Tag: application

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Luminar 4 with Affinity Photo

This tutorial is going to be a little outside the normal topic of game development but should still be of interest to some of you because Luminar 4 is currently available on Humble Bundle. Luminar 4 is an AI powered image manipulation program that’s easy enough even I can use it! One of the challenges though is that it doesn’t formally support Affinity Photo out of the box, and Affinity Photo is my photo manipulation weapon of choice. Therefore in this tutorial we will show how to get Luminar 4 up and running on Affinity Photo 1.8.

If you are simply interested in learning more about Luminar 4 be sure to check out our hands-on video, it’s an impressive program.

Installing Luminar 4 with Affinity Photo

First, install Luminar 4. Just go with the defaults and don’t worry about the plugins portion if you don’t already have Photoshop installed.

After Luminar is installed, navigate to the install folder in Explorer. In my case it’s C:\Program Files\Skylum\Luminar 4. Once there, locate and copy the file Luminar4.8bf. Now we need to copy it into the Adobe plugins folder, a folder that you will most likely have to create. In explorer go to the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files and if one does not exist, create a folder called Adobe. Inside Adobe create a folder called Plug-ins, then inside that create a folder called CC, then paste the Luminar4.8bf file into that directory. The end result should be something like this:

Luminar 4 plugin folder creation for Adobe Photoshop in use with Affinity Photo

Now right click Luminar 4 in the start menu and Run as Administrator. Now select File->Install Plugins from the main menu.

Install Plugins Menu in Luminar 4

So long as you copied the file earlier into the right folder, you should now see Uninstall in the resulting Window.

Uninstall Luminar Plugin

Click Uninstall then Install and you are done with Luminar. Now fire up Affinity Photo and select Edit->Preferences. In the resulting window select Photoshop Plugins.

Selecting Photoshop Plugins in Affinity Photo

Now click the add button, then select the Luminar directory.

Adding the plugin in Photo

Once selected, Luminar 4 should show up in the detected plugins section. After installing the plugin it will prompt you to restart Affinity Photo. Once done, you can access Luminar 4 in Plugins->Skylum Software->Luminar 4

Running Luminar 4 in Affinity Photo

While these instructions are specific to Affinity Photo, any program such as Paintshop Pro should also be able to install Luminar using this process.

You can learn more about Luminar 4 and the Humble Bundle (plus see the above process in action) in the video below. The Humble links contain an affiliate code that enables you to direct a portion of the proceeds from your purchase to support GFS and thanks so much if you do!

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Creature 3D Animation Software Now In Alpha

Kestrel Moon software, creators of the Creature 2D animation software have just released the very first 0.1 alpha of Creature3D. Creature 3D is a stand-alone 3D animation application, currently available for Windows 64 machines for free, for rigging and animating characters using procedural animation.

Features of Creature 3D:

Procedural Animation at your fingertips

Walk Cycles, Tail Animation, Ropes, Skin Sliding and Dynamic Flesh/Breathing Motion are a breeze with Creature3D’s state of the art Procedural Motor System. Take full manual control by tweaking both keyframes and animation splines.

Fast, Easy setup of Characters

Easily rig your Characters via Auto or Manual Rigging Modes. Add bones, then pick between Auto Weight or Manual brush painting for your Skin Weights.

Export your Animations to the World

Export your animation as industry supported mainstream FBX or GLTF assets which can then be imported into Game Engines like UE4 or Unity.

You can learn more about and download Creature here. If you want to get started with Creature 3D there are a few sample projects now available here. You can learn more about Creature 3D and see it in action in the video below.

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GIMP 2.99.2 Released

GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program, just released version 2.99.2 beta, a giant step toward the upcoming 3.0 release. The heart of this update is the move to the GTK 3 UI toolkit from the existing GTK2 version. This has many advantages, especially when it comes to increasingly common HiDPI devices.

Highlights of the 2.99.2 release include:

  • GTK3 based user interface, with native support for Wayland and HiDPI displays.
  • Major refactoring and cleanup
  • New plug-in API
  • Plugins now possible with Python 3, JavaScript, Lua, and Vala
  • More (color) space invasion
  • Render caching available for better performance

Be sure to check the complete release notes for further details on this release. You can also learn more about the 2.99.2 release and see GIMP in action in the video below.

