Its 2021 and things are already looking up. We in Australia have had a ton of rain and not much wildfires, no Covid cases in 2 weeks, Vaccines are going out in the rest of the world and some billionaires are being owned on wall street.
Could not have asked for a better start to the year!

I am working on some optimizations for the current version of FlowScape, since adding a lot of D&D content has pushed the memory consumption a little high. So i want to make sure it runs on every system. So stay tuned it shouldnt be long.


FlowScape V2 is also progressing, last week i was creating Lower level of detail for objects in the distance, so that the size of the landscape doesnt slow you down at all.


Every few month Unity comes out with a few new features, so i tested out Raytracing and path tracing to see what can be achieved with that. Currently its very unstable, does a terrible job with trees and plant shaders and crashes between scene loads, but i will be keeping an eye on it with each new release, as the quality of lighting that can be achieved is very cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOHonLvnwSI

This week's challenge on our discord is very special - We're collaborating with the composer Michael Ghelfi to create a FlowScape scene to go with his upcoming Haunted Cemetery ambience on YouTube.
Being a special event, there is of course also special prizes on the line. On top of the usual 100$ prize, Ghelfi is giving away his entire collection of sounds (worth around 100$) to the winner, and a pack of ambiences and an orchestral album to the runner ups.


Make sure to stop by and Vote in the "World of Dreams" Challenge, as there are some awesome entries.
The Ready to go channel has a lot more models recently added that import perfectly, so have a gander in there for any new models you might want to import.

You can join the discord here https://discordapp.com/invite/HwRN2k8

I have added 92 new images to Flickr that i thought were outstanding. Well done guys and girls, you continue to amaze me with the art you are creating with FlowScape!

Check them out here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/189735127@N05/

Let the power of Halloween take over and do its magic. Hope you have a pleasantly frightful night and succeed in trick or treating.

Happy Halloween!

Come join our Trick or Treat design challenge on Discord.
The winning entry wins $100.

https://discordapp.com/invite/HwRN2k8

Hey beautiful people

This is a little update for those that dont visit our Discord, which is the main hub around FlowScape with a lovely community, weekly competitions, a place you can ask questions and showcase your work.

Invite to Discord

Currently we have the Ancient Ruins Challenge, where you can win a $100 prize



If you are new to FlowScape there are a ton of great little tutorials covering most topics on our Youtube



Link to the playlist

A few little sneak peaks at what is happening behind the scenes with underwater creatures.







Got some fancy new birds that properly flock and avoid the terrain



Working on solutions for much larger Terrain



Check out Flickr where i upload my favourite images i see. Maybe yours is already there?



Link to Flickr


While its been a while since an update has come out thanks to all that is happening in the world, i will keep sharing what i have planned for the future, as i still pour many hours into FlowScape and cant wait for you to get your hands on the next release.

Hope you all are staying safe and happy!

Today we have a little sneak peak at a VR Prototype i have been working on. It is taking a while to develop as taking a headset on and off so many times in a day can be quite exhausting, but it sure is promising! and so much fun to play with as you are essentially the camera, making navigation a breeze.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpyUq87bL-k

Last weeks Storybook Challenge was won by Kiki with her creative entry. Congrats!


This weeks challenge is "Temple of Doom" A big thank you to Cynthia who runs the challenges on our discord every week. Join the Discord to enter


We have some great new tutorials that were created by AlanSmithee, Check them out, maybe you might learn a trick or 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-C5Zm5FiiA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaaFCXWIlH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwWnWrqcehQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdpji7yHjr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDoz6Q6gUac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-mcdP8wCUA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9wntkWGLGI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye2d7524cy0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7rQ8fEePFU

I hope each and everyone of you are well, please stay safe!

Design Challenge
Tales of Adventure

What would your storybook look like?
If you were a powerful mage that could make stories come to life,
what would be buried between the pages of your tales? How would you
show the stories of a tale untold?

Use the storybook landscape for this challenge, and blow us away with
your daring tales of adventure or fortune!

