Another sneak peek: Updated Rive extension rendering in the Editor!
We’re getting closer to an update of our in-editor rendering of a Rive scene.
It uses the same rendering code as we use in the engine runtime, meaning full vector rendering with feathering and so on. A little bit of work still left, but we’re making good progress!
At the same time, there will also be a new scripting api for Rive, that matches their more recent “databinding” functionality.
Working on adding the new semantic type “center position” for custom vertex formats that automatically exposes the objects world space position in shaders. You can use this to achieve billboards and impostors in the engine/editor that are always rotated towards the camera:
Thank you. Yet again, this is something everyone has been waiting for for a long time. The timing is also great. I have lots of billboard sprites in one of my prototypes.
I have one small question: will this also somehow work if the particles or the container game object are rotated?
This question is also relevant for sprites. In the current implementation of the shader, the sprite or object/objects above it in the hierarchy cannot be rotated for the billboard to work properly.
It will not automatically work if you rotate objects I think, you will need to combine this with a transform (which is also available as a custom attribute).
Here’s a performance task I worked on for the next Defold version - caching texture parameters in OpenGL:
The left side is latest Defold stable (1.12.2) and the right is the latest dev (1.12.3), and as you can see there’s almost half as many opengl calls in this complex scene.
It’s quite noticable performance wise as well, fps wise, on my dev machine:
stable:
min: 400 max: 430
dev:
min: 430 max: 470
Scene is taken from: GitHub - martianovdev/Defold-BRDF-Deferred-Rendering-V2 · GitHub
Speaking as one of the mortals: I don’t fully understand what’s happening here, but the right side has fewer scary numbers, so it must be good news. 
Could you see wireframe of mesh in renderdoc? Wireframe mode does nothing. I couldnt do on my game. I dont know why
This realy looks gamechanging 
A little teaser from @jhonny.goransson from the ongoing work on the light component! Showing 3 types of lights with different properties and their representation in the Editor:
It’s a WIP, but if you’d like to test it on your own, it’s on this branch: GitHub - defold/defold at issue-11724-editor-light-component · GitHub
And here are the building instructions (don’t forget about the prerequisites): defold/editor/README_BUILD.md at dev · defold/defold · GitHub
@jhonny.goransson looks really nice and seems to be covering everything I could ask for in lights for 3D development. Thank you for the hard work!
Will this also be applicable in 2D games? 
Will the light component work with the PBR extension? Would be great if did 
Yes, there is no real distinction between 2D and 3D in the engine, as it’s all 3D.
This is part of our end goal, ro provide a robust PBR workflow, there are some steps left to make it convenient, but having good lighting mechanics is a vital part to it.
Fab. Already planning how I’ll be able to use this.
Yes, the plan is for it to work with default rendering pipeline (forward ligthing, no shadows) and Jhonny is planning to use them in the PBR Core example (and I plan to make a 2D example with screen space lighting @totebo 
maybe further with normal maps)
No shadows? Is it because it is resource intensive?
It depends of course Current default pipeline is now just like this. But there will be templates with shadows built-in and examples on how to add different shadows techniques.
Slowly, but steadily I’m making a very basic 3D FPS template (that will be later on used for a tutorial) and I just checked it out on the branch @jhonny.goransson is working on with light components, so I’m now replacing a custom script for “sun” light with a directional light component!
Also, in this example I was using a very simple technique for shadow maps and instead of “creating” the camera in the render script code I use a camera component for simpler directional light source definition, so now with the camera preview in the editor I see what the “light” sees (what is not seen will be simply in shadows):
