Man, I had so much fun using this plugin over the last few months and cant wait to finally use it in my next video! Dash 1.8 is awesome, Top work team at polygonflow!
Currently not doing any job as I took a break for a few months. Have started applying for a job again and this is the first plugin I am gonna buy after trying it out for 30 days. Looks fun and time saving. Keep up the good work.
Sounds like a good idea! You can grab the trial now already if you want to train on it before you start working again! :) I can extend the 30-day trial if needed! :)
The plugin is so awesome, since I am not making money with unreal I find it hard to engage in a subscription method for such a plugin, but if I ever start making money with unreal, this is a must buy
@@polygonflow Hello 👋 will sure do. I am learning architectural visualisation, and I want to use unreal more but it's quite hard to export assets from archicad to unreal and your plugin is awesome, it helps create complex scenes in a short amount of time.
@@polygonflowdo you plan on keeping mega scans implementation after the whole fab faisco? These tools just work so well with those realistic assets! Should I start snagging as many free ones as I can?
@@ShinGidora Yes we plan to make the same integration with fab! So yes, you should make sure to add/download as many MS assets as you can, as we will of course only be able to show the downloaded MS assets in Dash later as well :)
This plugin is like a gift from god for me and my biggest passion project as well as for anything else I’m doing with unreal. I love you guys for life😂
Love it! How does it work together with world partition? And culling? How does the outliner panel look in UE after setting up the scene with objects? Does the landscape nanite & displacement work in 8x8km landscape?
Right now, the Dash results are not assigned to any partition. But we have plans to look into this workflow deeper and improve here! We do have a culling setting in our Scatter tool :) We store the Dash settings in one actor that has a JSON, and then for each scatter instance etc you create with Dash they are a separate actor in the outlier. Our Material Edit tool does not work at landscapes at all right now actually. Planning to fix this in the future as well! :) I hope this answers your questions a bit, feel free to join the Discord for deeper conversations 😄 www.polygonflow.io/discord
Thanks! No, right now we have not focused any on the ability to paint materials. Could you describe how you would like such a workflow to work together with our Blend Material Tool? :)
Happy to hear you like it and find it useful! Our plan is to still make it possible to easily use your downloaded Megascans assets through Dash :) So as long as one grabs lots of Megascans assets right now while they are free, I think most people will have a decent amount of assets to use in Dash going forward!
There's a tutorial where you can download every megascan assets to your account very easily, search for it. I would tell you the channel name but i dont remember :d
Been making game environments for 27 years this is just the kind of thinking I really dig .. purchased and using good job yall. Quick question about foliage. Since your using foliage in the scatter here I was wondering if unreal is still processing those things much like when you use UE's foliage system or is dealing with those kind of elements differently?
Thanks for saying that and thanks for the support! We use HISM just as UE foliage painter so once the results are in, it is more or less the same! :) If you have any follow up questions here, just let me know! :)
Ok, for real this looks amazing. Question though: I’m a cosplay photographer that is constantly spending hours looking for assets to build the environments where my clients will live in their images. I’m currently slogging through learning Blender so I can just create whatever I want myself. Would moving to Unreal Engine and utilizing Dash be a better course for me, or is it worth sticking it out with Blender to get where I want?
Hey! I'm not sure about the current state of Blender Eevee, but if real-time rendering is important to you, I would go with Unreal. In my opinion, it's simpler and faster to create amazing things with it.
Keep up the incredible work! I wouldn't be surprised if Epic purchases you one day and integrates your UI in by default. It's just SO user friendly. Wish your team all the success!
It works fine actually! Our scatter results use the same tech as UE foliage and PCG. HISM. So feel to try it out on a game scene! And of course with any game scene, it is important to think about how many assets are put into the scene, regardless of using Dash, UE foliage painter or PCG :)
@@polygonflow Hehe yeah-no that's true, the tool doesn't dictate how hard the mesh affect the computing performance. So, weather you use the UE5 method or this awesome tool, you'll get the same performance. I'd love to check out the dash plugin asap but I'm busy as heck with exams right now. Definitely going to download it once I have some spare time, you guys really are awesome for allowing us to test the product for 30 days. As someone who are not working a full-time job yet, that 10$ a month isn't going to kill me either, will definitely be subbing for the 3months! Thanks for that! :)
@@JPN762 Thanks for taking the time to write this and let me know you are down to try it out!😃Feel free to ping me on Discord once you have started testing it, and best of luck with the exams! /DanielFreden
Ye you can scatter or use our tools on any surfaces more or less! :) Right now our Blend Material and Edit Material tools do not support landscapes, but it is on our todo list! :) So feel free to give it a try and if you run into issues or questions, our Discord is the place to be 😀
@@polygonflow Thank you so much for the response. I have just downloaded the demo, once I finish up on a project I am subscribing; you guys have made a monster of a toolset here! haha
Do you mean if we could add a third layer, that would be snow layer? Certainly possible! And right now I think you should be able to change the color of the snow to make it look like Sand👋
@@polygonflow Yeah I think that would work. That snow looks good, if we could as you suggest turn it into color that sand has, we got ability to create more varied environments, whole deserts etc. Not sure if it would make sense here, but it would make it easy to do :)
@@UnchartedWorlds For sure! I will experiment with it tomorrow! But my idea is to use the Blend Material or Material Edit, scroll down to the Snow settings at the bottom and change a few settings to get the sand color, in case you want to try it right away 👍
Thats one heck of a tool.... Unfirtunately I do mostly medical animations and usually have more specific needs for that, so its probably not justifiable to get for work, even though I could imagine a few use cases already... A few questions about that: A) Does it still use PCG under the hood, is it custom blueprints or is it fully c++? I´m asking due to wondering how customisable it would be... B) Are the materials also "baked" in the UI or is there an option to switch it out with your own custom master material? I particularily like how you implemented AI for tagging, color reference and documentation. I think that should be a standard for every great tool these days. I could imagine some more extended features in the not too distant future: 1. Image analysis and automatic collection of fitting assets from the asset library. 2. Image analysis and complex 3D mesh generation through an iterative process of splitting it down into modular assets, creating lowpoly meshes for these and then adding detail via geometry scrippting and texture projecting using AI generated textures....:) 3. Maybe add some AI guided basic lighting. This way you could start out with AI generated concept art and then basically do 50-80% of the basic set up fullly procedurally and only needed to add the final artistic touches with shading/asset placement and specific hero assets... But this already looks insanely powerful as it is....
