Demystifying UI, OpenGL & PBR Pipelines | Indie Devlog

Indie devlog series following the development of Bright Life - a new 3D flora generator tool for indie game developers. The goal is to rebuild The Game Creator's PlantLife to modern standards to serve as a viable alternative to SpeedTree and Plant Factory.
Download Bright Life Alpha: / gajatix
Subscribe to get a free copy once it's ready!
In this update, the groundwork is set. A basic user interface is put in place, OpenGL is integrated, and the core of the PBR rendering pipeline is established.
Chapters:
0:00 Building the UI
0:42 Interface Design
1:30 Integrating OpenGL
1:58 Building A PBR Pipeline
3:29 Creating The Camera System
3:55 Finishing Up The 3D Viewport
4:08 Tidying Up the UI
4:30 Outro
#brightlife #indiedevlog #indiedev
Website: gajatixstudios.co.uk/
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / gajatixstudios
Patreon: / gajatix
Background Music By Scott Buckley
• 'Chasing Daylight' [Em...

[@GajatixStudios]

Tune in on Friday and discover the latest progress on this indie game development project! 🌳🍄🍃🌻

[@GajatixStudios]

Only a few hours left to go! 😁

[@Quantum_64]

​@@GajatixStudios 🎉

[@emanuelasula4650]

Glad to see you have made the second video already. Looking forward to see the final product! Really excited with your progress so far.

[@GajatixStudios]

That's awesome to hear! Thanks for following along with our development journey!

[@emanuelasula4650]

@Gajatix Studios this is a really greeeeeeat opportunity and wouldn't like it miss it ❤️

[@user-qd1ew8nn4z]

I’m really excited to see the final project!! 👌

[@ZB3D]

Excited to see this project getting started! 😁

[@GajatixStudios]

Still, a long way to go, but I hope you love what I've got so far! :)

[@CalmTime4]

Cool! Following to see all the next videos

[@AchebeGames]

This is going to be so useful! can't wait to see how it progresses!

[@GajatixStudios]

That's awesome to hear! I'm working hard on the node editor currently. Aiming to have it finished within the next fortnight, at which point I'll begin working on the next devlog video so you can see the latest progress! 😁

[@BerhTv]

looking forward!

[@andrewlmillspaughjr3486]

Cool cant wait to see whats nexted😊

[@GajatixStudios]

The foundations have been laid, and next the real fun will begin! 🌳

[@anonymousd5582]

This was very educational

[@GajatixStudios]

Glad to hear it! Currently editing the latest devlog coming out soon which goes into a lot of detail regarding wind simulation systems which I hope will be even more informative! 😁

[@FanaticalTactician]

Looking great so far! I can't personally attest to the mathematical complexities in game engines but I do sympathise with having to deal with integrals.

[@GajatixStudios]

Thanks! 😀 Integrals are pretty horrendous to deal with, but they do give you such tasty results for light simulation!

[@kaikizzle]

I just only came across this and I am very excited to see where this is going. As a foliage artist, mainly working with Speedtree there are several things I learned over the years and that I desperately miss in both plantfactory, Speedtree and Blender. I would love to have another solution that specifically tackles the indie market and more even performant foliage. Even if it might be a bit early, there are numerous thing I would ask for to be included as feature. To start of I will say that working with Normals to eliminate the look of either obvious planes sticking into each other or on the other hand, stylized unified shading can be a real pain. Speedtree offers the ability to shift the normal anchor into position as where crossplanes are spawned on their parent mesh to have localized smooth shading, but visualizing this or even following the documentation is nearly impossible. Its a constant forth and back between Speedtree and custom tools in Blender I build to achieve the results and its never bulletproof. There are a few things that would need to be automated for every asset to be sure the consistency and time saving parts are given. Good luck on your journey and keep us updated!

[@GajatixStudios]

It's awesome to hear from a dedicated foliage artist! 😄 Generating normals is a bit further down the road for this project, but I've already been researching in to it. The current plan is to introduce a bit of voxel trickery. I'm taking a page out of the book from the developers of Horizon Zero Dawn, generating a voxel-like blob surrounding the plant. This will be generated with smooth normals which will then be projected onto the plant itself. Some of this data will be stored in the vertices directly, but most will be captured in a normal map that can either be included or excluded when exporting textures (depending on the style an artist is after - a sharp stylized game for example would probably not want smooth normals). In terms of generating the voxel blob, I'm planning on using the co-ordinates of the bounding boxes of each leaf. That way, once an artist hit's the Generate button, this is automatically calculated, and ready for export in seconds instead of hours. I hope that makes some sort of sense. Here are some screenshots from Gorilla Games' GDC talk that demonstrate this approach and the results: gyazo.com/25abfc2061a3a09d41276f7f12f0294a gyazo.com/979de8d6d319b0aa121a2298e33909ad

