WIP: Visual Pinball in Unity (2021 Edition)

[bord]

Bravo!

[iaakki]

That topology guide is really nice! ❤️

[Thalamus]

AWESOME !! ❤️

[coolball]

Amazing.

[xoller]

Happy holidays, Freezy and everybody. 

 

Thank you for the update, it was an interesting read. In fact, I have been reading the git and related gits all year and there has been a great amount of work done over 2022! I appreciate that there looks to be good collaboration going on as well.

 

As always, the tilt five technology sounds great and I am looking forward to the demo.

[gear323]

Wow.  Great update and love all the attention to the details.   Looks better and better with each update!

 

[gStAv]

Great news, looks great. 😍

[freezy]

Working on some plungers

 

[hitman12]

This are real plungers or 3D models? I can' t tell the difference😀

[TerryRed]

19 hours ago, freezy said:

Working on some plungers

 

 

 

I wonder if anyone has ever tried making door handles from plungers like this?

 

These look fantastic.

[freezy]

I was revisiting the kickers for T2, and the stock kickers from VPX weren't properly textured. So I textured them, modeled an additional one, added them to the asset library. There was just one problem: For the thumbnails, a solid piece of wood doesn't really cut it, since you wouldn't see the actual kicker.

 

The solution was, and this was something I wanted to do since I started working on the asset library, dynamic environments. So now, we can use various objects configurable per asset for the thumbnail, in this case: kicker holes.

 

 

I also added the plungers that I've posted above, plus a shiny new coin door that I modeled a few months ago.

[Gravy]

On 1/4/2023 at 9:05 AM, freezy said:

Working on some plungers

 

That's some photorealism right there, had to do a doubletake.

[xoller]

I have been following this for the late 2021 since you guys were on mystery pinball 3000 stream. I know a decent amount of c# and done some things in unity. Let me know if I can help with anything, maybe debugging code/latest builds?

 

Thanks for your work on this and other vpin projects. 

Edited January 5, 2023 by xoller

[freezy]

Cool! PM me for further instructions

[JLouLoulou]

On 12/24/2022 at 12:38 AM, freezy said:

. McMaster-Carr was an invaluable resource because they offer 3D models of all of their products. However, they are CAD models and not polygon based, so I remodeled most items based on a hi-poly CAD conversion.

@freezy, To bad 😕... You wasted a lot of time for nothing by remodeling all of that. For sure they are polygon based. It just needed to be convert/export like it should be with the good format. I'm professional CAO enginer, and i use my CAO software for modeling all my mesh for VPX and FP ( Stargate, Shaq Attaq, FishTales, and now AIO FP exemple table ). And it's easier to modeling those kind of part with a CAO software than Blender or 3Dsmax..

Even if you don't have CAO software, you can convert it with Fusion 360 which is free, or drawing your own 3d parts easily.  Then, when you export you can choose the polygon resolution in obj format.

CAO files are like Vector Picture for texture. ( I Mean, CAO software = Adobe Illustrator, Blender = Photoshop... To make an analogy )

 

But thanks for your parts list link. It will be usefull for me too.

 

Great Work Freezy, keep you effort! 

[freezy]

10 hours ago, JLouLoulou said:

Then, when you export you can choose the polygon resolution in obj format.

 

Exporting is not the problem. The problem is that whatever the "resolution", the resulting topology is shit. Just look at this, the same screw automatically converted at 1,1k triangles (left), versus manually remodeled at 350 triangles (right):

 

 

On top of that, many things are impossible for a CAD-poly converter to get right. For example, there is a small bevel in the CAD. We don't do small bevels in game engines with geometry, we use normal maps for that. So what we do is a model without bevel, add a bevel modifier after that, and bake it into the texture.

 

 

[eighties8]

IMHO, VPE is the most exciting development in the history of Virtual Pinball. Anxiously following this thread and anything at all I can find on the latest developments. Is there any information on when we can expect to have a playable alpha release to test maybe 1 or 2 tables in our cabs (or on desktop) alongside our VPX installation?

 

The interview below contains some discussion of the transition from VPX to VPE from the perspective of a VPX table developer (starting at 27:20) on the decision developers are currently facing as VPE continues to inch toward a release:
 

 

[foofoorabbit]

On 1/5/2023 at 10:08 AM, xoller said:

I have been following this for the late 2021 since you guys were on mystery pinball 3000 stream. I know a decent amount of c# and done some things in unity. Let me know if I can help with anything, maybe debugging code/latest builds?

