Torque ShowTool Pro : a 3D visualization tool helping artists and programmers to inspect their game art for esthetic and technical accuracy by simulating the in-game environment.

TST Pro is a 3D visualization tool for the Torque Game Engine. It helps artists and programmers inspect their game art for aesthetic and technical accuracy by simulating the in-game environment, and providing easy access to behind-the-scenes structures.

TST Pro helps indies make games. Just as the Torque Game Engine and Torque Shader Engine provide AAA game engine technology at prices indies can afford, with Torque ShowTool Pro indies now have a AAA-quality art tool to help put their production pipeline and development workflow on par with commercial studios.

Torque ShowTool Pro comes with a detailed manual, which is freely available for download and includes 80 pages of easy to read, in-depth tutorial and reference information.

The Torque ShowTool Pro is a must-have development tool for every single team and individual working with the Torque Game Engine. Programmers and artists can:

* View a shape’s material details and mesh with the click of a button
* Inspect Nodes and joint structures using easy to understand visualization tools
* Quickly verify a shape’s lighting and shading characteristics using a wide variety of rendering modes
* Analyze a shape’s performance set-up by visualizing triangle faces and strips quickly and efficiently
* Examine a shape’s collision meshes in detail
* Dynamically adjust and review levels-of-Detail and mip-mapping
* Combine and review animations
* And much more!

In short, every aspect of your DTS shapes can be thoroughly examined in more detail than ever before. Shapes are viewed exactly as they will be used in-game… all without needing to load your actual game!

“Torque ShowTool Pro is simply the best tool for any Torque artist. Besides all the incredible features, Mac support is a huge plus. With TST Pro, I can just keep the icon in my Dock and launch it whenever I need to view shapes and animations– just launch and go. Best of all, I can keep all of my art production completely on my Mac.” - Danny Ngan

You can pick up a full license right away by purchasing the Torque ShowTool Pro, or clicking the “Purchase” button inside the TST Pro demo itself.

Features

——————————————————————————-

3D View

Capable of loading multiple DTS objects into their own view. DSQ files may be loaded individually or through a standard .cs file to import multiple animation sequences at once. A list of the last five loaded objects is available for quick reloading.
Multiple rendering formats: textured shaded, untextured shaded, flat shaded, textured wireframe, front face wireframe, wireframe, vertices, bounding boxes, and triangle strips.
In addition to the perspective view, a number of orthographic views are available.
Any loaded object may be mounted onto any other object using any node. Includes correct orientation for TGE vehicle wheels.
Levels of detail may be manually selected or automatically determined as they would in-game.
User selectable bitmap for environmental mapping.
Background may be a solid color or a loaded bitmap. A snapshot of a game’s level could be used.
Object bounding boxes, collision meshes, and line of sight collision meshes may all be rendered.[/li]
The light source may be moved around with the mouse in a ‘trackball’-like fashion, or turned off for unobstructed viewing of the applied textures.
Full support for the Synapse Gaming Lighting Pack. See how your object will look if you add this product to your game.

Materials and Texturing

The current mip map level may be changed at any time with a key press. Mip mapping may also be turned off by locking the current mip map in place.
Textures may be flushed and reloaded with a key press. They may also be reloaded automatically on a user defined interval.
All DTS material properties are displayed.
Activate the TGE’s reskinning code to change a loaded shape’s textures, such as for different team uniforms.

Animation Sequences

Animation sequences may be played forwards or backwards at a user defined time scale. The sequences may also be scrubbed through using the animation time slider.
Multiple animation threads may be layered with full blend support.
All animation sequence parameters may be viewed, including a list of controlled nodes and defined triggers.

Shape Structural Views

All nodes and their parent/child links may be shown. When a node is selected, its world or local position and rotation are shown along with a graphical representationof the node’s axis.
If a node controls a mesh’s vertices, they are rendered with color coding indicating their weighting.
View the hierarchical structure of an exported DTS object using a number of methods. Useful for debugging a shape.
See the rendering structure of your object at each detail level to determine the order the meshes will be drawn in.
View the rendering order of BSP-based sorted meshes to check that pieces are not overlapping inappropriately.

[ Download Demo and find more details here ]