[@kaikizzle]

@@GajatixStudios yeah it totally makes sense and I actually did the same thing in blender with geometry nodes haha 😂 I take the base mesh, calculate a voxel based bounding box and keep it fairly close to the original shape. Then I project the normals down to the low poly mesh and in the end still adjust the normals to look a bit more up, just because I mainly build foliage for a top down camera perspective. However this is not bulletproof as I am not calculating this per anchor or pivot of intersecting planes but rather for the whole mesh which introduced some obvious to spot areas in between.

[@GajatixStudios]

@@kaikizzle I also have a sneaking suspicion there's going to be some weird punching points with this approach. Going to need a bit of experimentation, but so long as I can get it to around 90-95% accurate it's probably going to be good enough for most flora models. However, I'll make sure there are options to fine tweak the projection mesh to cater to the situations where the automatically generated one makes a mistake 👍

[@kaikizzle]

@@GajatixStudios too good, can't wait to see your progress. If you need someone to beta test or build anything you might need let me know. Would love to be a part of this

[@GajatixStudios]

@@kaikizzle That's awesome to hear! Feel free to join the Discord (there are real time progress updates there). Currently working on the node editor (roughly 50% finished), but once it's done, I'm planning to send out an early build to a select few to test any early compatibility/launch/experience problems - I would love to include you in that list 😄discord.com/invite/UWn5X5Gh64

[@trixo7966]

Good luck! I will be here until you’re done with the project.

[@GajatixStudios]

Thanks for the support! I'm working as fast as possible to get to a working prototype for all subscribers to try out! :D

[@BigBrainHacks]

Darn, you capable!

[@GajatixStudios]

Why, thank you! ☺But we haven't got to the fun stuff just yet. That will start in the next dev log video coming in a few weeks time

[@Ochros]

Hey, fascinating project. Will the editor be cross-platform or windows only? What about engine integrations like a direct export to Unity, Unreal or the Godot engine? What file format will you use for exporting, like glTF2.0 or FBX and how you are going to address that the wind simulation for example are integrated in this?

[@GajatixStudios]

Currently being built for Windows. However, the editor should have no trouble running through Wine for Linux users. Exporting will initially be to standardised file formats (such as Fbx, Obj, etc), but a direct engine-export pipeline is definitely on the wish list. And it's still early days for wind simulation decisions. However, the current plan is to bake vertex weights either as a vertex attribute or through a texture map. This approach requires a bit more set-up from users in their chosen engine, but it means all foliage will automatically animate in line with in-engine wind simulation algorithms rather than a pre-calculated skeletal animation 👍

[@CodeVisionary005]

Hey man, I love that you are making this. I really need this. Really hoping for it to make it to the public and I was just wondering, is it free or do I have to pay a certain amount?

[@GajatixStudios]

That's awesome to hear! I've just finished working on the node editor and currently in the process of making the next devlog video to show off the latest progress. I haven't decided on a monetisation model yet. However, one thing that is certain is that anyone who Subscribes will be getting a lifetime copy for free no matter what 😁

[@Potatogoodyea]

This is really cool.

[@GajatixStudios]

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you like the project so far 😃

[@Potatogoodyea]

@@GajatixStudios yeah it’s going to be a really good tool to use for some developers.

[@GajatixStudios]

@@Potatogoodyea That's what I'm hoping for! If there are any features you think are a must have, just let me know!

[@kamil_atakan]

Subscribed!

[@GajatixStudios]

Thank you so much! It really does help me a tonne, and I hope the follow-up videos will be both entertaining and engaging 😃

[@SimonSlav-GameMakingJourney]

sic video :)

[@GajatixStudios]

Thank you! I hope Bright Life will eventually be a helpful tool on your indie development journey 😁

[@christianmonfiston]

Hey how did you learn OpenGL?

[@GajatixStudios]

There are plenty of fantastic books out there that cover all the aspects of OpenGL. However, two of the best free learning resources I've found are learnopengl.com/ by Joey de Vries, and the KZbin channel ThinMatrix www.youtube.com/@ThinMatrix ☺

[@matslindgren5795]

My wish would be, that it can be installera on windows 7 ...will it ..?

[@GajatixStudios]

Yes! There should be no compatibility problems for Windows 7👍

[@chelo111]

🔥🔥🔥🔥