Nice style
Mainly for rendering, but we’ve done a few in-game models from scratch with Blender and the workflow and the results are very positive. The only drawback is that our game converter loads Y-up FBX files, but Blender is Z-up. This is a biggie with animation.
FBX converter evolved since 2.71
Or is it something else converting problems?
I downloaded it last night.
Graphically, it’s a beautiful game!!! I will say, I have an iPad Mini and it is a little slow in loading.
Thank you guys! I really appreciate the comments!
@pohjan
The new FBX exporter is awesome, with many new additions like support for texture slots or custom properties. But unfortunately when you export the models with Y-up they come with a -90 deg rotation on X. It’s not problematic for static meshes (you can apply a 90 deg rotation before export) but it gets messy for objects that need to be animated by code (like our cannons) or character animations.
In principle our coders could do the transforms on our side, during the model conversion, but they’d need to spend a few days on it, and they have much bigger priorities right npw. Hopefully we’ll be able to try at some point in the next few months!
@tc2466
Thanks! We’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of people joining the game and the servers are taking a bit of a beating. You are probably experiencing problems when connecting to the server. The game should be pretty fast to load under normal circumstances.
Our coders are working day an night fixing the network code, and they done a lot of progress on the last few hours. Things should get better! Fingers crossed!
@Quantum Anomaly
Thanks! The models we use in the renders are subdivided in-game models with a few tweaks, and the textures do have an ambient occlusion pass. We played rendering them without this layer, but at the end we felt the ambient gave a little extra contrast and helped with the toy quality we were looking for. Well spotted!
@Nichersf
Yes. I made some of the cannons, and a couple of the characters entirely in Blender (La Belle, and the Bomber) . It was more a test of “can Blender do it” and the results were simply great. The ambient occlusion bakes are excellent (I actually used Blender to bake some of the assets in Crazy Taxi, but that’s a story for another day…) and the overall flow very rewarding. The only remaining issue for us is the FBX export.
@Steve S
Thanks for sharing the trailer! The end sequence with the boat sailing is entirely rendered in Cycles. I had nightmares thinking on how I was going to pull it off in Maya… Blender was a true lifesaver!
The rest of the trailer is mainly done by the animation studio at Rovio. It’s a pleasure working with them. They are a great bunch of guys with awesome ideas. (I think they used Arnold for the flag shot at the start, but don’t quote me on it…)
Thanks again!
You should try the “apply transform” button in the fbx exporter (added last release) then teh 90 degree rotation issue goes away… makes working in unity much easier for me
I’ve tried it but the “Apply transform” doesn’t seem to work with armatures. Unless I’m missing something?
Thanks!
Super awesome!
Whoa nice. There’s almost a playset feel to the 3rd one. I’d buy that if I saw it in Kmart
just lovely!
Actually the flag is rendered in the good old Blender Internal 
Have a nice day.
-Zagupi
Awesome work! Also, love playing the game!
Ah gorgeous looking pirates!
No it really doesn’t go away in Unity. It goes away for static meshes.
It doesn’t appear to be required for armatures, though the model comes in face down (wether or not that ‘apply transforms’ is pressed in blender 2.71) Unity seems to understand how to set up the character and everything seems to work - for humanoids. Not sure what kind of nightmares it causes for non humanoid meshes with funky bone names. Or people not working with Unity.
So no, FBX exporter doesn’t work right in blender 2.71. I suppose I should look at 2.72 release candidate.
Dan…I will say that once the loading was done, it seems much better. The game is very cool. You and your team have done a fabulous job on this.
Really great work on the game ! congratulation again. May i ask the average number of polygones per character? Thanks !
Lovely stuff! So crisp and colorful. Bravo!
Nice, i love pirate themed art!
Hey @Dan_MN! I love your game. The image you posted for your water shader doesn’t seem to work anymore. do you happen to still have a photo of the shader? Also, I was curious how you made the clouds?
Here you go! This is ancient history now, but managed to find the image on my drive. I hope it still works!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your help. It’s so cool being able to talk to you
