Q3D V-2.4 [3D Physics + Skeletal Animation UPDATE]

Now this was an easy one. Thank you very much. Great Plugin and easy to use.

next version has much simpler control over lights, and 3D sprite billboards, it's almost done

V 2.3 Is out check front page for change log. There are some important changes you may have to make to your current projects with regards to lights if you choose to upgrade to the newer versions.

major changes:

The new Q3D Light object makes controlling lights a lot simpler.

The new Q3D Sprite object is a sprite which exists inside of the 3D scene.

QuaziGNRLnose, Great to know about this update. Would you get a chance to add few examples for v 2.3 Or its not required?

when i get around to it, but for the most part the new plugins are self explanatory, and easy to understand if you can grasp Q3D Model.

Really nice update.

I have a little problem with LightMaps on my Models. I have loaded an obj file with 2 UV sets. One for DiffuseMap and one for LightMap. Ingame it renders totally black if i set the LightMap in the Animations Editor.

You need to set the property for "lightmap uvs" to "secondary set" in Q3D Models properties, or else it uses the primary UV set and acts like a second DiffuseMap. If thats not your problem then theres possibly an issue with your models second UVs, i'm not sure if the .obj importer supports them, you may have to convert to .js/.json.

working on adding skeletal animations for a future update

This is a great update, thank you for the hard work!

Edit: Yep, this is getting really easy to use now! It's great to see the wireframe lights and models in the editor, super super useful for setting things up! I love being able to add textures in the animation editor, really happy with how this has turned out

I'm curious though as to the limitations with the number of lights - is it only that 4 can be rendered in one viewport, or in one entire scene? Or is it types of lights? Or instances?

This is a forward renderer not a deferred renderer, so more lights will kill performance extremely and are not supportet by some graphics cards. This is a limitation in all graphic engines with forward rendering. There are some ways to use more in some engines.

thanks for updating!

How easy is this to use for a beginner? What are its limits? I assume a full open world game would be impossible

This is a forward renderer not a deferred renderer, so more lights will kill performance extremely and are not supportet by some graphics cards. This is a limitation in all graphic engines with forward rendering. There are some ways to use more in some engines.

Ah yes - the drawcalls are going to need keeping an eye on for sure! I was just wondering what the "Max Lights" property on the Q3D Master referred to? I'm currently doing some playing around and have about 8 lights wandering around in the viewport with the sine behaviour and it seems to be rendering correctly at 60 fps on a kinda old desktop PC.

UnusualCadence

Yea i forgot to remove that property, it's a remnant from an older version when browsers didn't gracefully handle too many shader uniforms and too many lights would cause crashes. It doesn't do anything now so you can *technically* build as many lights as you want, although some hardware may not support it and mess up the graphics. It's a good idea to not over-use lights, and recycle them.

I have eventual plans to try and write in a deferred renderer, but don't expect it anytime soon, as it would require considerable work.

How easy is this to use for a beginner? What are its limits? I assume a full open world game would be impossible

I'd say the plugin requires intermediate experience with construct and 3D tools. It's very easy to make simple things, even for a beginner, but more complicated 3D games require an understanding of trigonometry / linear algebra, and basic 3D graphics principles. The plugin is much simpler to use than it used to be, but it's not meant to be extremely beginner friendly as this would limit the flexibility / speed of the 3D engine a bit.

The C2 engine, and Q3D itself are geared for web technologies. Q3D performs quite well considering its all WebGL and JavaScript. You can make many types of 3D games, but as you assume there are obviously limitations to the size/complexity since everything is meant to run in a browser. With that said, the performance is pretty much as good as it can be in a browser, and you can get away with quite complex games. With time and updates it'll get even better, but don't expect native performance you seen in stuff like modern 3D AAA titles is possible.

All in all you need to expect that Q3D doesn't do the work of building your game for you, but gives you some nice tools to work on 3D web games / applications using construct.