Hey! Got it, you should give the free trial a test, maybe some of our tools can help your workflows! But let's see if I can answer your questions first, A) It is 99% custom C++ and Python, and a few blueprints. No PCG is used at all. We don't have any tutorials or docs on it, but you could in theory go in and customize at least some of the code yourself. B) When using Megascans and Poly Haven assets and materials through the Dash Content Browser, we use our own custom Master Material, which is what gives you access to our Material Edit and Blend Material tools. You could go in and change this Master Material, but if you replace it your your own you would lose access to our Material Edit and Blend tool. For the other materials you use through Dash (your own materials you have added through our AI tagging), we don't do anything special, no separate Master Material etc. (So no Material Edit or Blend Tool for those) 1 Something similar is already in the works! 2 For the time being we don't think 3D mesh creation is good enough and not sure about its use cases yet, and we definitely do not have a big enough team to look into that feat, but we are for sure keeping an eye out on how this feat is going within the industry! 3 Yes that would be awesome, we have our image-to-grading feature which is cool, but doing the same for lightning is something we really would like to do! For sure, we are definitely thinking and experimenting with different AI features that would help the artist create as long as they are still in artistic control! Lots of the steps in a world-building process can definitely be improved with AI features without removing the control of the artist! Happy to hear you think it looks great so far! If you decide to try it out, would love to hear your first impressions later!
Is this performant enough for large game environments, or is it mainly intended just for visual art? I'm downloading the trial, but was curious about frame rates.
It works for large games as well yes! We actually shared a user-created environment yesterday that was quite big: x.com/polygonflow/status/1858115488003342346 FYI, the Dash results does not "respect" world partition, but we hope to look into this more down the line :)
Yes it works well for game dev as well! We are using HISM in the background, same as PCG and the UE foliage tool so all should be good! And for our procedural mesh tools, we offer an easy option to convert them from our custom mesh type to static meshes, so all good on that as well! If you end up giving it a try and have questions about your specific use case, feel free to let us know, happy to help out! :)
@@polygonflowHello, so when you duplicate cans/logs in the video you are actually creating instanced meshes, not separate meshes, right? Trying to understand if I parsed your message correctly. If that is the case I would definitely look into buying.
@@Markandei Our Physics tool, actually creates individual meshes. But you can easily merge them together with our Merge Tool to create one Static Mesh. Does this workflow make sense for you? Our Physics Paint tool creates an instance though! :)
Happy to hear you think so! Please let us know if you still feel that way after you have tested it! We have really tried to make it as easy as it seems in the video! :)
@@newtforgegames It is our top priority right now, so soon yes! But for now, you can still use those assets in Dash by first placing them in the level, or by adding them to your project assets in the Dash Content browser 👍
Yep that should work! We have a projection mask in the road tool! You can see it around the 4:00 timestamp :) If it does not end up working for your mesh, drop us a message in our Discord and we can try to figure it out together!
Hey! I really want this plugin! One question - if I get this plugin, will someone else who works on my project (sound designer) still be able to get on the project without the plugin? Had that issue previously
Hey! Yes, no worries! You can work together with them on it without them having Dash! Here is some additional info: docs.polygonflow.io/getting-started/getting-started#sharing-the-level-with-someone-without-dash
None of our tools work with level streaming unfortunately, it is on our to-do list though! Regarding world partition, our tools are not world partition aware, but I know some people have used Dash in those levels anyhow. So, no, no official support, but you can give it a try yourself for free and see how it goes if you want! Honestly, we need more feedback on the world partition workflow. So if you want an extended free trial to try it out some, you can drop us an email, info@polygonflow.io :)
Hi. Can i use Dash to add water to my scene instead of the road? And if yes do i need to aply water material instead of the material that you have used?