 

Thanks for your work on this and other vpin projects. 

Any plans on building the latest?

 

I know I sound like a spoiled child when I say this and I should just download Unity and build

it myself.

 

I just keep hoping every month that we get small updates, or videos/screenshots of tables some people are working on. A year ago, there were people posting T2, Tom and Jerry, and freezy was showcasing Volley… now there is nothing. Nobody’s showing anything off. The github repo has just a few PRs that aren’t ever getting merged. There’s only a single DOTS branch that is being worked on by freezy but the last commit was over 2 weeks ago.

 

This thread is the official place to get VPE news and the news only trickles in at a couple posts every month.

 

I agree with vestaviascott that VPE is the most exciting dev for virtual pinball, but at this level of engagement, it won’t be released to the public for years.

 

This isn’t a knock against freezy who’s the main contributor… this is freezy’s baby. But if freezy is the only one working on this huge project part time, it will be a while before anyone sees anything out of this effort.

 

The ones that have used VPE to build

tables should show their work to drum up excitement. That’s how communities grow and people get involved.

 

I would definitely feel more compelled to shut up and download Unity to build VPE and use it if I saw more people posting their work here. 

[freezy]

Hey,

 

We just had a call with Unity today. It was great and they gave us some insights how to solve a few particular problems we have.

 

I agree that progress is slow, slower than I'd like it to be, but the reason why you don't see more table updates is because we're working on a table which we'd like to keep under the wraps for now. It's a very special table and we're even getting help from the original developer, but it takes time and we'd like to get it right before we announce anything.

 

That said, I'd like to post more updates, so in January I was mainly working on getting up-to-date with the latest Unity version, which takes time, since the framework we're using for the physics has completely changed. So there isn't really anything to show off I'm afraid.

 

In terms of work force, @xoller joined our dev team and is working on mechanical sounds. Also, @jp8t will be working on 3D modeling more assets. If you're a Unity developer and know HDRP, that would be a skill we're very much looking for. Otherwise we'll just have to figure out all the stuff ourselves.

 

I hope that brings some clarity in our process. I would love to work on this full time, but I also need to feed the kids.

 

Cheers,

 

   -freezy.

[foofoorabbit]

Thanks for the update. I will download Unity and see if I can contribute to VPE in some way.

Edited February 9, 2023 by foofoorabbit

[arkehr]

Hello,

 

I have a small company leasing out cabs to events and such. We run completely custom tables in our own engine atm, but thinking about porting them to Visual Pinball Engine. From reading through this forum I understand that table authors hate having their work used by cab makers for profit without consent. I want to make absolutely clear that this is not what we do. To the VPE devs, would you be ok with your work being used for profit and would the tables made in VPE be considered derivatives and therefore fall under the GPL license? We are of course going to GPL any modifications we might make to VPE itself.

 

Best,

 

arkehr

[freezy]

Hi!

 

The GPL doesn't forbid any commercial usage, and to be honest, that's completely fine. What's important is that should you modify and redistribute your derivative, you're obliged to also publish the changes you've made. But that seems to be your intention anyways.

 

I don't think that the tables created with VPE fall under the same license, unless you actually add code. I'd say it's similar to Quake, where the code is licensed under the GPL, but the "data" (the maps) have their separate, proprietary license.

 

However, if you import a VPX table into VPE and use it as a base to create your VPE conversion, I'd argue that you'd have to check with the original author(s) first, since that "data" would come from a third party. But if your tables are completely custom, that wouldn't be the case neither.

 

Finally, I'd be interested to know why you would create your own custom engine if there's VPX? And of course, if you would be willing to contribute in general to VPE in order to get it fully functional?

[slydog43]

I would like to see a few pics of an event please.  Sounds interesting.

[alumriel]

Outstanding work. Can't wait to see things when they are "done". 😃
My heartfelt thanks to everyone working on this.

[alumriel]

I searched and didn't find an answer to this....

 

Just out of curiosity, will VPE have "native" support for basic backglass and DMD features that we currently require another program to handle? (meaning no need to run b2s server, etc...)

I can understand if this is not feasible, to maintain backwards compatibility with existing content, so no worries either way.

 

My hope is that the process of installing / setting up VPE will be less complicated than how VPX currently is. (although the "Baller Installer" has helped a LOT with that)

I feel like there is a considerably higher barrier to entry with this hobby, compared to arcade emulation (e.g. MAME).