I would love to share my first steps and first learnings with Godot 3 with you guys 🙂

Export Blender Models as .dae files

As one of my first tasks I tried to export models from Blender to Godot. For my first approach I used .obj files and imported them into Godot without any problems so far. After a while I realised, that my artist also created some materials, which weren’t included in the import.
I figured out that Godot advices to use .dae files, which includes the materials correctly. So we exported the files as .dae. Surprisingly every model was imported as a Scene in Godot, which first confused me, but it is the right workflow. I will explain it within the next chapter.

Use Scene instancing

Having each Model as a scene has one big advantage: We can instantiate them. In UE or Unity this is called a “Prefab” as far as I know. In Godot we can use a Scene as a prefab, this is why .dae files represent a scene. It is a good practice to have everything as a scene and then in your game scene instantiate all the other scenes just like that:

Game (Scene)
  Human (Instanciated Scene)
  Landscape (Instanciated Scene)

You can read more about that here: http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/getting_started/step_by_step/instancing.html

Use Unity Tutorials, if you can’t find any for Godot

Actually there are more tutorials available for Unity than for Godot, but nevertheless just watch the Unity ones. Most likely it is really easy to transfer the knowledge from Unity to Godot, since most options have the same names or working in kind of the same way.

GD Script is not Python

Even if they look quite similar GD Script is not Python, it is just inspired by Python. Why is it worth to know that? I was confused, because I encountered some ‘What the fuck’ moments when writing GD Script for the first time, since I have a strong Python background. So you should definitly check out the GD Script syntax first to get an overview. 

You can read more about GD Script here:
http://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/getting_started/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_basics.html

Next steps, next big idea

I decided to start a Vlog (it will not replace the Blog) on YouTube within my project (Remastering MegaLoMania). I will record the first introduction video within the next days, so make sure to follow me on my social media channels to get informed.
In the Vlog I would like to share all learnings and progress I made day by day.

Thanks for reading!