it is done), but for game this is only first step. Once you have terrain, you have to build cities, villages, etc...and for that you need huge library of items and tool to efectivelly crawl through such library.

[michael.foster]

my ideas to improve this (as i also agree)

 

- Export of multiple separated meshes by selecting desired objects, so it will not be in one mesh, but every object a separated mesh, part of export also can be all these meshes already set-up in node

  example: When i am exporting a vehicle with 18 wheels, turret, some parts that fall off, hatches, every object of such needs to be exported one by one, i want to select all and export it to get the same result

  as if i did it one by one

 

- Multiple parameter changes to objects of same type, when i have 18 wheels and all have same Rigid body, Cylinder shape and JointSuspension, i would like to change parameters to all of them at the same time,

  without such ability the import takes 18 times longer and only due to lack of this option

[ulf.schroeter]

The lack of a powerful asset browser is a long discussed flaw of the UNIGINE editor though it shouldn't be too challenging to implement it. A similar flaw is the missing of a powerful script debugging tool. The development of complex code quickly gets stuck due to still pre-historic debugging capabilities. All together this causes quite inefficent game world building and development.

 

Quite ununderstandable why UNIGINE crew does not address these longterm flaws critizised continously by the user community for years now. There are so many game engines out there showing excellent examples of these features boosting productivity.

[demostenes]

The lack of a powerful asset browser is a long discussed flaw of the UNIGINE editor though it shouldn't be too challenging to implement it. A similar flaw is the missing of a powerful script debugging tool. The development of complex code quickly gets stuck due to still pre-historic debugging capabilities. All together this causes quite inefficent game world building and development.

 

Quite ununderstandable why UNIGINE crew does not address these longterm flaws critizised continously by the user community for years now. There are so many game engines out there showing excellent examples of these features boosting productivity.

 

I cant agree more. Lack of these two features are probably biggest flaws of Unigine right now. I hear non stop complains from developers about lack of script debugging tool and from level designers about lack of asset browser. Once you have bigger ammount of code in unigine script, it is really pain to debug (=> low productivity), same for the asset browser. We have now cca 2000 of unique meshes (still growing) and it is absolutelly impossible to be productive (they dont know, what assets they have, so how they can build?). They even started using Unity3d as asset catalogue (!!!!!).

[michael.foster]

Another thing is in editor, option to add multiple meshes at the same time, currently .. 900 boxes in demos is added with script, but that is only thanks to the fact they are all identical.

 

In dialog window where i choose what mesh i want to add, i would like to hold down SHIFT or CTRL for selecting multiple files.

[binstream]

We have added a "Randomizer" editor plugin, which randomly replaces all selected nodes with another nodes from a configurable set - it is very useful for adding variations to typical objects.

The plugin will be available in the next SDK plugin.

[binstream]

Regarding the asset browser: it is in the work now (finally!), can't state the exact ETA though.