Scythe Walkthrough (Pre-alpha v0.0.7)

[@sinelacico]

Scythe is exactly what I've been needing for a very long time

[@TaydenDev]

Dude! This is amazing! People are definitely going to use this as a rudimentary mesh modelling tool 😂 I’m keen to see what kind of things you’ll add to the system, I’m guessing you’re focussing mostly on level design use cases? Have you thought about a mesh editor use case? I can see great utility in the tool

[@ScytheEditor]

Thanks! Yeah, it's 100% level design focused and I won't have any plans go outside of that. UE's modeling tools are focused on general mesh editing, which is what scythe is based off of.

[@TemporaryVoid]

Hope you continue the good work on it and maybe one day apply for a mega grant or something, we need this in unreal by default

[@ScytheEditor]

Applied for one last year, still waiting on a response though.

[@kekuncias]

Fucking finally a good tool again!

[@Gup11654]

I got this, whats the process with installing it?

[@ScytheEditor]

@@Gup11654 just extract the zip into Yourproject/Plugins/ and when you load up unreal, make sure it's enabled in plugins.

[@garrettbillian6340]

This looks awesome! Any support for DynamicMeshActors and Volumes?

[@meanderingdev]

Awesome stuff! A few questions though: Is there a way to make them without adding meshes to your project? Like have them just exist in the level? And how does it handle baked lightmaps? The thing I like about BSP is it evenly lightmaps the whole level.

[@ScytheEditor]

You can change your mesh output to a Dynamic Mesh, which will not create static mesh assets and have them only exist in the level. Dynamic Meshes don't support things like lumen and nanite from my understanding. I'm not sure how performant they are over static meshes too. By default, it generates lightmap UVs for all the meshes so you can use it with static lighting (baking it).

[@meanderingdev]

@@ScytheEditor okay, so it's very much built on the modeling tools. That might make it rough for my uses but I'm still looking forward to watching it develop! Great work so far!

[@ScytheEditor]

@@meanderingdev Tell me more about your use case. Is it that you're not happy with how unreal generates lightmaps?

[@meanderingdev]

@@ScytheEditor Sure; Right now I'm using UE's BSP tools (which works for me but there are many drawbacks I work around). The first reason is because it creates level geometry inside the level only, thus doesn't clog the project files up with meshes. You are right that dynamic mesh instances does this too but they don't support baked lightmaps (necessary for my project). Second is the fact subtractive geo is an object you can duplicate and reuse (while hammer style is usually consumed Boolean operations right). Third is the fact that BSP is evenly lightmapped across the whole map, so I don't have to adjust lightmaps res as I add geo etc. keeps the world lighting consistent. And the fourth reason is that it's interactive as all one object (well many, but from Brush Editing mode it feels like one object). While modeling mode it's usually a bunch of chunks of objects. Everything else it does you've already got going and I love! Especially quads and quad units, texture tools, quick object placement - amazing stuff! I just think there's too many annoyances in the UE modeling tools fundamental roots for me to consider it worth switching to. This does get it really close though!

[@HevonCZR]

Fantastic work! Does you guys have any future plans to bring this editor to other engines, such as Unity or Godot?

[@ScytheEditor]

It's fully married to the unreal engine editor, so it'll only ever be for Unreal Engine.

[@HevonCZR]

@@ScytheEditor :(

[@ScytheEditor]

Definitely take a look at Half-Edge by Freya. She's making a standalone level editor that has similar goals and may be what you're looking for.

[@HevonCZR]

@ Gonna take a look at it. Thx and good luck with your project!

[@ScytheEditor]

@@HevonCZR thanks!

[@olliveraira6122]

Where do you download this?

[@ScytheEditor]

patreon.com/Kronok (supporting development gets you the latest pre-alpha build. It'll be on Fab when it's fully released)

[@DolanDuking]

will it be possible to backport to UE4.26?