ZEQ2 Lite

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Working on surface based aura particles. Still not perfect, but conforms to the character's animations at least. Still working on the transparency issues with the aura particles though...

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Still working on the auras, and I think I'm starting to get somewhere with the transparency problem, but it still has some issues against bright background objects, or brighter portions of the sky. Still, it's a lot better than it was...

Before the transparency fix on the left, after on the right:

Sunday, July 23, 2017

How does it work? Are you heavily spawning quads on the shape? Using a particle system?
Also, how does your shading work exactly? I'm having troubles getting the complete gist of cel-shading, which I'm doing researches on for various projects. If I can get the base, I would maybe be able to write more elaborate shaders for it.

(if you see this, Brad, I know the framework has one, but it is your extended version of it, and it is too elaborate for me )

Sunday, July 23, 2017

I'm rubbing my nips to that new aura as we speak

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Eagle wrote : How does it work? Are you heavily spawning quads on the shape? Using a particle system?

It's using a particle system with the Skeletal/Vert Location spawning module, with the skeletal target parameter set in the character blueprint's construction script, and a sphere location module to help round out the shape and produce a slight offset from the mesh when it spawns, making the inner and outer aura effects slightly more customizable.

Also, how does your shading work exactly? I'm having troubles getting the complete gist of cel-shading, which I'm doing researches on for various projects. If I can get the base, I would maybe be able to write more elaborate shaders for it.

(if you see this, Brad, I know the framework has one, but it is your extended version of it, and it is too elaborate for me )

To be honest, I don't really understand the post-process material well enough to explain how it works too well, but it's a modified version of a couple different tutorials smooshed together to produce the effect with instance parameters so I can tweak it without needing to recompile the whole material for small changes, such as adjusting outline tolerances. If you look around you should be able to find a few of the ones I used (Can't remember which ones at this point) on the UE4 forums, or on Answer Hub.

emirh08 wrote : I'm rubbing my nips to that new aura as we speak

Gross dude...

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Also, kept the older "sphere" based aura for moving around at higher speeds since this new method doesn't allow the particle movement direction to be rotated, so now I have it set to switch between the new aura spawning method, and the old one as needed in order to help the visuals along a bit... Video of it later today maybe, once I get the speed variable for the switch setup properly...

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Video up...

https://youtu.be/uMtw_QxgrGM

As I said, still not perfect, especially against the sky, but it's a little better than it was...

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Looks fairly impressive, but the performance cost must be astronomical for it looking that opaque. I'm justly going through Alex's aura concept right now, and with some tweaks, it could reveal itself a very good compromise between accuracy and performances. Probably fits better hardware-side than a particle system; I guess those are more CPU-based?

Edit: don't hesitate to throw a link when the update is ready! I may not be able to use my cheapo laptop right now, but I'm still eager to help with the tests.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Eagle wrote : Looks fairly impressive, but the performance cost must be astronomical for it looking that opaque. I'm justly going through Alex's aura concept right now, and with some tweaks, it could reveal itself a very good compromise between accuracy and performances. Probably fits better hardware-side than a particle system; I guess those are more CPU-based?

Performance cost is about the same as before actually, and they can be set to be GPU particles instead of CPU, but regardless I get what you're saying. I've considered Alex's concept many times, but I'm still not sure if I could execute it very well without a lot of work I still don't know how to do in terms of programing it.

Edit: don't hesitate to throw a link when the update is ready! I may not be able to use my cheapo laptop right now, but I'm still eager to help with the tests.

Hey, if your potato PC can run it without exploding, I say that's a win right there.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Performance cost is about the same as before actually, and they can be set to be GPU particles instead of CPU, but regardless I get what you're saying. I've considered Alex's concept many times, but I'm still not sure if I could execute it very well without a lot of work I still don't know how to do in terms of programing it.

Yeah, I have mentioned it on Discord, with hopes it leads to a technical discussion and how to make it more than just a concept, with no distinction of the environment.

Hey, if your potato PC can run it without exploding, I say that's a win right there. Razz

I've got another one operational though. Even crappier than my old Asus X75A1! HP625: AMD V120 (x86_64 refresh) single core processor @2.3GHz, a dedicated GPU, ATI Radeon HD4200 series, and I think 3GB of DDR3 666MHz. It's a more recent version of the one I had about a decade back.
If you can make ZOPU run on this one, then you get all my respect.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

[quote="Eagle"]

I've got another one operational though. Even crappier than my old Asus X75A1! HP625: AMD V120 (x86_64 refresh) single core processor @2.3GHz, a dedicated GPU, ATI Radeon HD4200 series, and I think 3GB of DDR3 666MHz. It's a more recent version of the one I had about a decade back.
If you can make ZOPU run on this one, then you get all my respect. :*laughing out loud*:

I don't even think UE4 should run on something with a single core processor, and even if it can, it would probably be stressing it to the point that the computer might lock up and/or crash...

