Gavin Clayton
@gavinclayton.bsky.social
Hello! I'm the creator and lead developer behind Daggerfall Unity.
Now working part-time on another game.
Devlog: https://dev.interkarma.net
Location: Australia
Now working part-time on another game.
Devlog: https://dev.interkarma.net
Location: Australia
Asset manager can now import a mix of files and folders while preserving source hierarchy on import. Asset builders are multithreaded and run even while files are being copied, so whole process completes in about the same amount of time as file copy, including thumbnails for textures and models.
July 1, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Asset manager can now import a mix of files and folders while preserving source hierarchy on import. Asset builders are multithreaded and run even while files are being copied, so whole process completes in about the same amount of time as file copy, including thumbnails for textures and models.
Deep Engine drag-and-drop several hundred FBX model files into asset manager
June 29, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Deep Engine drag-and-drop several hundred FBX model files into asset manager
Setting up a modal progress dialog so editor can display progress after user drags and drops a large number of asset files into engine.
June 26, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Setting up a modal progress dialog so editor can display progress after user drags and drops a large number of asset files into engine.
Early stage of Deep Engine's asset rebuild and hot-load in action. After editing and saving image file, the build system detects change to source file and rebuilds it into a texture asset based on current meta properties. Note editor thumbnails on left update after image is saved.
June 8, 2025 at 1:56 AM
Early stage of Deep Engine's asset rebuild and hot-load in action. After editing and saving image file, the build system detects change to source file and rebuilds it into a texture asset based on current meta properties. Note editor thumbnails on left update after image is saved.
I haven't posted a blog update in several weeks now, but I have been working hard across several fronts! This blog post catches up on what I've been doing and where I'm headed next.
dev.interkarma.net/2025/05/02/m...
dev.interkarma.net/2025/05/02/m...
May 2, 2025 at 3:46 AM
I haven't posted a blog update in several weeks now, but I have been working hard across several fronts! This blog post catches up on what I've been doing and where I'm headed next.
dev.interkarma.net/2025/05/02/m...
dev.interkarma.net/2025/05/02/m...
Making an editor front-end for asset compiler. Asset builders are now multithreaded, so an expanding log reader is required to solve the problem of linear output becoming interleaved from different threads executing in parallel. I can also highlight any build errors directly in the editor.
April 25, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Making an editor front-end for asset compiler. Asset builders are now multithreaded, so an expanding log reader is required to solve the problem of linear output becoming interleaved from different threads executing in parallel. I can also highlight any build errors directly in the editor.
Making some big improvements to asset browsing. In addition to thumbnail view, it will now support lists and trees and more filtering options.
Also built a new tree view control that's fully virtual and can scroll hundreds of thousands of items without slowing down.
Also built a new tree view control that's fully virtual and can scroll hundreds of thousands of items without slowing down.
April 17, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Making some big improvements to asset browsing. In addition to thumbnail view, it will now support lists and trees and more filtering options.
Also built a new tree view control that's fully virtual and can scroll hundreds of thousands of items without slowing down.
Also built a new tree view control that's fully virtual and can scroll hundreds of thousands of items without slowing down.
I really want to become more proficient in Blender. Following some courses and immersing myself in practise each day. Right now learning how to model a detailed human figure and I'm slowly becoming more confident with the tools. Best way to learn is to make mistakes and fix them.
April 3, 2025 at 8:20 AM
I really want to become more proficient in Blender. Following some courses and immersing myself in practise each day. Right now learning how to model a detailed human figure and I'm slowly becoming more confident with the tools. Best way to learn is to make mistakes and fix them.
Animation retargeting now working well enough to throw all kinds of animations at all kinds of models. This whole process was really involved. I had to set up a retargeting pipeline to handle joint-to-joint mapping, pose correction, and proportion correction.
March 30, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Animation retargeting now working well enough to throw all kinds of animations at all kinds of models. This whole process was really involved. I had to set up a retargeting pipeline to handle joint-to-joint mapping, pose correction, and proportion correction.
Revisiting and improving animation retargeting in my engine. Looking forward to supporting more animation inputs.
March 28, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Revisiting and improving animation retargeting in my engine. Looking forward to supporting more animation inputs.
Really happy with my procedural sky so far. Shadows lengthen and shorten as the sun disc arcs from dawn to dusk. Clouds are lit by sun's direction as they drift and evolve throughout the day. The skybox colours light environment based on time of day. It's a good base to build on!
March 21, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Really happy with my procedural sky so far. Shadows lengthen and shorten as the sun disc arcs from dawn to dusk. Clouds are lit by sun's direction as they drift and evolve throughout the day. The skybox colours light environment based on time of day. It's a good base to build on!
I forgot to mention - new sky system casts shadows over terrain that move as the sun tracks across the sky throughout the day. I'll do a proper pass on this once distant terrain is further along. It's not much, it just adds a little extra something.
February 28, 2025 at 4:14 AM
I forgot to mention - new sky system casts shadows over terrain that move as the sun tracks across the sky throughout the day. I'll do a proper pass on this once distant terrain is further along. It's not much, it just adds a little extra something.
