| Q&A |
 Esenthel
Engine,
Grzegorz Œlaziñski
May 2010 |
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“DirectX
11 Tesselation feature is a new addition in the Esenthel
Engine which I'm proud of. The developers don't need
to do anything more than just ask the engine to enable
tesselation and the models will automatically get more
smooth. No additional work on the models is required
in order to gain more quality.”
<
Esenthel Engine in action
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| Q1 |
Please
give a brief description of Esenthel. Why are you naming this
engine Esenthel? |
| A1 |
Esenthel
Engine is a next-gen game engine developed by me (that is Grzegorz
Œlaziñski) over the past several years.
The project started originally as a hobby, however during its
development I've observed that I like working on it and later
I've also realized that I actually can achieve something with
it. After all those years it's not only a piece of software,
it's also a piece of my life.
The name Esenthel was first used as a title for a simple 2D
RPG game for DOS operating system which I was working on for
fun. The name "Esenthel" comes from a combination
of words "Essence" and "Essential".
When I've decided to focus only on engine development and I
was looking how to name it, I thought - "why not use the
Esenthel name".
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| Q2 |
Could
you please describe Esenthel workflow from the DCC software
to the release of the 3D game? |
| A2 |
Esenthel
Engine is compatible with which most of the companies use for
asset creation, that is 3D Studio Max, Maya and similar.
The engine can handle both low and high poly models and features
support for a variety of different texture types like : color,
specular, opacity, bump, normal, glow, detail, macro, reflection
and light maps. The workflow is as straightforward as - creating
the asset in external software, importing the asset to the engine
format using provided tools - that's it.
The tools also provide a great deal of customization of the
models. For example in the Mesh Editor tool you can perform
lots of various operations like transform the mesh, set custom
material parameters, create or adjust skinning and animations,
simplify models (optimization), create LOD's and Physical representation. |
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| Q3 |
About
importing 3D assets, is reliable even for importing large scenes,
complex riging character... Is there any exporter for 3dsmax,
Maya or Softimage, or Esenthel support 3D formats such as Collada
or FBX? |
| A3 |
Yes,
the importing is handled mainly by the use of Collada format.
The engine supports many other formats as well such as Wavefront
OBJ, Milkshape3D, Blitz3D, Ascii Scene Export ASE, Biovision
Motion Capture BVH or even formats supported by the Unreal Engine
like PSK and PSA, however using the Collada format is the most
recommended because it offers the greatest set of features supported.
As for importing large scenes, the engine handles it pretty
well, typically all you need to do is just import the model
into Esenthel Engine native MESH format, and just place that
mesh in the World Editor tool. The World Editor will automatically
handle all the operations needed for optimized rendering and
streaming of the model, such as for example splitting the model
into smaller parts when needed.
And as for the rigging, there's also not a problem, the engine
supports up to 256 bones, which is more than enough to handle
realistic body and facial animations. |
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| Q4 |
Could
you please describe the editors that come with Esenthel? Is
it easy to apply a material, configure a mesh? |
| A4 |
 The
engine comes with a rich set of features, starting with the
most simple ones like a custom calculator or mathematical functions
visualizer, both can be very helpful to a programmer, then we've
got a tool for autoupdating the Engine SDK to the newest version
from esenthel server, we've got Converter tool to convert textures,
perform automated operations on files and create PAK files,
then we've got tools for creating 2D icons from 3D models, previewing
images and textures, previewing PAK files, synchronizing files
across multiple computers.
And finally going to the more important tools there is Gui Editor
used for visual Gui System creation, using point and click methods.
There is Mesh Editor which is basically a miniature version
of 3dsMax, used to perform basic operations on models and mainly
import them from external files.
And finally and most importantly there is World Editor, which
key features are support for unlimited sized worlds, collaborative
world editing, version control system, mini map generation,
and lot more.
