Posts on Max Kruf

Védelem: The Golden Horde

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 23:31:24 +0000

Vedelem: The Golden Horde is a Real Time Strategy game set in 13th century eastern Europe. The Golden Horde is the biggest and deadliest Mongolian invasion that the world has ever seen. As the last line of defense, you are called to save your lands against the Mongol empire. They will ruthlessly attempt to pillage your economy and bring your Keep to ruin.
Manage the economy of your Castle, build new structures, find and exploit resources and expand your borders while mustering an army capable of repelling the Mongolian Invasion.

TAO - Show reel

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:09:00 +0000

TAO - Scene Debug Viewer

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 18:29:49 +0000

A small debugging tool to draw the editor scene with replacement shaders. This can be helpful when blocking out a level or finding issues within the scene.

Features

User presets
- Shader and parameter configuration
Included examples
- Base color
- Triplanar grid (lit and unlit)
- World and object space normals
- Overdraw
- UV checker

GitHub

TAO - Vertex Animation

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 16:06:00 +0000

The vertex animation package is a solution with the goal of having thousands of units on screen at the same time, each one controlled by its own animation state.

Project Details

I worked on this project while I was part of the Tech Art Outsource team. This tool was build for project Castle, it’s a game where thousands of units are on the screen at the same time. To render all of these on screen they needed an effective solution. This project was already using Unity DOTS, so this was the perfect opportunity to get started with this and utilize the “performance by default” technology.

TAO - Landscape Material

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:15:00 +0000

An interactive landscape material/shader for Unreal Engine 4.

Project Details

The shader was initially developed during the prototype phase for the game Til Nord. They needed a shader where the vehicle and other objects interact with the snow on the terrain. During development the shader got build into an generic landscape shader that could be used for all kinds of terrain types. This resulted in project Arid using it as well.

TAO - Texture Combiner

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 23:05:00 +0000

A tool to quickly combine multiple textures into one. It is available for WebGL and Windows.

This tool was made during development of the landscape shader. This shader used packed textures to reduce the amount of samples needed. In order to allow the end-users to quickly create their own packed textures I created this tool. Now anyone on the team can use the tool without having other photo manipulation software installed on their machine.

Levis Umbra

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 16:11:00 +0000

An underground mining facility overrun by rogue AI.

Levis Umbra offers to bring back the Stealth genre to its roots.
We offer an experience entirely based on sneaking and stealth dynamics.
Armed only with a hacking device, the protagonist will have to open a way deep inside the core of an underground mining factory, taken over by a defecting AI.

UE4 - Analytics Prototype

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:10:00 +0000

This is an prototype of an basic analytics tool in UE4. The tool was used in Levis Umbra and allowed us to visualize the play-through of players who had played the game and submitted their data. Designers could visualize the steps and actions back in the UE4 editor.

The tool has a simple API that allows for quick integration into existing blueprints.

Crime Engine

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 16:33:00 +0000

Custom game engine made in C++ for the game Streamlined Mastermind.

Project Details

The concept for Streamlined Mastermind was made earlier, the idea was that we would create an engine where Streamlined Mastermind would be made in. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to build the engine into a production ready tool, the final game was made using an existing engine.

MA_Parallaxing

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 03:12:00 +0000

A tool to setup parallaxing and culling for sprites in Unity.

GitHub

ALL HANDS ON DECK!

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 18:44:00 +0000

ALL HANDS ON DECK is a couch co-op party game that takes the chaotic and silly nature of Mario Party and the fast management decision making from Diner Dash. During your time in the sky, the self-made zeppelin starts falling apart and it is up to you and your friends to work as a team in order to keep in the air.

Ray Tracer

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 17:38:00 +0000

A ray tracer made in C++ to learn about math, data structures, algorithms and of course ray tracing.

It uses SFML to display the output. The math library is made by hand.

Features

Primitive shapes.
Hard/soft shadows.
Roughness.
Phong shading.
Reflection and refraction.
(Prototype) sphere based acceleration structure.
Directional and point lights.

Project Details

For this assignment we had to create our own math library and then build a ray tracer using it. The base course was focused on getting a basic understanding about ray tracing, light, math and optimizations. The extra course I followed was about path tracing, low level optimizations and building towards a real-time ray/path tracer.

DROUGHT

Sun, 06 May 2018 18:36:55 +0000

INTRODUCTION

In a solar flare ravaged world over 20 years into the future, humanity is in a struggle for resources. Most of the earth’s water supply has been radiated into space before the earth’s magnetic field could restore itself. A small group of survivors set out through the ravaged world to find a government build bunker on the east coast of the United States. Approaching the approximate bunker location a massive sandstorm hit the group of survivors.
Waking up on some planks inside an old fishing vessel, you find out that your group is gone.
There is nothing left for you but some supplies and a map with some scribbles on it.
You have to find out where your group went and find the bunker before you run out of supplies and health. There are many dangers in the wasteland: tornado’s, radiation and storms that will make you wish you would have stayed in the fishing vessel.

MA_TextureAtlas

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 21:24:57 +0000

Texture atlas creator tool for Unity.
This tool is made to combine textures and/or remap the UV’s for 3D models. The tool can also be used to make 2D sprite sheets. The visual editor gives you the ability to set and prioritize the sizes and positions in the texture atlas/sprite sheet.

Project Details

By having full control over the size and position of the textures that are being placed in the atlas you will never stand for surprises when exporting. This will cost some more time than auto-generating your texture atlases but you know whats going on and which models/textures are getting priority.