Working on sky colour gradients that are a bit more "grounded" by reality, then I'll finish animation of day night skies. These skies aren't going to win any technical achievement awards, but they can sometimes make pretty background vistas, and I'm OK with that.
February 27, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Working on sky colour gradients that are a bit more "grounded" by reality, then I'll finish animation of day night skies. These skies aren't going to win any technical achievement awards, but they can sometimes make pretty background vistas, and I'm OK with that.
Working on game time and day/night cycles. An animated sun disc follows directional light as it rotates through the sky. Also animating environment light intensity on a curve. Now to animate sky colour gradients and a few other refinements, and I'm done with skies for a bit.
February 27, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Working on game time and day/night cycles. An animated sun disc follows directional light as it rotates through the sky. Also animating environment light intensity on a curve. Now to animate sky colour gradients and a few other refinements, and I'm done with skies for a bit.
Fixed some visual bugs and improved performance a whole lot. Static HDR image-based lighting on left, dynamic sky shader HDR lighting on right - computing whole skybox + irradiance maps every frame at only +3ms.
February 26, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Fixed some visual bugs and improved performance a whole lot. Static HDR image-based lighting on left, dynamic sky shader HDR lighting on right - computing whole skybox + irradiance maps every frame at only +3ms.
Now using my dynamic skies as a source for HDR image-based lighting. Comparison between a static HDRI and dynamic sky pickup on spheres with roughness and metallic gradient.
February 26, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Now using my dynamic skies as a source for HDR image-based lighting. Comparison between a static HDRI and dynamic sky pickup on spheres with roughness and metallic gradient.
Creating utterly lurid skies to get them out of my system.
February 25, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Creating utterly lurid skies to get them out of my system.
A basic procedural sky with clouds, gradients, sun disc, and a bit of lighting on clouds based on their volume and sun direction. Lots of work to do on this in future, but it's a good enough starting point.
February 25, 2025 at 12:14 AM
A basic procedural sky with clouds, gradients, sun disc, and a bit of lighting on clouds based on their volume and sun direction. Lots of work to do on this in future, but it's a good enough starting point.
Just a tiny bit of ray marching through noise volume gives the clouds a better sense of light direction and volume. It's still fast too at ~1ms per redraw.
February 24, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Just a tiny bit of ray marching through noise volume gives the clouds a better sense of light direction and volume. It's still fast too at ~1ms per redraw.
As much as I want to go nuts working on awesome clouds, I can't get bogged down. A quick compute shader to render noise into a texture cube will do for now.
February 24, 2025 at 7:12 AM
As much as I want to go nuts working on awesome clouds, I can't get bogged down. A quick compute shader to render noise into a texture cube will do for now.
Using colours to represent a vector in shaders is a neat way to "see" directions, sort-of like synesthesia for spatial orientation.
February 24, 2025 at 3:43 AM
Using colours to represent a vector in shaders is a neat way to "see" directions, sort-of like synesthesia for spatial orientation.
In Project Arroa: Revenwood, Dougal’s Glade is where the player starts their adventure. It’s also a sandbox where I can experiment with production, art styles, and gameplay. This post explores the concept along with a few additional details.
dev.interkarma.net/2025/02/21/d...
dev.interkarma.net/2025/02/21/d...
February 20, 2025 at 11:59 PM
In Project Arroa: Revenwood, Dougal’s Glade is where the player starts their adventure. It’s also a sandbox where I can experiment with production, art styles, and gameplay. This post explores the concept along with a few additional details.
dev.interkarma.net/2025/02/21/d...
dev.interkarma.net/2025/02/21/d...
Bright moon dipping below gum trees behind the house tonight.
February 14, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Bright moon dipping below gum trees behind the house tonight.
First video of functioning terrain painter tool. Paint two textures at once with brush radius, UV scale, and slope threshold. The slope threshold controls how the horizontal and vertical textures are blended. UV scale defines texture repeat.
February 13, 2025 at 4:14 AM
First video of functioning terrain painter tool. Paint two textures at once with brush radius, UV scale, and slope threshold. The slope threshold controls how the horizontal and vertical textures are blended. UV scale defines texture repeat.
A downside of this terrain texturing method is the control map texels look blocky when adjacent to different settings.
A solution is to resolve neighbouring control blocks and blend between their colours manually in fragment shader. And to carefully manage weights for more natural-looking blends.
A solution is to resolve neighbouring control blocks and blend between their colours manually in fragment shader. And to carefully manage weights for more natural-looking blends.
February 10, 2025 at 3:48 AM
A downside of this terrain texturing method is the control map texels look blocky when adjacent to different settings.
A solution is to resolve neighbouring control blocks and blend between their colours manually in fragment shader. And to carefully manage weights for more natural-looking blends.
A solution is to resolve neighbouring control blocks and blend between their colours manually in fragment shader. And to carefully manage weights for more natural-looking blends.