If you already have a water material, you can simply drag and drop it on our road mesh yes! If you want to use the Dash Water material we have on our water plane, please send a message on our Discord and I can record a video showing you how to do it :)
All our scatter tools are using HISM in the backend, so it works as well as if you would use PCG or UE Foliage Painter :) So it works well! You can of course try it out for free to try it out properly :)
@@polygonflow Yes, perfect ergonomy ! I am UE5 user just for fun its not my job, and its very hard to use it without Dash 1.8, Syncerly I dont use the 1.8, but trought the video tutorial its amazing for a non professional guy like me. waiting for lighting tutorial with Dash 1.8. good job guys.
quick question , is the tool customizable inside its system? for instance does the scattering system use pcg that we can further tweak? or the material system we can use our own master material? Thanks!
You can easily access the base python code for the scatter tools and further tweak it if you like yes! But no, we are not using PCG to create the tools. So you would need some programming skills to do further customizations :) Our Material Edit tool and Blend Tool are built with our own Master Material so if you were to use your own Master, you would not be able to change the material through Dash. Perhaps we will expand into this in the future, but no concrete plans on it right now to be honest :) Is it something special you think is missing from our scatter tools and materials? :) Happy to get suggestions!
Using Megascans and Poly Haven materials through Dash on Landscapes does not work well right now no, it is because we have not set up Landscape Materials yet, but we will in the future! :) But you can use all our tools, on landscapes yes! Scattering, Procedural Roads etc etc :)
Hey! We are looking into the best possible solution. Until then, the current way of doing this would be to add your FAB assets to your project through FAB, and then in the Dash Content Browser, go to the Current Project View, and compute the folder with these FAB assets. But, remember that you can of course use all the tools in Dash even if you don't add your assets to our Content Browser. You can open the tools through our menus or by searching for the tools and then assigning assets to the tools, like Surface Scatter :)
Sorry to hear that, not sure what's the issue. You should be able to see all your project asset folders in the Current Project tab in our Content Browser. And then once you compute the folders, the assets should be popping up. What step is it you are having problems with?
As the UE Foliage Painter is pretty good and pretty easy to work, we focused on the approach we have right now with our scatter tools :) But you can paint vertex colors and then use those vertex colors as mask in our Surface Scatter tool :)
Hi! The tools we provide with Dash are editor-only, meaning they're not suitable for animation or in-game behavior changes. That applies to the physics systems too. We're looking for ways to change that, but I'm not sure if/when we'll be able to pull it off.
What exactly you mean? :) We are working on integrating Fab/Megascans into our Content Browser, if that was what you meant :) But you can of course use the Dash tools on assets that already exist within your level as well, now already :)
Oh, sorry about that, not sure what is happening here, could you join our Discord and send a message there? Much easier to go back and forth and find the issue in Discord :) www.polygonflow.io/discord
Hey, it looks so amazing and beneficial. I have a small question: is there any way I could integrate my own materials? Are there any rules for that? What if I want to use other custom tools like Easy Fog (for example)? Is there any way I can connect this plugin with Dash? Or can I change\edit the snow layer but material? Is there any way I can create a falloff mask for scattering? Because, as I see in the video, when you excluding plants from the road, it looks like a sharp cut, not a falloff (if that makes sense) So exciting :)
Hey! Right now our Material Edit and Blend Material only works with our own Shader and that works with Megascans and Poly Haven assets, but we are planning to look into giving support for your own materials as well, not sure when exactly though :) EasyFog is a really cool tool, but no, you would not be able to adjust that Fog with our fog tool right now no :) But we are planning on improving our Fog tools a lot in the future as well :) You can't control any other Snow than our Snow no, but our snow is getting constantly updated as well! So it will only become better and better :) Yep we have a FallOff parameter in Surface Scatter, it is actually quite good and very important for many Scatter use cases indeed :)
We have been working on a crossroads system, but it is in pause currently actually. Hope to resume it later in the year though! Anything in particular you think would be important for that, or just the basics? Nothing in the plans specifically for random roads generation, but I am noting it down. In one or two releases we are planning on shipping "presets" with our Compound tool to help users build more complexed environments more easily, so a road system definitely fits in there! :)
@@polygonflow Your title says about easy world building - so, it sounds like it should generate a city as easy as in Houdini. But on the video I see this tool is more like an UE brush plugin.
@@PsijicV I hear what you say for sure. City building is something we are planning to go deeper into soon! For cities right now, I would say Dash is better for adding details to them, than building a full city from scratch. But our Path Scatter and Grid Scatter tools can definitely be used to build a city, but the workflow is not as good as we would like it to be, that's for sure! :)
after selecting the curve for the second time to create the second road for the lines nothing happens after clicking on the + (no second road is created 😞
Hmm, have you made sure to opened a new Road tool for the second road? And also, please check so the new road is not created within the other, that might make it hard to see it. A great tip when creating your second road, is that you can duplicate the first road tool from within the tool menu. Then you get the same settings and can then adjust further :)
Hey! If you open up the terrain tool in Dash, you can assign a Height Map that you have in your UE Content Browser to it, and then the Dash terrain will use the data from the height map! :) If I did not understand the question correctly, please let me know :)
I was really excited to try out this plugin, but to my disappointment, it only supports Windows and not macOS. It's unfortunate that mac users are left out. I hope a macOS version is available soon!
