Vicious Engine 2™ Materials

Material Node Editor

Artists familiar with material node graphs in major 3D modeling packages will feel right at home with the node editor in V^e2. Nodes are connected together in networks, simple or complex, to create a shader for a particular material.

Rapid Prototyping

As an artist works in the node editor, the material in the scene updates automatically. This allows an artist to quickly iterate through several ideas for a material without having to stop and load the game between each tweak.

Flexibility

Create a wider combination of effects, shaders, and materials through the use of material nodes.

Particle Effects

Use the node editor to create shaders for particle systems to help give particles volume and depth.

Soft Edges

Soft edges can be given to particles allowing them to more realistically interact with their environment as they clip through objects.

Multipass Materials

Multipass materials allow layers of textures to be rendered on a mesh to create complex textures without the need for additional layers of geometry or a single complex material. This allows materials such as aged cement, animated effects over top a material, and more.

Frame Buffer Effects

The frame buffer allows for a wide range of effects from distortions to camera effects to in game display screens. Examples include heat waves, energy shields, ice, warped glass, security camera monitors. As well as bloom and other camera effects.

Normal Maps

Realistically catch light and detail on low polygon meshes with normal maps generated from the high poly mesh.

Script Integration

Swap materials, change opacity, or modify shaders using script calls and variables exposed to the shader node networks.

Graph Integration

Graphs can be used to modify color and other values over time, allowing for pulsating glows, color changes, and more.

Procedural Textures

Create procedural textures to help reduce the memory needed to store large textures.

XML Based Node Creation

Nodes are built using XML, and can easily be extended to include custom nodes.

Consistent Cross Platform Output

The node editor generates shaders that will look the same on each supported platform (PC, PS3, and Xbox 360)