Monday, July 24, 2017

Heh, yeah, I can imagine. It's already going full speed upon doing anything. Much like a Raspi, but shittier.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Still messing with the aura. Switched it from Additive to Translucent, and that's helping with the transparency, but I'm finding I need to add some additional particle emitters to the system to vary the colors, and re-add in the brighter "core" color... Not fully implemented yet, so no video...

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Video update:

https://youtu.be/sYrJIJPp-J8

Finished making a few more adjustments, such as adding another emitter for an additional color for its cel-shading style flame gradation, or fixing the Super Saiyan 3 aura to be more rounded, and also added in a morph target for 3's hair to animate it growing out for the first time transformation.

I tried adding a halfassed set of morph targets to animate 3's hair when boosted, to match with the other hair animations, but it didn't exactly... Let us just not speak of that one...

Monday, July 31, 2017

You might want to change the rendering priority to avoid hiding your character behind the aura.

Monday, August 07, 2017

Eagle wrote : You might want to change the rendering priority to avoid hiding your character behind the aura.

Noted, and mostly fixed. Aura is now rendered behind the player, and only some elements are setup to render on top of the player (Inner aura spikes, Super Saiyan Blue sparkly things, exc.), plus the Kaioken aura now only renders behind the primary aura, and base form aura now blends its colors into Kaioken.

Also, new video up, as well as a new version released!

Video

Full patch notes and download can be found here

Monday, August 07, 2017

Small Hotfix update to fix a few small issues that I missed before compiling the 0.0.6 version.

You can find version 0.0.6.2 here along with the updated patch notes:

http://zopu.spritehaven.com/?p=80

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

Saturday, August 19, 2017

This looks like it has quite some potential. I'm just curious, is there a possibility with UE4, for this to have fully destructible maps in the future? Keep up the great work!

Sunday, August 20, 2017

I'm just curious, is there a possibility with UE4, for this to have fully destructible maps in the future?

Pretty much all modern 3D engines can do this, since it often requires just swapping models or using fancy shader programs to modify the mesh structure. Heck, even idTech 3 can do the prior method. It is more dependent on whether the developer wants or is capable to make such systems; this, I can't answer for Shenku.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

BruceLeeFan88 wrote : I'm just curious, is there a possibility with UE4, for this to have fully destructible maps in the future?

The short answer: It's sorta possible with a lot of work.

The long answer:

Adding in destructible meshes is relatively easy, and it takes minutes to set each one up, I would just need to configure all the static geometry to be destructible meshes instead of static meshes.

The real hurdle though is getting the terrain to be destructible, because the UE4 Landscape system is not inherently setup to be changeable at runtime, so any such system would need to either be custom built in C++ and compiled into the engine, or make use of a plugin someone else made with C++ that allows for such systems. Both of which I don't think any have been released yet, and the ones I've seen involving voxel based landscape deformation aren't yet publically available I don't think.

The alternative would be to use visual trickery, such as what was used in Dragonball Xenoverse 1 and 2, involving decals placed at the point of impact on the ground that have materials setup to create an illusion of deformation, but it's really just a flat image that seems to have 3 dimensions.

The other alternative would be to create a collection of various destructible meshes of land masses to use to rebuild the entire world map from scratch, but the performance drain for so many destructible meshes would be immense, and their scale would probably be a major issue for performance as well.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

https://youtu.be/DjACKC1lcRg

Testing out cinematics using UE4's Sequencer tool... It's still a little rough, and has some camera/focus/character animation syncing issues, but this is just the first pass at it...

Saturday, September 02, 2017

Adding in some "crater" decals (From ZEQ2-Lite's Landing Map)as step 1 of many to adding some limited destructibility to the world. Decals currently last different lengths of time based on how big the explosion from the attack was. In this case, these are lasting maybe a bit too long, since I was flying around for a good 15 minutes and they were still there.

While not perfect, especially with the decal applying to buildings presently in odd stretched ways, it's almost a convincing illusion at a quick glance...

Also, setting it up so if the player lands on the ground at a high enough speed, powers up, or transforms while on/near the ground, they too leave a crater decal on the ground...

Saturday, September 02, 2017

Some more decal updates, as well as a check to change the sky and use an alternate decal if the explosion was large enough, for a more "cataclysmic" appearance. Namek looks especially cool, at least in my opinion. Not accurate, but still cool.