Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
workspace, Genetica attempts to enhance network orderliness by only allowing
nodestobeplacedintospecificinputslots,asshownby
Figure18.3
.
Asusers
fill empty slots with additional nodes, new slots appear where needed.
This distinctive characteristic causes all networks in Genetica to exhibit cer-
tain design commonalities, even for assets created by different artists. First, nodes
are always arranged in such a way that information flows downwards through the
network, with nodes towards the top of the workspace signifying the initial com-
ponents involved in an asset's production and lower nodes representing additional
refinements of previous steps. Second, each asset ends in a single root node at the
bottom of the workspace that represents the final output of the network. Because
of this structure of many branches coalescing into a single root, node networks in
Genetica are referred to as
node trees
or even just
trees
.
18.2.2 Groups
Node trees can be packaged into single nodes called groups. Consider a glow or
bloom effect, which can be created in any image editor by combining a picture with
ablurryversionofitself.Therighthalfof
Figure18.4
showshowsuchaneffect
would be structured in Genetica. The Change BCI node influences the strength
of the effect, the Gaussian Blur node creates a blurry version of the image, and
the Combine node blends the blurry version with the original sharp image. As
previously indicated in
Figure 18.2
,
such a setup would be constructed by dragging
the mentioned nodes from the library panel into the workspace.
Figure 18.4.
A glow effect packed into a single group node (left). The contents of that
group (right).
