Goshapes makes it easy to rapidly generate levels in Godot 4.
This tool augments Path3D nodes with abilities to:
- create custom block meshes (earth, buildings, etc)
- create path meshes (fences, paths, roads)
- scatter instances (trees, rocks, grass, etc)
This makes it ideal for quickly putting together 3D environments.
Goshapes wraps your custom meshes to a path you specify in the editor:
You can also use paths to procedurally place instances:
^ Notice that the trees above both snap to ground and ignore the footpath. This can be toggled by layer masks.
To install, clone this repository into the addons folder of your Godot 4 project, so that its path in your project is res://addons/goshapes.
A sample scene, and some sample shape styles and materials have been included under the samples subdirectory. Have a play around there, it should become obvious what the tools can do.
Goshapes works mainly in the inspector. You can add a new Goshape through the add menu or the Goshapes menu in the top toolbar.
The inspector will always have shape native properties and path options. Path options can be copied between shapes, while shape native properties are individual.
For a Goshape, all posibilities and configurations can be achieved using the inspector.
- Axis matched editing is useful for inorganic shapes like buildings or structures. When enabled it will caused axis-aligned points to move with the point you're currently editing.
- Invert and recenter alow you to change the direction and origin respectively.
Alongside that, there's the Path Options which can be copied between shapes.
- Flatten will force the path to flatten the Y axis, which is useful when you're editing flat surfaces for a player or NPC to traverse.
- Twist will allow you to bend the path in weird and wonderful ways for shapes like corkscrews and vertical spirals.
- Line will cause the shape to extrude along the path instead of filling the path. This is useful for footpaths, roads and fences.
- Rounding will round the edges of the shape by the desired distance
- Interpolate affects the detail of the shape
- Points On Ground will cause the points to align to the surface below them using Raycasting
- Offset Y shifts the shape up or down
- Ground Placement Mask will affect which objects are selected in a Points On Ground raycast
Shapers can be picked from the top of the shaper inspector (Shaper must be expanded.)
Blockshapes are the main Shaper type for rendering geometry, they combine up to three shapers to make geometry: the CapShaper, the WallShaper and the BottomShaper. For the most part, this is automatic.
There are three cap shaper types: Flat, Plane and Line. Flat and Plane are great for building most shapes (with Plane containing more detail) and Line is useful when using the line PathOption (see above). These three methods alter the triangulation technique used for the caps.
All Cap shapers take a material and render its UVs 1:1 in world space.
There are two wall shaper types: Bevel and Mesh. Bevel will generate a straight wall and allows tapering and bevelling. MeshWall is the most useful, allowing you to create custom geometry and wrap it to a wall. There are some tricks to creating that geometry, that I go into below (see Making Mesh Walls).
Scatter shapers allow for spawning of as many instances is needed within an area:
- Density controls how likely an instance is to spawn
- Spread changes how far apart the instances are (actual distance from neighbour is between 0 and spread * 2
- Seed changes the random seed
- Place on ground causes the genrnated instances to be placed on the ground using Raytracing
- Noise lets you override the inbuilt reandomness
- Evenness changes how well aigned the instaces are. The higher the value, the less organic the scatter selection is.
I initially developed this addon for Godot 3, as GDBlocks. This version marks an increase in scope that was made possible thanks to new tools and performance improvements in Godot 4. As the change is quite dramatic, I've decided to fork my own project and make the improvements here. Going forward, this will be the only active project in development.