Yee sorry about that! We have gotten some Mac support requests, but so far there are not enough for us to devote the enormous amount of time that we would need to, to make it work! :( Noting down your request though!
I hear you, we would have loved to offer a free non-commercial version, but as we are putting lots of time into continues development we need to bring in revenue in order to make the project feasible. Hopefully, we might be able to offer a free version in the future! For now we also have a perpetual license for those that are not a fan of the subscription model, would that make more sense for you? :)
We do offer a free trial for 30 days, but after that, it is a paid plugin. But we do have a few different pricing options! If you don't think they work for you, send us an email and we can discuss, info@polygonflow.io :)
I just installed the software, but their must be some shortcut to directly start typing in the text field in dash right? It can’t be that you actually need to click in the text field to start typing ? But what is the key combo? Anybody knows ? (For example how the Unreal Quick Action plugin works) just Alt + Q. And you can start typing, what you want or need.
@@polygonflow Shortcuts are a good idea, and it would be nice if you could specify a shortcut for your tool. I use move tool a lot, and I wish I could specify a shortcut to trigger it myself.
![[TH] 2024 PMGC League | Survival Stage วันที่ 1 | PUBG MOBILE Global Championship](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FVFT-PFwU80/mqdefault.jpg)
Please let us know what you think of our new UI! We hope you will love it! 🙏
It's amazing, it's like a cheat code in a good way
@@glenn3646 That's a lovely way of seeing it❤🔥What do you think will be your favorite new feature of 1.8?😄
This is one of the best Feature...This will help to make scenes faster. Eagerly waiting to try this
@@dddharmesh Thank you! Would love to hear what you think after you have tried it!
pleaase just make it a little cheaper... It's so wonderfull, but I don't understand how you justify your pricing.
the amount of work put in this plug in is insane............ thank you so much for your work and for ur kindness ..........
You are very welcome! Thank you for your support!
Man, I had so much fun using this plugin over the last few months and cant wait to finally use it in my next video! Dash 1.8 is awesome, Top work team at polygonflow!
Awesome hearing that, thank you for the support ❤I have been looking forward to your next video, and hope to see some cool Dash 1.8 stuff in there!
this is genius. Creating a scene just by simulating how it would be created in reality. Really awesome
This is huge. Unreal Unleashed!!
@@unbalanced.studio that's a good tag line! 😄
Currently not doing any job as I took a break for a few months. Have started applying for a job again and this is the first plugin I am gonna buy after trying it out for 30 days. Looks fun and time saving. Keep up the good work.
Sounds like a good idea! You can grab the trial now already if you want to train on it before you start working again! :) I can extend the 30-day trial if needed! :)
@@polygonflow Many thanks. I will try it soon. Just busy at the moment in some pending house chores and job interviews.
@@scott1391990 No worries! Best of luck with the interviews! :)
The plugin is so awesome, since I am not making money with unreal I find it hard to engage in a subscription method for such a plugin, but if I ever start making money with unreal, this is a must buy
Thanks for saying that ♥️ Would love to hear more about what you do in Unreal, so feel free to send me a DM on Discord 👋 /DanielFreden
Hi Rudy!
That's totally understandable; you should message us at info @ polygonflow . io, and we'll give you a 6 months license for free :)
@@polygonflow Hello 👋 will sure do.
I am learning architectural visualisation, and I want to use unreal more but it's quite hard to export assets from archicad to unreal and your plugin is awesome, it helps create complex scenes in a short amount of time.
After trying Dash, I can't stop using it. It's more than just a plugin.
@@StillMotion ♥️♥️ I totally agree, as we keep developing it, it is soon limiting calling it a plugin.
This is the best tool out there, thank you!!
You are very welcome! What would you say are the top 3 features? 😎Just curious!
Oh my god. This is insane. High on my wishlist!
@@ShinGidora Awesome! Grab a free trial, and let us know how you like it 💪
@@polygonflowdo you plan on keeping mega scans implementation after the whole fab faisco? These tools just work so well with those realistic assets! Should I start snagging as many free ones as I can?
@@ShinGidora Yes we plan to make the same integration with fab! So yes, you should make sure to add/download as many MS assets as you can, as we will of course only be able to show the downloaded MS assets in Dash later as well :)
@@polygonflow tysm! 🔥
This plugin is like a gift from god for me and my biggest passion project as well as for anything else I’m doing with unreal. I love you guys for life😂
😄😄 Happy to be of assistance! What are you working on? 😀
Awesome update again, keep up the great work guys. Love Dash
Thanks for the support ♥️
Love it! How does it work together with world partition? And culling? How does the outliner panel look in UE after setting up the scene with objects? Does the landscape nanite & displacement work in 8x8km landscape?
