Amazon's Lumberyard Gaming Engine (Free)

[Rodney]

I don't know enough to suggest how useful this may be to those who are interested in the gaming aspect of 3D but it's newsworthy so...

In short, Amazon has recently released their Lumberyard gaming engine for free.
It's based on Cryengine (and will diverge further as times goes on

But let's let others more knowledgeable delve into the details:

https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/lumberyard-free-is-the-new-black/

I saw that the FBX plugin is expected to be updated in short order and that may provide a path for A:M Users to move assets toward Lumberyard, moreso than what is currently available.

If you are into game development it should be of interest if for no other reason that to know what tools are available.


The site: http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

Some related words:

Amazon Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for you to create the highest-quality games, connect your games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch.

By starting game projects with Lumberyard, you can spend more of your time creating great gameplay and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building a game engine and managing server infrastructure.

 

Regarding requirements:

To get started you need a PC with Windows 7 64-bit, 8+ GB RAM, a 3GHz+ quad-core processor, and a 2+ GB DX11+ compatible video card.

 

[John Bigboote]

Do you mean FBX plug-in is to be updated thru Lumberyard... or thru A:M...?

 

If A:M is going to be supporting FBX... well- HUZZAH!!! That's big news!

[Rodney]

If A:M is going to be supporting FBX... well- HUZZAH!!! That's big news!

 

That would be big news.

I know of no current plans for anyone to offer an FBX plugin for A:M.

That doesn't mean folks aren't researching it or developing tools of that sort, just that no one has informed me of such.

 

The FBX plugin in Lumberyard is (according to their website) slated to be updated soon.

They have a roadmap of sorts that specifies where their focus lies as they move forward.

 

I mention the FBX format because in some programs that's the general way OBJ and other formats are imported... through that same general pipeline/approach.

An example of this would be Fusion's FBX import node which is the conduit for getting OBJ files into the program... even though that wouldn't be obvious from the name of the nod/importer itself. You just point the FBX importer to the OBJ file and it figures out the difference between file formats behind the scenes.

 

Currently, OBJ to FBX is one of the more viable options to get A:M resources into external programs.

[robcat2075]

Are you sure you don't mean .X ?

[Rodney]

Are you sure you don't mean .X ?

 

If you are asking me. Yup.

I'm sure I don't mean .X.

 

From their blog:

FBX Importer – We are soon releasing a new FBX importer, built entirely from scratch, to make it easier for artists to bring content into Lumberyard (including customers who are fans of tools like Blender). Our next release will support single meshes and materials, and we’ll follow up with support for multi-mesh, skins, skeletons, and animations. Additionally, since we know that many game teams rely on their own proprietary formats, we’ve also built an abstraction layer alongside the FBX importer that enables you to extend the input format to suit your own team’s needs.

 

 

It may be worth noting that (most of) the code for Lumberyard is open. I'm not sure if this open-ness extends to the FBX importer but I must assume that it does.

And the best time to learn is very often during initial stages of release, in that way knowledge increases incrementally but I dare say exponentially as new changes are accounted for (i.e. through contrast and comparison) with what is already known.

[John Bigboote]

Wish list for V19. FBX export.

[Rodney]

Wish list for V19. FBX export.

 

Should we assume by FBX export you mean basic FBX exporting to a static model or fully functioning FBX models with material, animation etc. etc.

Or could some of that wait until v20.

 

When rubbing a lamp and wishing for stuff we must needs to be pretty specific or else we be getting something we doo no wan.

[John Bigboote]

All of the belles and most of the whistles....! I am seeing more and more gaming and web 3D viewers asking for FBX which holds model, textures and UV's, animation(point cloud). I think it would be something that would continue A:M to be a player in this highly evolved 3D world.

[nemyax]

animation(point cloud)

AFAIK, FBX doesn't support point clouds.

[detbear]

I wonder if matt was actually talking about Mesh animation which relies on the exporting cp points movements after they are animated within hash via rig in Hash.

 

When I think of point clouds, i think of things like facial mocap as with the FACESHIFT application that was recently bought by Apple. It relies on depth points in real time to pick up facial motion.

[Fuchur]

A PointCloud is something different (for instance used for 3d scanning to create polygonal data from it) and I doubt he was talking about that.
What he is very likely talking about is CP- / vertex animation like it is exportable in the MDD format already.

See you

*Fuchur*

[nemyax]

Well, FBX does both skeletal and vertex/shape animation.

[John Bigboote]

Ooops, yes- I was referring to mesh-based export, like the MDD file format does. It would be great to upload models with animations to Sketchfab.com