Unity HoloLens UI Shader

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 22:47:36 +0000

When building for the Microsoft HoloLens there are a lot of new opportunities, challenges and designs when it comes to building a User Interface. But at the moment the field of view is quite limited and you (or at least I) don’t want to ‘cut off’ to many visuals on my screen. By cutting of visuals the view looks even smaller as you can see the ‘borders’ of the screen, this creates a narrow feeling. To reduce this I have looked at what Microsoft did for their UI designs.

Shader Sandwich - How to make a (unlit) terrain shader

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:45:52 +0000

Intro

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a terrain shader in Unity with Shader Sandwich. In this example, we will make an unlit shader, but of course you can make all kind of terrain shaders with this technique. The shader can handle up to 4 textures.

Index

[Terrain setup](http://Terrain setup)
[Shader Sandwich setup](http://Shader Sandwich setup)
[Adding the first texture](http://Adding the first texture)
[Adding the second texture](http://Adding the second texture)
[Adding the control masks](http://Adding the control mask)
[Finalizing the shader](http://Finalizing the shader)

Terrain setup

We start by creating a new empty scene, in the new scene we will create a new terrain. In the terrain options, we will disable Cast Shadowsand set the Material to Custom. In the project folder, we will make a new material and assign it to the Custom slot. We can also disable the Reflection probes as we are not going to use it. And lastly, we already add one texture to the terrain.

Unity Unlit Terrain Shader

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 20:55:40 +0000

A basic unlit terrain shader for unity, it can handle up to 4 different textures.

The shader is made with Shader Sandwich. And here are some screenshots from a Unity terrain with the unlit shader.

Download Project Files Download Project Files v2

[LD38] Dinosaur Protection Program

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 22:07:49 +0000

Aliens are out to kill the last living dinosaur, build a variety of artillery cannons to protect your planet from the alien invasion.

Generate your planet!

Survive waves of enemies!

Survive more waves of enemies!

Or play in Retro style!

[MA_NodeEditor] Update 3 – Editor Multithreading / Background Processing – Unity

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 21:00:55 +0000

In this update, I have added multi threading for the editor, now heavy calculations can run in the background and you can continue working. Before the editor would freeze up when processing heavy calculations.
Because you can’t use coroutines in editor scripts this had to be done in a separate way.

[MA_NodeEditor] Update 2 – Histogram – Unity

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 21:00:18 +0000

Update 2 for the texture editor, this time I have added a histogram/levels view in the preview window.
Also I have been experimenting with multi-threading in the unity editor. So hopefully it will be working ‘soon™’, I’m thinking about making this an option to turn on and off.

And the last thing I’m working on is a small editor to create your own nodes for in the editor, people will then be able to extend on it and maybe there will be a community library of nodes, but this is still only an idea.

[MA_NodeEditor] Update 1 – SearchBar & PerlinNoise – Unity

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 20:55:17 +0000

I didn’t have that much time last week, but here is the first little update for the editor. I have added a search bar, it speaks for itself; you can search nodes and functions to add/use them.

And the first noise/procedural generator node, it’s a simple perlin noise generator and I say simple because I have used the Unity build in perlin noise generator. But it is a good test and I’m looking forward to add more kind of these nodes. It is a very interesting topic.

MA_NodeEditor 1.0

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 20:52:29 +0000

A Unity Editor extension where I’m working on. It’s an extension for editing/creating textures & materials in Unity. This could be useful if you don’t have access to Photoshop (or similar programs) or when your artist doesn’t have the time to edit. With this program you don’t have to leave Unity in order to make quick changes to textures and when you make changes the original texture keeps intact (nondestructive).

Photoscans

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 12:37:01 +0000

Stones, Crystals & Fossils.

Street props.

Trees.

5 unique mountain stones

Fri, 14 Oct 2016 22:12:08 +0000

Photoscanned and optimized for games.
3 mountain crystals, 1 fossil and 1 green stone

5 Models
3 LOD’s
4K Textures
PNG

Albedo, Specular, Occlusion and Normal maps

Additional shader for the stones to make them ‘pop’ a bit more. Made with Shader Sandwich!
(ofcourse you can use them without the shader!)

First photoscans!

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 00:47:53 +0000

First models made using a photoscan workflow, these are the low (/lower) poly objects.
Baked in 3DsMax & XNormal.
Retopo with 3DsMax & Mudbox.
Photoscan things with VisualSFM & Meshlab.

Now I’m working on a improved (opensource) workflow.

EOS (environmental experience)

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 00:18:34 +0000

You play as an EOS-employe, waking up later than scheduled you find yourself all alone in the sleeping quarters. You notice that the sleeping quarters are oddly silent and personal belongings are scattered all around.

Heading for the main hall you find more items that appear to be abandoned. Something doesn’t seem right and you head out in search of other people. It appears that you are not completely alone…

Pret met Zeemeeuwen (Fun with Seagulls)

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 17:14:45 +0000

Pret met Zeemeeuwen (Fun with Seagulls) is a game made for school, we had to make a game for new students in order to gain a better insight of the the course they could follow and to motivate them.
It was also the first game where we had to work together with the developers.

Space Burger Bounce

Wed, 03 Feb 2016 16:54:22 +0000

Space Burger Bounce is a game that Sunhyo Mastenbroek and I (Max Kruf) have made for a school assignment.
We had 2 lessons for this (8 ours total) and some time at home.

The game is about moving the guy through the space-station by bouncing between the handles and when needed, by farting… :P
You can collect hamburgers to fart more and reach the end of the level.

Basic Unity Multiplayer Base Building System

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:44:58 +0000

This is a basic unity base building system, I made it to practice with (the new) Unity Unet networking.

It generates a UI with some options to build. Also you can’t build where somebody else is building and the buildings are synced to the host so when somebody joins later they will be in the same world.