Right now, the Dash results are not assigned to any partition. But we have plans to look into this workflow deeper and improve here! We do have a culling setting in our Scatter tool :)
We store the Dash settings in one actor that has a JSON, and then for each scatter instance etc you create with Dash they are a separate actor in the outlier.
Our Material Edit tool does not work at landscapes at all right now actually. Planning to fix this in the future as well! :)
I hope this answers your questions a bit, feel free to join the Discord for deeper conversations 😄
www.polygonflow.io/discord
You've made a very nice work! Now the interface is a lot clear!
Is it possible to paint levels of the blend material too?
Thanks! No, right now we have not focused any on the ability to paint materials. Could you describe how you would like such a workflow to work together with our Blend Material Tool? :)
Amazing update
Thank you for the help in Discord with finding the bug and helping us test it👋
Wonderful job! I really like the changes. It's getting better every time! Thanks!
Absolutely amazing! Does this work with datasmith Twinmotion import?
@@Jordan-dr9hq Thanks ♥️ Could you elaborate more exactly what you mean? 🙂
I love the new Dash, it saves you so many hours of work. I'm just curious how you're going to do it next year when Megascans costs money.
Happy to hear you like it and find it useful! Our plan is to still make it possible to easily use your downloaded Megascans assets through Dash :) So as long as one grabs lots of Megascans assets right now while they are free, I think most people will have a decent amount of assets to use in Dash going forward!
There's a tutorial where you can download every megascan assets to your account very easily, search for it. I would tell you the channel name but i dont remember :d
Nagyon jó bemutató!
Awesome! Can't wait to try it out!
You really should! ❤🔥❤🔥
Been making game environments for 27 years this is just the kind of thinking I really dig .. purchased and using good job yall. Quick question about foliage. Since your using foliage in the scatter here I was wondering if unreal is still processing those things much like when you use UE's foliage system or is dealing with those kind of elements differently?
Thanks for saying that and thanks for the support!
We use HISM just as UE foliage painter so once the results are in, it is more or less the same! :) If you have any follow up questions here, just let me know! :)
Ok, for real this looks amazing. Question though: I’m a cosplay photographer that is constantly spending hours looking for assets to build the environments where my clients will live in their images. I’m currently slogging through learning Blender so I can just create whatever I want myself. Would moving to Unreal Engine and utilizing Dash be a better course for me, or is it worth sticking it out with Blender to get where I want?
Hey! I'm not sure about the current state of Blender Eevee, but if real-time rendering is important to you, I would go with Unreal. In my opinion, it's simpler and faster to create amazing things with it.
Keep up the incredible work! I wouldn't be surprised if Epic purchases you one day and integrates your UI in by default. It's just SO user friendly. Wish your team all the success!
Thank you❤🔥
Man, what a tool!!! I really love it!! Makes our job much easier, thanks for that tool guys 😍
Thanks for the support! If you haven't already, feel free to share your work in our Discord, always fun seeing what people create with Dash!
@@polygonflow Will do it for sure!! Thank you
its amazing, guys! Great job!
Looks lit! Wondering how well all the scattering objects (foliage) will be processed performance wise within a game scene...
It works fine actually! Our scatter results use the same tech as UE foliage and PCG. HISM. So feel to try it out on a game scene!
And of course with any game scene, it is important to think about how many assets are put into the scene, regardless of using Dash, UE foliage painter or PCG :)
@@polygonflow Hehe yeah-no that's true, the tool doesn't dictate how hard the mesh affect the computing performance. So, weather you use the UE5 method or this awesome tool, you'll get the same performance. I'd love to check out the dash plugin asap but I'm busy as heck with exams right now. Definitely going to download it once I have some spare time, you guys really are awesome for allowing us to test the product for 30 days. As someone who are not working a full-time job yet, that 10$ a month isn't going to kill me either, will definitely be subbing for the 3months! Thanks for that! :)
@@JPN762 Thanks for taking the time to write this and let me know you are down to try it out!😃Feel free to ping me on Discord once you have started testing it, and best of luck with the exams! /DanielFreden
Incredible work! A question though- Is it possible to use an existing mesh as terrain or convert?
Ye you can scatter or use our tools on any surfaces more or less! :)
Right now our Blend Material and Edit Material tools do not support landscapes, but it is on our todo list! :)
So feel free to give it a try and if you run into issues or questions, our Discord is the place to be 😀
@@polygonflow Thank you so much for the response. I have just downloaded the demo, once I finish up on a project I am subscribing; you guys have made a monster of a toolset here! haha
@@CameronMcMillan22 Thanks for the support and kind words, means a lot!
Can you add "desert" to snow and rain layer? I mean sand :)
Noted!
Do you mean if we could add a third layer, that would be snow layer?
Certainly possible! And right now I think you should be able to change the color of the snow to make it look like Sand👋
@@polygonflow Yeah I think that would work. That snow looks good, if we could as you suggest turn it into color that sand has, we got ability to create more varied environments, whole deserts etc. Not sure if it would make sense here, but it would make it easy to do :)
@@UnchartedWorlds For sure! I will experiment with it tomorrow! But my idea is to use the Blend Material or Material Edit, scroll down to the Snow settings at the bottom and change a few settings to get the sand color, in case you want to try it right away 👍
Thats one heck of a tool....
