Dev Log #25: New Office, Drone HDRIs, and Playtest Progress

The last two months have been very productive for Poly Haven!

Last time we announced details about Project Lighthouse, our first proper game project, and things have been moving forward nicely since :)

We also moved offices last month, made progress on our marble texture vault, drone HDRI app, and about 254 other things!

A while back we started using Notion as a project management tool and communication hub, following a semi-agile workflow and creating tasks for almost everything we do. This means we have a lot of data and charts about what we’ve been up to since the last dev log!

Cumulative effort (approx. days of work) the team spent on projects since the last dev log. Not including Project Lighthouse.

This is going to be really valuable to track how much work goes into each project and help us figure out how to spend our time and effort more effectively.

If you like pretty graphs and data, you'll probably like our stats page or finance reports too :)

Project Lighthouse Progress

Things are more or less going according to plan with the game project.

We’re currently iterating on the central part of the game and have started doing a few playtests with folks we know. We plan to do some more general hands-off tests with you guys on Patreon at some point as well when we’re ready.

Right now we’re finally at a place where the gameplay and mechanics are becoming finalized, so we can start working on the art and assets for the game. We’re taking an iterative approach and are figuring out where we can get help from a community project in the next few weeks, and what parts we need to take care of ourselves. I’m really excited for us all to work on something big like this together, and build free content for other game developers to benefit from at the same time.

A New Place

Our previous office was unfortunately sold and we got kicked out. Things were getting a little cramped with the 6 or 7 people we had working there every day anyway, so it was time move to a new location.

We’re now in a nice quiet suburban house with plenty of space for the team, the dogs, and a little room to grow :)

Drone HDRIs

I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is a huge success! Getting to this point has been a major and consistent struggle with DJI’s SDK and other factors since July. Our first tests have been completed successfully and we’re finally ready to start shooting some actual HDRIs!

Once we have some practice and experience, we intend to publish our app so that anyone with a similar DJI drone can also shoot aerial HDRIs easily. Feel free to reach out to us in the meantime if you’re interested.

Marble & Natural Stone Vault

We’ve completed a few tests and determined the best workflow to scan these materials efficiently without cutting (or cracking) corners, so the challenge now is actually acquiring or gaining access to the material to scan.

Full size 2x3m polished stone slabs are prohibitively expensive, and it doesn’t make sense for us to purchase literal tons of rock to scan once and then dispose of. So our approach has been to try and find a supplier to partner with who has a variety of material and all the necessary equiment to facilitate us to scan for a few days.

This has become a bit of a roadblock, and we’re struggling a bit to find local suppliers who are willing to cooperate with us. I’d hoped the textures would be done by the end of November, but it’s looking like it might take us a bit longer to get started.

In any case, I’m sure I’ll definitely have better news by the time I write the next dev log!

Surface Imperfections

We’ve got a solid plan and even a bit of a timeline for the surface imperfection scans (scratches, finger prints, grunge, etc). Once Project Lighthouse is out the way, this will likely be the next big project that the core team works on. It’s essentially a new asset type for Poly Haven, so we want to do it justice.

Once we have some experience and technical standards in place, we’ll also be opening up the floor for anyone else to contribute textures.  Unlike our usual scanned materials, this sort of thing doesn’t necessarily need any fancy cameras or strict process, it’s much more creative, so it’s a great opportunity for community contributions.

Add-on Update

Finally, a few weeks ago I started working on a major update to our Blender add-on at last.

Along with many new features and quality-of-life improvements to address all the common pain points, the new version will switch over to Blender’s extension system and coincide with the Blender 5.0 release.

We’ll also use the opportunity to increase the price of the add-on on Superhive as a way to help encourage people to get it on Patreon instead, which will remain $5/m and helps us towards the goal of releasing the add-on freely for everyone.