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LDtk The Level Designer Toolkit

LDtk, or Level Designer Toolkit, is an open source MIT licensed Haxe based 2D level editor from the creator of Dead Cells. If it looks familiar that is because we recently covered it when it was known as LEd. In just a few short months though, LDtk has come a long way, including community ports to Linux and MacOS. With the 0.5 release (the re-brand version number), tons of new features were added to LDtk including:

  • Tiles flipping: in Tile Layers, you can mirror tiles before painting them by pressing X or Y (or Z). This also works from group of tiles.
  • Tiles stacking: you can now optionaly stack multiple tiles in a single cell of a Tile layer, reducing the need for multiple layers. For example, you could paint a brick wall, then enable stack mode (T), and add details like cracks or vines over the same wall. Be careful though: erasing of stacked elements can be tricky, so you should use a mix of multiple layers and stacking to get the best results.
  • New editing options bar: Grid locking, Single layer mode and Empty space selection moved to a new more streamlined button bar.
  • File association: project files now use the extension *.ldtk instead of *.json. Therefore, on Windows, double-clicking such files will open the app accordingly. If you prefer the .json extension, you can force it in each project settings (but will lose benefit of the file association).
  • Auto-layer rule preview: when you move your mouse over a rule, you will now see which cells in the current layer are affected, making their testing MUCH easier.
  • Tiled (TMX) export: this optional export now generates proper standard tile layers. However, to support LDtk stacked tiles feature (see above), multiple Tiled layers might be generated per single LDtk layer. Also, IntGrid layers are now properly exported to Tiled (as standard tile layers, with an auto-generated tileset image).
  • New color picker: it supports copy/paste, manual hex value editing and a much better UI (thanks to simple-color-picker).
  • Flood-fill fixes: if you hold SHIFT while clicking in a Tile layer, it will flood-fill the area using currently selected tiles (randomly, or by stamping group of tiles, depending on the current mode).
  • Flood-fill erasing: just use SHIFT+Right click to erase a whole contiguous area.
  • The layer Rule editor now overlaps left panel and allows level editing while being open (makes rule testing much easier). Press Escape to close it.
  • In Tile layers, you can press L to load a saved tileset selection (using S key)
  • Renamed the Level panel to World (for the 0.6.x future update).
  • It’s now possible to change the tileset or even the source layer of an Auto-Layer without loosing your rules.
  • Auto-layer baking: turn a complex Auto-Layer into a standard Tile layer (think of it as the flatten feature in Photoshop). Be careful, it’s a one-way operation.
  • Unified “Show/hide grid” and “Grid locking” options. You can now just press G to toggle grid (which also implies “grid locking” in supported layer types).
  • All options (such as “Grid on/off”, or “Compact panel mode”) are now saved to a JSON file in your app folder, in userSettings/.
  • Help window is now a side panel.
  • Opaque tiles are detected in tilesets for use in various optimizations (mostly related to the new tile stacking feature).
  • Fixed a crash when deleting IntGrid layer while an AutoLayer uses it as source.
  • Added some colors to UI buttons
  • New exit button icon.

You can learn more about LDtk releases here, including an even newer 0.5.1 beta release. As mentioned earlier the project is open source with the code released under the MIT license and available on GitHub. You can learn more about LDtk here with downloads available on Itch.io. You can learn more about LDtk and see it in action in the video below.

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Nomad Sculpt

If you’ve ever dreamed of doing 3D modelling on the go, today’s product Nomad Sculpt may be perfect for you. Nomad Sculpt is a 3D sculpting application designed from the ground up to be mobile first. It brings all the functionality you would expect from a modern 3D sculpting application like ZBrush, Mudbox or Blender but it runs on your Android or iOS mobile device!

Key features of Nomad Sculpt include:

  • Clay, Crease, Trim, Smooth, Mask and many other brushes
  • Stroke customization with falloff, alpha and other options
  • Matcap rendering or Physically Based Rendering
  • Vertex painting, with roughness/metalness control
  • Multiresolution sculpting
  • Voxel Uniform Remeshing, along with subtractive boolean
  • Dynamic Topology, to refine locally your mesh
  • Robust layers that supports topology change
  • Designed from the ground up for a mobile experience
  • Support pencil pressure (Apple Pencil, Samsung S Pen, etc)
  • OBJ, STL and glTF support

Nomad Sculpt is available on the App Store and the Android Store. It is $15 for the complete version, but there is a reasonably full functioning, export disabled trial version available. You can also see Nomad Sculpt in action in the hands-on review below.

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ODIN 2 Synthesizer VST

Recently updated, today we are checking out the free and open source ODIN 2 synthesizer. It is built on top of the JUCE audio framework (also open source). ODIN 2 is described as:

Ever dreamt of a kickass synthesizer which is available on every platform? With a deep synthesis engine, endless modulation capabilities and it is literally for free? Look no further, Odin’s got you covered!

The sound of this 24-voice polyphonic beast will take you from your studio right to Valhalla. Earth shattering basses, exquisite leads or mad FX, Odin’s got them all! Use the classic sound of analog waveforms – or draw your own. High quality emulations of legendary analog filters like the Moog-ladder or the Korg-35 further shape your signal. Round your sound off with four onboard FX, or get crazy with modulation. There’s much to discover in Odin 2.

The source code for Odin 2 is available on GitHub under the GPL 3 open source license. Odin 2 is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems and is implemented as an VST compatible with most modern DAWs. If you are looking for a DAW to host Odin 2, check out our coverage on Reaper, LMMS, Mixcraft or ZRythm.

You can check out Odin 2 in action in the video below.

