Hey fellow Monkey devs,
This month I get the chance to post the first screenshot. Have a look at how far my editor has come. Some serious visual coding happening there. As you can see, I started to make it a little bit more pretty.
This is my very first time posting in the monthly WIP (Work In Progress) thread on the jMonkeyEngine Hub, and I’m excited to share some of the milestones I’ve hit recently!
I’ve been working on creating a distinctive anime-style rendering pipeline, and here’s what I’ve managed to achieve:
Custom Anime Shader: I’ve developed a custom Anime Shader. It’s currently forked from the PBR Lighting Specular-Glossiness pipeline, adapting its principles to achieve a stylized anime look. It’s still missing a lot of features I plan to add, but the core foundation is there!
Enhanced Cartoon Edge Filter: I’ve taken the existing CartoonEdgeFilter and made some significant enhancements to make the outlines even prettier and more fitting for an anime aesthetic.
Anime Water: I’ve also created an Anime Water effect, which is forked from the standard WaterFilter. My goal here is to achieve a stylized, anime-specific water appearance.
It’s been a fun challenge so far, and I’m really looking forward to continuing development and adding more features to bring this anime rendering style to life in jMonkeyEngine.
I’ll be sure to post updates as I make further progress! Any feedback or thoughts are welcome.
Hey.
I have come up with a flat rolling wheel compass.
Compass HUD scrolls a texture beneath a fixed frame creating the illusion of the compass wheel rotating. Points of interest (POIs) appears as icons which can move along the wheel’s rim depending on POI direction and distance from the player.
Here is a short Demo (compass is a goldish wheel on the right side of the screen).
Regarding the compass orientation, I was wondering if it might be less confusing if it were linked to the ViewCam (camera’s orientation) rather than the player’s direct forward direction? In many games, especially first-person or third-person with a free-looking camera, the compass typically aligns with where the player is looking, not necessarily where the player character’s body is facing. This often feels more intuitive for navigation.
Hope you’re having a great time! I am working on developing several ideas, but showing you all of them is a real challenge because time and energy are always limited.
One particular hurdle that’s been consistently bugging me is the settings configuration window. This has been especially problematic concerning the various OpenGL versions required by certain demos (see TestTessellationShader) within the jme3-examples package. Those settings were being silently saved, leaving us completely in the dark about what was actually configured!
Well, I decided enough was enough! I’ve tackled this head-on by revamping the modal window. I’ve integrated new graphical components for intuitive selection of the OpenGL Render type, AudioRenderer, Frame Rate, and Joystick activation flag. Additionally, I’ve enjoyed the creative process of designing a new logo. Below are some screenshots illustrating the improved interface:
Furthermore, I’ve added a method to to log key-value pairs configured in AppSettings. This enhancement now provides much-needed transparency into the settings applied during application startup.