Unfirtunately I do mostly medical animations and usually have more specific needs for that, so its probably not justifiable to get for work, even though I could imagine a few use cases already...
A few questions about that:
A) Does it still use PCG under the hood, is it custom blueprints or is it fully c++? I´m asking due to wondering how customisable it would be...
B) Are the materials also "baked" in the UI or is there an option to switch it out with your own custom master material?
I particularily like how you implemented AI for tagging, color reference and documentation. I think that should be a standard for every great tool these days.
I could imagine some more extended features in the not too distant future:
1. Image analysis and automatic collection of fitting assets from the asset library.
2. Image analysis and complex 3D mesh generation through an iterative process of splitting it down into modular assets, creating lowpoly meshes for these and then adding detail via geometry scrippting and texture projecting using AI generated textures....:)
3. Maybe add some AI guided basic lighting.
This way you could start out with AI generated concept art and then basically do 50-80% of the basic set up fullly procedurally and only needed to add the final artistic touches with shading/asset placement and specific hero assets...
But this already looks insanely powerful as it is....
Hey! Got it, you should give the free trial a test, maybe some of our tools can help your workflows! But let's see if I can answer your questions first,
A) It is 99% custom C++ and Python, and a few blueprints. No PCG is used at all. We don't have any tutorials or docs on it, but you could in theory go in and customize at least some of the code yourself.
B) When using Megascans and Poly Haven assets and materials through the Dash Content Browser, we use our own custom Master Material, which is what gives you access to our Material Edit and Blend Material tools. You could go in and change this Master Material, but if you replace it your your own you would lose access to our Material Edit and Blend tool. For the other materials you use through Dash (your own materials you have added through our AI tagging), we don't do anything special, no separate Master Material etc. (So no Material Edit or Blend Tool for those)
1 Something similar is already in the works!
2 For the time being we don't think 3D mesh creation is good enough and not sure about its use cases yet, and we definitely do not have a big enough team to look into that feat, but we are for sure keeping an eye out on how this feat is going within the industry!
3 Yes that would be awesome, we have our image-to-grading feature which is cool, but doing the same for lightning is something we really would like to do!
For sure, we are definitely thinking and experimenting with different AI features that would help the artist create as long as they are still in artistic control! Lots of the steps in a world-building process can definitely be improved with AI features without removing the control of the artist!
Happy to hear you think it looks great so far! If you decide to try it out, would love to hear your first impressions later!
this is insane how everything is so easily compiled without havinf to manually build blueprints and PCG's with constant tweaking
That is exactly what we have tried to go for! :) Happy to hear you like it!
Looking great
Thanks! Looking forward to hear your thoughts on it later 🙏
Really Impressive!
Is this performant enough for large game environments, or is it mainly intended just for visual art? I'm downloading the trial, but was curious about frame rates.
It works for large games as well yes! We actually shared a user-created environment yesterday that was quite big: x.com/polygonflow/status/1858115488003342346
FYI, the Dash results does not "respect" world partition, but we hope to look into this more down the line :)
Awesome!
Thank you! We are very happy that it is finally out!
That is amazing! Is it optimized for game development as well?
Yes it works well for game dev as well! We are using HISM in the background, same as PCG and the UE foliage tool so all should be good! And for our procedural mesh tools, we offer an easy option to convert them from our custom mesh type to static meshes, so all good on that as well!
If you end up giving it a try and have questions about your specific use case, feel free to let us know, happy to help out! :)
@@polygonflowHello, so when you duplicate cans/logs in the video you are actually creating instanced meshes, not separate meshes, right? Trying to understand if I parsed your message correctly. If that is the case I would definitely look into buying.
@@Markandei Our Physics tool, actually creates individual meshes. But you can easily merge them together with our Merge Tool to create one Static Mesh.
Does this workflow make sense for you?
Our Physics Paint tool creates an instance though! :)
@@polygonflow Thank you so much for the response! Will let you know if I have any questions!
This AI tool should actually be integrated into every game engine. Whoever developed or invented it, I truly admire their genius work.
Thank you for saying this! We are fortunate to have great developers in the team👋
This insanely good.
Happy to hear you think so! Please let us know if you still feel that way after you have tested it! We have really tried to make it as easy as it seems in the video! :)
Now that FAB has been released does Dash still work in the same way? With the megascans content
@@newtforgegames It is our top priority right now, so soon yes!
But for now, you can still use those assets in Dash by first placing them in the level, or by adding them to your project assets in the Dash Content browser 👍
can you use the road tool to snap to a custom mesh? like I have a real life elevation that is brought in via FBX
Yep that should work! We have a projection mask in the road tool! You can see it around the 4:00 timestamp :)
If it does not end up working for your mesh, drop us a message in our Discord and we can try to figure it out together!
How does the integration with Fab work?
Hey! I really want this plugin! One question - if I get this plugin, will someone else who works on my project (sound designer) still be able to get on the project without the plugin? Had that issue previously
Hey! Yes, no worries! You can work together with them on it without them having Dash!