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Codecks Game Development Project Management

Codecks is a project management tool in the vein of Trello but aimed specifically at game developers. Modelled around the concept of a card game, decks are created for the various different tasks that need to be accomplished. Individual users interact in the form of hands, formed from cards either created locally or taken from community decks. There are also milestones as well as integration into several other technologies such as Github and Discord, as well as Trello import.

Key features of Codecks include:

Cards, Decks & Projects

Well designed collectable card games provide a great sense of the current state of your game. Let’s apply those design cues to project management.

Conversations & Notifications

Ever lost track of a comment thread? Conversations in Codecks are very explicit about who is part and whether it’s been resolved.

Time Tracking

Codecks’ optional time tracking allows you and your team to see how much time you’re actually spending on your tasks.

Search & Order

Use our advanced search and ordering options to dice and slice your work just the way you need.

Metrics & Reports

“Will we manage to release in time?” is a tough question. Especially in game development. Codecks is here to help.

Milestones

Plan for your release – one milestone at a time.

Codecks has a free tier available for teams up to 3 developers in size with several other pricing tiers available.

Codecks Pricing Tiers and Details

You can learn more about Codecks and see it in action in the video below.

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Material Maker and Pixelorama Updated

Pixelorama and Material Maker are two very different programs that have an exceptional amount in common. One direct commonality is, they both received updates this week. In addition to new updates, Material Maker and Pixelorama are both open source game development related applications released under the MIT license and created using the Godot game engine.

Material Maker is a graph or node based procedural texture generation tool, perhaps the closest thing that exists to a free and open source Substance Designer alternative. Material Maker just released version 0.93 with new features including several new nodes and node improvements, support for custom meshes, an all new dynamic reference panel and more. The source code for Material Maker is available here.

Pixelorama is a pixel based art application with animation support. Pixelorama just released version 0.8.1 adding new tools for moving animation frames, a new purple theme, sprite generation improvements and more. The source code for Pixelorama is available here.

You can learn more about both releases in the video below or watch here on Odysee.

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Roblox Going Public

Roblox, the popular programmable sandbox video game, have just announced their intentions to go public, seeking an initial valuation of 8 Billion dollars. After their most recent round of venture capital, Roblox is currently valued at half that, with a 4B$ valuation.

Interestingly according to Reuters Roblox may go public in a very non-conventional way.

Roblox is weighing whether to go public through a traditional initial public offering or a direct listing, the sources said, cautioning that the plans are subject to market conditions.

The sources requested anonymity as the plans are private. Roblox declined to comment.

In a direct listing, no new shares are sold and underwriting banks do not weigh in on the pricing, unlike in an IPO.

By not selling new shares, companies do not dilute the ownership stakes of existing shareholders and the public listing allows current investors to sell shares easily.

Direct listings are relatively rare. Workplace software maker Asana Inc and data analytics company Palantir Technologies on Wednesday became only the third and fourth companies to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct listing.

So why is this of interest to game developers? Game developers are making a lot of money on the Roblox “platform”, with 2020 earnings expected to reach about 1/4 Billion dollars according to MarketWatch:

Roblox announced in July that it had more than 150 million monthly active users on its platform, which topped the latest numbers from a similar game, “Minecraft.” Microsoft Corp.’s  Xbox division announced in May that 126 million people were playing that title each month.

Roblox also offers tools for developers and said in July that its developer community was on pace to earn $250 million in 2020, up from $110 million in 2019.

Games on the Roblox platform include “Adopt Me!,” a virtual-pet title that had over 10 billion plays as of late July, and “Piggy,” which launched in January and had nearly 5 billion visits in just over six months from its launch date.

If you are interested in learning more about Roblox’s developer program, the developer portal is available here. You can learn more about the Roblox IPO in the video below.

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NVIDIA RTX Voice Hands-On Review

In the age of COVID, with so many people working from home or in out of the ordinary scenarios, we may not necessarily have a ton of control over our environment. This means noise cancellation is perhaps more important than it has ever been. We are not immune to the effects and the audio quality of GFS videos have certainly suffered in the last few months. Enter RTX Voice.

If you are unaware, RTX Voice is a free plugin from NVIDIA that uses machine learning to filter out background noise. RTX Voice is described as:

NVIDIA RTX Voice is a new plugin that leverages NVIDIA RTX GPUs and their AI capabilities to remove distracting background noise from your broadcasts, voice chats, and remote video conferencing meetings. This allows users to “go live” or join a meeting without having to worry about unwanted sounds like loud keyboard typing or other ambient noise in noisy environments. RTX Voice also suppresses background noise from players in loud environments, making incoming audio easier to understand.

RTX Voice requires an RTX 2060 or higher and works with the vast majority of video capture applications including OBS Studio and Camtasia. The also offer RTX Voice support in their more comprehensive, but also free, Broadcast App.

We decided to put RTX Voice to the test in a simulated real world environment, using a Shure MV51 microphone and a Logitech Pro X headset (affiliate links). The tests were done with RTX Off and On with each device, as well as with background noise including typing and television. You can see (and hear!) the results in the video below (or watch on Odysee).