Enter on our Discord before June 25th, 1pm CEST to win a $200 paypal prize

Click here to enter

Development of FlowScape is back on track as things are looking much better here in Australia and most importantly, the kids are back in school! I finally have time during the day to put into development again.

Thought this might be a good chance to show some of the features in the oven, a lot of them are done, some need a bit more polish, but it shouldn't be too long until i get an update out.



If you ever feel like a challenge, head into our friendly Discord where you can learn new tricks, get help if you are stuck and we have weekly art competitions with a $30 prize.
https://discord.gg/HwRN2k8

Hope you are all well and taking care of yourselves

The last update was rather wet, so to keep a nice balance we have some desert plants and trees for you today.



A few bug fixes also:

Sun lines up with the reflection

Ocean button disappearing when taking a panorama is fixed

The rain follows the camera now instead of just being over the terrain for those ocean storms

The Physics boats were not saving in some circumstances and that should be fixed

found a bug that stopped sky rotation from saving

Enjoy!

Hey Folks

We have a new Ocean setting in this update, its in the main panel just click on that and play with the settings.
In the boats section there are some physics driven boats now that will bob up and down with the waves, this is an experimental feature, so it may do funky things, especially if you scale them small or large, so for best results keep that size slider in the middle for now.

In the water tool, if you scroll through now you have a bunch of river objects you can place and maybe piece together like a slot car set.

Volumetric fog can be accessed through the little arrow next to fog, have a play with these settings and see what you can come up with, its another experimental feature, hopefully its useful.

A few pieces of furniture are now available. Remember you can use Alt + mouse wheel to resize, Shift + mouse wheel to rotate and Ctrl to place on objects such as the floor.

AO now lives in the camera settings

Copy paste can now use Shift, Alt and Ctrl

A few bug fixes are here and there as well.

If you find any more, do let me know through Discord, which is also a great place to chat, join challenges, help each other out with issues and meet some nice folks!

https://discord.gg/HwRN2k8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5-OGWCL5XU

Enjoy

A lot of you guys are pushing FlowScape way beyond i ever imagined and it really warms my heart. I have been saving the best things i can find to our Twitter Go check it out!

We have some new things to play with and we have some new tools as well in today's update.

Over 50 new castle and village buildings and accessories.

A dozen satellite captured terrain pieces for backgrounds.

By popular request, a rainbow.

Falling leaves that can be placed under a tree.

Fluffy pollen to give the scene some atmosphere.

Visibility layers so that you can toggle off flowers or plants or trees while you are building massive scenes.

More save slots.

When importing you can press place, to drop the imported object on top of your landscape.

and a few bits and pieces im sure you will discover yourself.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSYNTqw6P5Y

Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul
~ Niki de St. Phalle

In today's update we have Breathtaking Auroras, Fluffy Clouds, Magical Unicorns, Climbing Lianas and Beautiful Lanterns.

Check out the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luR5ybaOaGg

New things:

You can toggle a house onto the Rock layer by pressing R, so you can paint on it.

Copy Paste has had some thought gone into it, simply press Ctrl C and then you can place the copy one by one, then right click to cancel.

You can invert an object by pointing at it and pressing I.

Resizing the moon is now possible with the transform tool.

We have a water object now, but i highly recommend to only use 1, it has performance issues with too many, and also you might see some glitches, This dev cant wait to try those RTX cards to bypass these limitations.

Rotating the map in Ortho is now possible.

In settings you can switch to AZERTY keys

Fixes:

There was a bug with birds and butterflies and other flying things on the turtle and book where they would clump together, thats been sorted.

An are you sure button on random landscape, apologies to the streamer that i saw that happen to. Woops.

Right Ctrl P for a random Landscape

Got rid of the blue tint below the water as that messed with sculpting.

I have turned undo off while sculpting, so that you dont try it and undo your trees. Undo will come for sculpting eventually.

Fixed a blurry Ui in low res mode

Happy Painting!