Tech_Art on Tres Sims

Setting up LDTK and exporting Scenes to Godot

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Goal

LDtk and Godot are awesome tools for developing 2D games. Godot is an up and coming game engine, with a super extensible platform, that plays nicely with text based version control systems and has a rich set of features that are only getting better every day. And when it comes to level design, LDtk has all of the tools you need out of the box to hit the ground running and create beautiful levels, and coincidentally, it also plays nice with git! Together, these two tools are a match made in heaven for anyone looking to make a 2D game. In this guide, I want to cover the basics of importing and using a tileset in LDtk, then exporting that data for use in Godot, since the process is not as intuitive as it might at first seem.

Houdini Engine Terrain Generator

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I recently finished “The Way of Kings” by Brandon Sanderson, and was really inspired by his description of the Shattered Plains. The idea of this landscape, seemingly shattered by a colossal force was fascinating, and I got me thinking, hey that sounds a lot like some of the voronoi destruction tools in Houdini, I bet I could make a tool that would generate the terrain, and based on user input, design some of the landscape materials, and end up with a really cool looking scene! So, that’s exactly what I did!

Compatibility Plugins for Cutting-Edge Mesh and Volume File Formats with Python

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

During my time developing software for DASH, I occasionally found the need to write my own file interpreters. We used several file formats that were super cutting edge, that our engineering tools and web application packages didn’t have support for yet. In these cases I would need to write custom software to import the files into the software or environment.

3mf and NRRD Readers for Houdini

One of the engineering tools that we used frequently was Houdini, a procedural DCC tool designed for the film and VFX industry. Since it was designed for film and VFX it didn’t always have the built-in capability to import certain volume and 3D printing formats.

"Meh": A Standalone mesh inspector, and 3MF exporter

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As a software engineer at an additive manufacturing company, I’ve had the opportunity to work on some interesting challenges. One that I think was particularly successful was running to ground was the need to have a way to communicate build properties of multiple 3D printer parts that would be manufactured as an assembly in a reusable and simply way.

The slicing software that managed our polyjet printer did not, at the time, have great support for mixing files with multiple properties, or more importantly, support for combining files of different types that were made in different parts of our production process.

John's Wizard Dungeon

Sun, 19 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I am a published game developer! Wow, it feels good to be able to say that. In my final semester at UCF, I led a team of four to design, develop, and publish a VR escape game on Steam. We wanted to tell the story of a plucky thief who wanted to steal the Elixir of Life from the Wizard, John, who had locked in his dungeon. Check out our trailer, then I’ll go over more detail on my role in the project.

AR Board Game Demo

Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As a part of my senior project at UCF, I craeted a demo using AR to augment the board game Betrayal At House On the Hill . I’ve always enjoyed gaming of both the digital and phyiscal variety, and was excited about the opportunity to bring a digital twist to one of my favorite board games.

As a part of this project, I created digital recreations of several of the room tiles, created an AR tracking on the game parts in Unity 3D, using Vuforia to handle the minutia of the AR, and created a tool to allow me to snap the digital tiles together, to help optimize the AR tracking elements of the project.