Here is some additional info: docs.polygonflow.io/getting-started/getting-started#sharing-the-level-with-someone-without-dash
does this work with world partition and level streaming to create big open world maps for games?
None of our tools work with level streaming unfortunately, it is on our to-do list though! Regarding world partition, our tools are not world partition aware, but I know some people have used Dash in those levels anyhow. So, no, no official support, but you can give it a try yourself for free and see how it goes if you want! Honestly, we need more feedback on the world partition workflow. So if you want an extended free trial to try it out some, you can drop us an email, info@polygonflow.io :)
Hi.
Can i use Dash to add water to my scene instead of the road?
And if yes do i need to aply water material instead of the material that you have used?
If you already have a water material, you can simply drag and drop it on our road mesh yes!
If you want to use the Dash Water material we have on our water plane, please send a message on our Discord and I can record a video showing you how to do it :)
Looks really nice, but how performing it is in the game, since is all procedural?
All our scatter tools are using HISM in the backend, so it works as well as if you would use PCG or UE Foliage Painter :) So it works well! You can of course try it out for free to try it out properly :)
@@polygonflow That's crazy. Ty for fast answer!
@@Aleks_Sense Feel free to reach out with more Questions in our Discord once you have tried it some 💪
I am Plugins user, This monster should be the best UE plugin !
Thanks for saying that! Do you think our latest UI change was a good call?
@@polygonflow Yes, perfect ergonomy ! I am UE5 user just for fun its not my job, and its very hard to use it without Dash 1.8, Syncerly I dont use the 1.8, but trought the video tutorial its amazing for a non professional guy like me. waiting for lighting tutorial with Dash 1.8. good job guys.
@@revoprod-h6k Awesome! Ye we should def tackle lightning at some point! :)
Wonderful!
Oh yes, we agree! :)
quick question , is the tool customizable inside its system? for instance does the scattering system use pcg that we can further tweak? or the material system we can use our own master material? Thanks!
You can easily access the base python code for the scatter tools and further tweak it if you like yes! But no, we are not using PCG to create the tools. So you would need some programming skills to do further customizations :)
Our Material Edit tool and Blend Tool are built with our own Master Material so if you were to use your own Master, you would not be able to change the material through Dash. Perhaps we will expand into this in the future, but no concrete plans on it right now to be honest :)
Is it something special you think is missing from our scatter tools and materials? :) Happy to get suggestions!
Sweet👍👍👍
Ohh yes😎
Does it support landscape? If i bring in terrain created in World Creator, then can it apply landscape texture to it.?
Using Megascans and Poly Haven materials through Dash on Landscapes does not work well right now no, it is because we have not set up Landscape Materials yet, but we will in the future! :)
But you can use all our tools, on landscapes yes! Scattering, Procedural Roads etc etc :)
Can we distribute decals along the curve?
@@povilaslondon Yes! We have proximity mask in our Decal Scatter 👍
How long can we use this after the trials are activated?
The free trial is 30 days! :) Do you think that would be enough time to try it out?
awesome
Thank you!
Is there an easy way to get fab assets into the content browser?
Hey! We are looking into the best possible solution. Until then, the current way of doing this would be to add your FAB assets to your project through FAB, and then in the Dash Content Browser, go to the Current Project View, and compute the folder with these FAB assets.
But, remember that you can of course use all the tools in Dash even if you don't add your assets to our Content Browser. You can open the tools through our menus or by searching for the tools and then assigning assets to the tools, like Surface Scatter :)
WHAT THE BIG TEAM YOU HAVE !! YOU'R INSANE , MAKE SUPER Utilities (But For Free :)
can't find the fab assets in the content browser.
Sorry to hear that, not sure what's the issue. You should be able to see all your project asset folders in the Current Project tab in our Content Browser. And then once you compute the folders, the assets should be popping up.
What step is it you are having problems with?
Is there a perpetual offline license?
There is not right now no, no offline ability at all actually. We hope to add this eventually! :)
Hi ! Dash is amazing ! But i can't use "Draw curve " on my own landscape did i do something wrong ?
That should definitely work, can you send us a video and some more info in our Discord? Much easier to help there!
www.polygonflow.io/discord
@@polygonflow Thx for the answer, i sent you a video on discord 😃
@@DrGreenthumbISO Great, thank you!
it is not possible to paint scatter like the physics tool works?
As the UE Foliage Painter is pretty good and pretty easy to work, we focused on the approach we have right now with our scatter tools :) But you can paint vertex colors and then use those vertex colors as mask in our Surface Scatter tool :)
Can i make the animation with physics tools? For example, I want to do a bottle drop animation in the movie sequencer
Sadly not! We are planning to look into it properly down the line, but it is a very hard problem to fix it seems 😢
Hi!
The tools we provide with Dash are editor-only, meaning they're not suitable for animation or in-game behavior changes. That applies to the physics systems too.
We're looking for ways to change that, but I'm not sure if/when we'll be able to pull it off.
Super cool
Thank you!
will there be a Mac version ?
At some point maybe! But as there is not much demand for it, it is really hard for us to prioritize it with our small team 😔
Can this be imported into Fab resources?
