GameDraw – First Impressions

GAMEDRAW PRO – FIRST IMPRESSIONS

 Had a chance to try GameDraw Pro – Here’s some notes after few days of (quick) tests.

WHAT IS GAMEDRAW

3D modeling plugin for Unity3D. Allows you to do basically all basic (and some advanced) mesh modeling tasks directly inside Unity editor. There are several other tools included like: Export mesh, optimize (decimate) mesh, UV mapping & texturing, Boolean operations, 2D image to 3D tracing, sculpting etc. (*see full list of features here).

Results after few tests

 

Basic 3D Modeling (Park Bench)

First try on some simple modeling, let’s try to make simple park bench.
(Note. I’m not too familiar with any 3D modeling totally from scratch : )

Didn’t take too many steps,  but had to think a while how to do all the parts (basically all was done using only extrude, moving faces and couple rotations)

– Starting with default box object, dragging faces to get wanted shape
– Move the pivot
– Clone the planks
– Combine them using GameDraw / Optimization / Combine / Selection (same material)
– Luckily it didn’t delete the original meshes (just sets them disabled)
– Take the original plank again and make 2^nd part of the bench
– Draw the iron parts, mainly using extrude and rotate selected vertices few times
– Mirror the irons, combine them
– Combine everything
– UV map unwrapping (just pressed the button and exported UV layout as a png image. There are options to set angles, margins etc. for tweaking the unwrapping)
– Open png image in Photoshop, add some textures to it (from cgtextures.com)
– Then saved it as a new image
– Created new material (for testing some normal maps also..)

Done! Well not so bad actually..

Webplayer:
http://unitycoder.com/upload/demos/GameDrawModelingTest1/ (texturing is bit wrong on the chair planks..didnt pay much attention to it)

ScreenShots: (click images to view full size)

   

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 Basic 3D Modeling (Rampart Wall Block)

I could had easily modeled those rampart proto walls with GameDraw in few minutes..

Last time it took quite a while, as I noticed few times that some combinations were missing, some pivots were in wrong corners etc..

Quite simple again:
– Started from default box again, moved some faces, extruded faces, scaled faces, moved edges.
– For UV mapping: used automatic “make cubic UV’s” button to fix them.
– Lastly moved the pivot to bottom right corner

Done!

ScreenShot: (click image to view full size)

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Moving Pivot

This could be my most used tool, let’s see how it works..
– Create default box, select it
– Click enable GameDraw
– Click mesh editing button
– Click [x] Move pivot
– Now you can freely move the pivot around

* I’d need some snapping or auto-align tools here. Usually just want to move pivot to middle bottom or bottom left corner, also would be useful to have option to reset the collider position..
** You can do unity vertex snap to other object vertices by holding v-key), but cannot snap to the object itself (?) on which the pivot is being moved. (One workaround is to duplicate the object then snap to it…)

ScreenShot: (click image to view full size)

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 Optimise Existing Model (reduce polygons)

Quick test on decimator..seems to work ok in basic models, bigger models had problems.

Just few steps away again,

– Select object/mesh from scene
– Enable GameDraw
– Click optimization tools
– Decimate mesh: Click initialize
– And then can adjust optimization percentage. (It doesn’t show vertices count or cannot enter target vertice count though..)

Tested also one object with 48000 vertices, seems to be too much (hangs)

In comparison (screenshot#2): 3ds Max has some extra option to protect borders, which seems to help in some cases. (bit unfair comparison though: 3ds max is 3xxx usd, gamedraw is 4x usd)

ScreenShots: (click images to view full size)

100% vs 50% (just wanted to see when the surface starts to break, it does work ok on proper settings)

 

(below) 3ds Max with 50% and [x] protect borders

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 2D Perlin texture into 3D Mesh

Tried to create simple floor plane mesh from 2D perlin texture (similar to floor generated in Perlin Cave Generator)

Tracing worked fine, but the mesh is split in multiple pieces (layers?), it came out extruded and some overlapping pieces?

Could of course delete those unwanted parts or extruded faces with GameDraw mesh editing..

ScreenShot: (click image to view full size)

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INST3D (create 3D object from textures)

Just for fun tried using the same 256×256 perlin texture inside Inst3D (as front & right texture), interesting mesh came out..

Could be used for making levels? ( for example 3D Thrust style of game came into mind..)

ScreenShot: (click image to view full size)

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 WAREHOUSE

– Free ready to use textured models (with normal maps)
– Can be used in commercial projects, I think I read somewhere that they are all done in GameDraw too (?)
– Seems to work inside firewall / proxies too
– No colliders on the models..

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PROS

– Saves time: Quickly you can create, modify, texture and optimize models right inside Unity3D (helps especially in testing / prototyping, no need to start 3D software every time to do small mesh modifications or objects)
– Move pivot tool! (no more putting objects inside dummy GameObjects to get correct pivots..)
– Free version also available
– Works in Unity indie too
– Has a many free ready 3D model assets inside GameDraw WareHouse (free registration required for access)
– Fast support (I emailed some feedback+ideas and got fast reply that they will check & start working on them right away..oO *Note: Already added in the current published version)
– Lots of extra tools (like: UV unwrapping, inst3D, Booleans etc. City Generator is coming too?)

CONS

– If you are already used to some 3D modeler, takes a while get used to the new system / UI (although it wasn’t that difficult after all.. I guess I’m just  too used to 3ds max)
– Encountered some bugs & hangs in the version that I was testing (like: redo button didn’t work some editors, decimate hanged on heavy model and few other small ones. But they seem to be publishing new updates quite fast)
– Personally I’d like to see some more basic modeling features (from 3ds max), like quick align, snapping tools for meshes/selection and pivot, creating new mesh from 2D lines/splines etc..)
– Current list of ready primitives is not really complete.. (and some models like fence is there 3 times with only small change on them..)

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Anyways, since there is a free version available go and try it out yourself 🙂

LINKS

–       GameDraw website : http://gamedraw.mixeddimensions.com/
–       Unity asset store : GameDraw Pro | GameDraw Free
–       Unity forum thread : GameDraw – 3D Modeling INSIDE of UNITY!
–       Tutorials : GameDraw youtube channel
–       ShowCase: GameDraw showcase images
–       Documentation : GameDraw-documentation.pdf