Useful tools for Indie game development

Started by Krischan, June 10, 2017, 14:44:00

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Naughty Alien


Santiago


Pfaber11

I use AGK2 ,free sound recorder, wings 3D , Icon changer, PNG to Icon converter, and  I think that's about it . I have a windows 10 laptop and a Pie 9 Android phone . I rate wings 3D although Blender might have more features I find it too complicated and so don't like using it . Oh and for creating my non 3d stuff I use mtpaint .
HP 15s i3 1.2 upto 3.4 ghz 128 gb ssd 16 gb ram 15.6 inch screen. Windows 11 home edition .  2Tb external hard drive dedicated to Linux Mint .
  PureBasic 6 and AppGameKit studio
ASUS Vivo book 15 16gb ram 256gb storage  cpu upto 4.1 ghz

blinkok

I use direct folders. Not totally directly game related but it's a must when you have separate source and binary folders and also awesome for switching projects

3DzForMe

#34
Visual studio community edition, great for front end UI. Innoscript, a great installation scripting tool.
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1

3DzForMe

Well, finally got around to trying Unity - after the initial install grumbles - which I think was simply related to Visual Studio wanting to associate itself with a 'registered' user, the first four tutorials are really quite an eye opener as to whats possible in Unity with little effort and a bit of application.
BLitz3D, IDEal, AGK Studio, BMax, Java Code, Cerberus
Recent Hardware: Dell Laptop
Oldest Hardware: Commodore Amiga 1200 with 1084S Monitor & Blitz Basic 2.1

playniax

I switched to Unity and have never looked back.

I hated it at first but looking back now I have no idea why.

Krischan

#37
Three useful, free tools I use on a regular basis plus an additional tool which only requires an online account but is free to use I want to share with you as they may be useful for other indie game developers, too.

First is "Instant Meshes" to remesh the topology of a mesh to create a low poly version of a high resolution mesh. It is made for 3D scans, but can be used on other meshes, too. The results are stunning as long as the input mesh is high-res.

Download: https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes



Second is the "Modular Tree" addon for Blender. You can create any tree you want, it is easy to use and works completely within blender.

Download: https://github.com/MaximeHerpin/modular_tree/tree/blender_28



Third is "Materialize" to create PBR textures from various input textures, or even from a diffuse map only. Works very well as a PBR material preview tool, too. Many export functions.

Download: https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/



An additional tool I'm working with more and more is "Quixel Mixer" from Epic Games. A free tool which requires an free Epic Games online account, but is free to use (only if you're using the Epic Megascans Textures in your own texture you may need a license for the Textures). You can mix Diffusemaps/Heightmaps/Roughness/Metallic Materials to create new textures from existing ones. Very useful.

Download: https://quixel.com/mixer



I forgot to mention another great, free tool when it comes to mesh recreation or optimizing 3D scanned objects: "Cloud Compare".

You can do a lot of things with it, I'm using it to "scan" an imported mesh into a point cloud, recreate the surface again from this cloud and export it to a new mesh.

In general, I import an object, scan it with "Edit > Mesh > Sample Points" with 1.000.000 points and recreate it with "Plugins > PoissonRecon" using a Poisson Surface Resonstruction Algorithm to get more even distributed vertices over the whole surface which can be further processed within Blender using the Decimate tool or the Instant Meshes tool. It is comparable to Meshlab, but is easier to use and more stable.

Download: https://cloudcompare.org/

Kind regards
Krischan

Windows 10 Pro | i7 9700K@ 3.6GHz | RTX 2080 8GB]
Metaverse | Blitzbasic Archive | My Github projects