What exactly you mean? :)
We are working on integrating Fab/Megascans into our Content Browser, if that was what you meant :)
But you can of course use the Dash tools on assets that already exist within your level as well, now already :)
Is this compatible with voxel plugin
In what way exactly do you mean? :)
My tools panel does not appear when I create the terrain or hit edit, when I hit edit with the terrain selected nothing happens?
Oh, sorry about that, not sure what is happening here, could you join our Discord and send a message there? Much easier to go back and forth and find the issue in Discord :) www.polygonflow.io/discord
Hey, it looks so amazing and beneficial. I have a small question: is there any way I could integrate my own materials? Are there any rules for that? What if I want to use other custom tools like Easy Fog (for example)? Is there any way I can connect this plugin with Dash?
Or can I change\edit the snow layer but material?
Is there any way I can create a falloff mask for scattering? Because, as I see in the video, when you excluding plants from the road, it looks like a sharp cut, not a falloff (if that makes sense)
So exciting :)
Hey!
Right now our Material Edit and Blend Material only works with our own Shader and that works with Megascans and Poly Haven assets, but we are planning to look into giving support for your own materials as well, not sure when exactly though :)
EasyFog is a really cool tool, but no, you would not be able to adjust that Fog with our fog tool right now no :) But we are planning on improving our Fog tools a lot in the future as well :)
You can't control any other Snow than our Snow no, but our snow is getting constantly updated as well! So it will only become better and better :)
Yep we have a FallOff parameter in Surface Scatter, it is actually quite good and very important for many Scatter use cases indeed :)
@@polygonflow cool cool cool, thanks a lot for answering! Downloading Dash for testing:)
@@MrChronn22 Awesome! If there are any problems, don't hesitate to reach out in our Discord 💪
What about crossroads and random roads generation?
We have been working on a crossroads system, but it is in pause currently actually. Hope to resume it later in the year though! Anything in particular you think would be important for that, or just the basics?
Nothing in the plans specifically for random roads generation, but I am noting it down. In one or two releases we are planning on shipping "presets" with our Compound tool to help users build more complexed environments more easily, so a road system definitely fits in there! :)
@@polygonflow Your title says about easy world building - so, it sounds like it should generate a city as easy as in Houdini. But on the video I see this tool is more like an UE brush plugin.
@@PsijicV I hear what you say for sure. City building is something we are planning to go deeper into soon!
For cities right now, I would say Dash is better for adding details to them, than building a full city from scratch. But our Path Scatter and Grid Scatter tools can definitely be used to build a city, but the workflow is not as good as we would like it to be, that's for sure! :)
after selecting the curve for the second time to create the second road for the lines nothing happens after clicking on the + (no second road is created 😞
Hmm, have you made sure to opened a new Road tool for the second road? And also, please check so the new road is not created within the other, that might make it hard to see it.
A great tip when creating your second road, is that you can duplicate the first road tool from within the tool menu. Then you get the same settings and can then adjust further :)
Yeh i want dash apply to heighmap and sculp landscape of tab landscape ue5
Hey! If you open up the terrain tool in Dash, you can assign a Height Map that you have in your UE Content Browser to it, and then the Dash terrain will use the data from the height map! :)
If I did not understand the question correctly, please let me know :)
I was really excited to try out this plugin, but to my disappointment, it only supports Windows and not macOS. It's unfortunate that mac users are left out. I hope a macOS version is available soon!
Yee sorry about that! We have gotten some Mac support requests, but so far there are not enough for us to devote the enormous amount of time that we would need to, to make it work! :(
Noting down your request though!
amazing tool, but a rental model base on a free software is crazy! it'd be fair to charge if only commercially used rather than subscription based.
I hear you, we would have loved to offer a free non-commercial version, but as we are putting lots of time into continues development we need to bring in revenue in order to make the project feasible. Hopefully, we might be able to offer a free version in the future!
For now we also have a perpetual license for those that are not a fan of the subscription model, would that make more sense for you? :)
@@polygonflow i actually understand, specially if it's a small team, thanks for the answer tho
@@wallisad2422 Happy to hear that👏We are indeed a very small team :)
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
is this free
We do offer a free trial for 30 days, but after that, it is a paid plugin. But we do have a few different pricing options! If you don't think they work for you, send us an email and we can discuss, info@polygonflow.io :)
I just installed the software, but their must be some shortcut to directly start typing in the text field in dash right? It can’t be that you actually need to click in the text field to start typing ? But what is the key combo? Anybody knows ? (For example how the Unreal Quick Action plugin works) just Alt + Q. And you can start typing, what you want or need.
Thanks for bringing this up! You're right, it should be automatic. We'll implement this in the next update!
Thanks dash team this looks like a great update. Especially the blend material set up.
@@polygonflow Shortcuts are a good idea, and it would be nice if you could specify a shortcut for your tool. I use move tool a lot, and I wish I could specify a shortcut to trigger it myself.
@@兔阿-q6q 100%! We will look into this!
You’re a fucking god
Comments like these keeps us motivated, keep it up😎