Creating a simple 3D application using ShiVa3D

This year on Habré articles about writing games on Unity3D became quite popular. But for some reason, no one has yet talked about competitors. Today I will talk about the most important (in my opinion) competitor - ShiVa3D.

Small review

ShiVa3D is a three-dimensional game engine with a graphical editor designed to create applications and games for web, consoles and mobile devices.
With Shiva, you can make programs and games for Windows, Linux , Mac OS, iOS, Android, Palm OS and Wii. There is also a plug-in for viewing 3D directly in the browser.

ShiVa3D consists of four parts: Editor, Game Engine, Developer Tool (program for building projects) and Server.

Shiva's game engine is based on Open GL or DirectX graphics and ODE physics. The engine can draw terrain, ocean and various three-dimensional models using shaders. There is static and dynamic lighting and shadows, dynamic particles, various effects, animations, user interface elements, the ability to create multiplayer games and play sounds. The engine is expanded with plugins, for example, you can replace ODE physics with PhysX.

Built-in WYSIYWG editor allows you to create games and applications using all the features of the engine. For programming, Lua is mainly used , but you can write to optimize scripts in C ++. The editor has 4 editions: PLE (free), Basic (€ 169), Advanced (€ 1499), Educational (free). The “cooler” the editors, the more buns are available. Now the editor works only under Windows, but in the next version they promise cross-platform.

Application example

Although there are many different demos with the editor, I’ll still tell you how to make my application. I use the PLE edition, which can be downloaded from the official site .



At first glance, Shiva has a not very friendly interface. But it has several advantages:
- Everything is divided into desktops (by default there are five, but you can make up to eight)
- Any desktop can be customized (arrange windows according to one of the templates and change the set of tabs)

So, we will start creating the first application.
First of all, in the Game Editor window, create a new game (Game → Create). Next you need to create a scene, for this in the same window, click Edit → Scene → Create. Once created, the scene will immediately load into the Scene Viewer.

Let's start filling the scene. It’s customary to do this on the Design desktop.
First, create a landscape. In the Terrain Editor window, click Terrain → Create and in the form that appears, set it Chunk Count = "4x4"(enough to start). After clicking OK, we will see a flat plane in the Scene Viewer. To make the shape you need to select all the pieces (Chunks) and add a height map in the Geometry sectionnoise (Noise). Below we mark the check box “Auto Update” and adjust the sliders to taste. Next, we diversify the gray mass with light. In the Terrain Editor in the Material section, select all four box checks, then find in the Data Explorer, in the Models folder “DefaultDynamicLightSet” and drag it onto the scene. Now we can see something similar to a ski resort, if you do not like it, then we will "stretch" the texture of the earth. To do this, add the new material in the same section, the “Albedo Map” field in the form for creating a new material sets the texture (I selected st_rockcanyon). After creating the material, click the “Preview” button opposite the “Texture”. The distance of rendering the textures is quite small, so it may be necessary to bring the camera closer.

The camera is controlled using three key combinations:
- Alt + left mouse button - rotate the camera
- Alt + right mouse button - zoom in / out
- Alt + middle mouse button - move the camera on the sides

Next, make the sky. We find Ambience Editor (another tab in the same window as the Terrain Editor) and in the Sky section we put the sky textures in the corresponding fields (you can leave it out for bottom). I like the texture of skyblue.

For a complete set, there is not enough water ... The ocean is done in the appropriate section of the Ambience Editor (section Ocean). All you need to do is mark the very first check box “Enable Ocean” and configure everything else to your liking.

In principle, everything. But there’s not enough code to run ...

We go to the General desktop and create a new AI Model (Game Editor → Edit → User Main AI → Create).
Next, on the "Code" desktop, click "Add Handler" and select onInit.
In the body of the function we write

application.setCurrentUserScene("MyScene") -- MyScene нужно заменить на название вашей сцены

Save and compile the code. Next, you can go to the “Preview” desktop and see what you get. I got this:

Summary

ShiVa is not a complicated engine. It is suitable for game developers with a small budget. Also on the official website there are interior designs made using shiva. If you want to do something more serious on ShiVa, it will be useful to read the tutorials and documentation on the developer page .