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0 pointsterramex5y ago0 comments

> Graphical programming languages are nowhere.

They are super popular in game development. The most popular one is Unreal Engine's "Blueprint". Unity does not include visual scripting, but there are popular plugins on Asset Store, the biggest one is PlayMaker. Unity Technologies themselves plan to release their own, in-engine visual programming tool this year.

Apart from that, visual programming is commonly used for shader programming, video compositing and AI/animations scripting [1].

I am a programmer and like many of my peers I cannot stand those systems, but designers and artists love them. They are widely used everywhere from small indie games up to AAA releases, not only for simple logic but for modelling complex behaviours and flow controls too.

https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com

[1] Example of AI graph form The Division (5:34 - 6:10): https://youtu.be/fZOZ2daE-lA?t=334

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KineticLensman5y ago

> I am a programmer and like many of my peers I cannot stand those systems

I am also a programmer but I love my graphical shader editor in Octane [0]! It's the perfect interface for defining a graphical data flow. For example, I can implement really complex spatial conditionals by creating a merge node controlled by a greyscale bitmap. E.g. to create a gold thread on a silk material, I can merge existing gold and silk shaders through a bitmap of a lace pattern, itself edited in Photoshop. Just by connecting some nodes.

[0] https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/

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