I always try to put most effort in making the tools as easy
to use and as most feature rich as possible. |
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| Q5 |
HUD
based on Flash technology are more and more popular (Scaleform,
Hikari... ) are you supporting such technology ? |
| A5 |
Personally
I haven't looked much into this technology, but I remember that
one of the users on Esenthel Forum has been successful with
using Hikari with Esenthel so I guess it could be pretty simple. |
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| Q6 |
You
have published a demo concerning DX11 tesselation. How can 3D
artists and developers can handle this feature : do they need
to generate displacement maps? Can dynamic tesselation be used
to replace LOD? |
| A6 |
Yes,
DirectX 11 Tesselation feature is a new addition in the Esenthel
Engine which I'm proud of. The developers don't need to do anything
more than just ask the engine to enable tesselation and the
models will automatically get more smooth. No additional work
on the models is required in order to gain more quality. Soon
I'm planning on extending the tesselation to also support displacement
maps.
I doubt that the tesselation will completely remove LOD system,
because tesselation can only add the details to a model, it
cannot dynamically reduce detail (by removing triangles). The
recommended method is still to have some different LOD's and
use tesselation only on models close to the camera, in order
to make them even more smooth.
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| Q7 |
Is
it possible to handle different profile : for exemple displaying
dynamic tesselation for 3D users that have DX11 graphics chips,
and normal map for the others? |
| A7 |
Of
course, the engine scales very well from modern DX11 systems
to DX10.1, DX10 and DX9 (with Shader Model 3.0 and even 2.0).
The engine automatically detects which features are supported
and uses the most optimal set of shaders. |
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| Q8 |
Every
Software editor claims that it's 3d engine is faster to learn,
bring better graphics, etc. About Esenthel, could you please
give us few example that show it's benefits? |
| A8 |
Many
people choose Esenthel over other engines because of its simplicity
and power. Typically companies when developing an engine focus
on features that attract the clients visually, however they
often forget to put the same effort in the internal core of
the engine. I on the other hand, before developing various features
focused only on the core itself. I've spent great deal of time
on just planning the general architecture, data and object management
systems. The invested time now pays off, the engine now isn't
just rich in features, it's also very "programmer-friendly".
I like to think about Esenthel as not only as a game engine,
but as a complete "development platform". The developers
when using Esenthel not only have access to automated Game Engine
functions which perform the most of work for them, but also
have access to hundreds of low level functions which plainly
speaking gives unlimited possibilities in game and software
creation.
However not to skip the general features, from the most important
I would need to mention - support for truly unlimited world
sizes, next generation graphics and physics (technologies such
as DX11, PhysX, fully dynamic lights with soft shadows, per
object motion blur, SSAO, depth of field, realistic cloth and
soft body simulation) and of course previously mentioned simplicity,
unlimited potential and tools. |
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| Q9 |
What
do you think of the evolution of the engine market between proprietary
and open source 3D engines? |
| A9 |
It's
quite amazing how quickly the games and engines have evolved,
I remember that not so long ago there was only Commodore 64,
ZX Spectrum with their 8-bit games and pixelated graphics. Now
we've got games which look almost real. But back to the subject,
when it comes to open source 3D engines, the idea is generally
good, let's have an open source engine and let the whole world
develop it, but in practice it doesn't go that well. People
without organized coordination, serious motivation and financial
investments will always be behind commercial teams. Current
open source engines are just good enough that they can be used
for a simple commercial game, and that's about all that they
can offer. I don't think that it will change anytime soon -
regularly new hardware comes out, new technologies are developed
for that hardware, games need to be more competetive so they
need to use that technology (they need to look good). Open Source
would be attractive only if there wouldn't be any new hardware,
technologies, and it would have time to keep up with commercial
products. But it's great to have open source alternative, you
can use it for learning programming, I've learned much from
the Allegro library back in the old days. |
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| Q10 |
More
and more 3D engines are now ready for the web (Torque, Trinigy...)
do you plan to support web browser also? |
| A10 |
Personally
I don't think that browser based games have much future, it's
just a different way of starting a game, which offers absolutely
nothing more than starting a game from an executable file.
Neither of my clients have expressed interest in such technology,
definitely more interest is put into the support of other platforms.
Esenthel Engine has proven to be a great success for Windows
PC platform, now I'm planning to extend it into other platforms,
right now I'm in the middle of porting the engine to Mac, after
that, other platforms will follow. I am most interested in supporting
platforms such as iPhone and XBOX, for more on that, please
stay tuned. |
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