Hey everybody and welcome back to ForgeHub! Today we have a new newsfeed for you going over everything covered in the recently posted 343i video on Forge! This video went in-depth on a lot of the new features coming to forge while also highlighting some returning features as well!



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forge Menus and UI Elements

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We were shown a few menus from the new Forge Experience, some of you may have seen these if you've been tampering around with the leaked forge build on the Co-Op flight, but we're going to cover them and recap anyway for all of you who haven't!



Starting one that should look pretty familiar to all of us who Forged in Halo 5, the object browser! This has seen some significant updates, primarily Prefabs now being a dedicated section at the top of the browser, as well as a "Recents" section, which we can assume will be recent Forge blocks placed. Alongside those additions we can also see at the bottom that all the object categories are seemingly openable like folders, allowing you to flow to any category while keeping others open or closed for fluid Forging. Compared to Halo 5 where almost every menu has multiple sub-menus. We can also see that many of these categories are similar to Halo 5, such as Accents, FX, and Lights, but there are some new ones too such as, Props, Biomes, and Halo Design Set. According to Cliff Schuldt (Level Designer at 343 Industries), it seems that the Halo design set is primarily used to block out maps, as in the video you can see there is a gridded texture applied to it, something very similar to what you would see in other game engines.


(Design Set Texture according to Cliff)



In other menu-related news, we also saw our first official look at radial menus, such as these, the Prefab Menus and the Scripting / Building/ Quicksave menus. These Menus seem to be primarily for the functions of Scripting, Building lighting and map elements, and Prefabing items; with many more features being a possible addition down the road if the community wants it or if the team has a new feature they really want to add.



This is the "Build Menu", this can be accessed from the radial menu with the Node Graph and Quicksave options. This menu is where you can build elements of the map such as in-depth lighting, Reflection Volumes, Nav Mesh, and Audio. While we don't know all the details on how this menu functions exactly what we can see from the video is that the Nav Mesh is used for Bot pathfinding, confirming that we will be able to use Bots on our Forge Maps! Another thing you may have noticed from the picture above is the statement "Dirty Data will prevent the map from being Published.", we can deduce that in order to share your map you will need to make sure those red triangles are gone and all this data is built. So make sure that you build all of your build menus so we can check out your Forge Creations when Forge Launches in November!



We also got this brand new UI element on our screen, Michael Schorr (Forge Lead at 343 Industries) explained this one and it seems to be an exact counter for Object properties, allowing us to be more exact without having to open up a menu to make fine adjustments perfectly. This is great for all of us using the Z-Fighter tool, now we don't have to always eyeball or use coordinates in the menu to know the exact details of an object!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other cool features and options
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------



We now have the ability to preview all objects from the menu! Object searchers rejoice! No longer will we have a basic green box to show how big an item is with no other visual information, now we can hover over any object in the menu and it'll show us exactly what we are going to place, and not just a wire box outline or anything like that no, a full item, colors, textures and all!





Scaling has been shown off quite prominently throughout this deep dive as well, we were able to see things from scaling a piece down to the skinniest possible size to get a very unique texture to using scaling for multiple pieces to make one very finely detailed piece in the prefabs section.





Even Terrain can be fully scaled from something so small as a trash pile with grass in it to a mountain from one single piece! This evolution to Forge is going to really broaden our horizons
on so many objects, making this a true renaissance to Forge and Forge art from such a crucial feature in the new tool. You can imagine the sheer possibilities not only for Map Art but for custom Prefabs and more





Speaking of scaling and prefabs, we also see this beloved feature from Halo 5 return to Halo Infinite with its own dedicated radial menu (See earlier in the article), we were able to see two examples of the new prefab system, one where Cliff prefabed two objects together to show how to do it, and another with two prefabs showing us some more detailed prefabs that some forgers have created. It's going to be great to see all the new prefab creations from everyone once Forge Releases, heck we might even have a few prefab dedicated Forgers!



We also got a sneak peek at some of the new textures and texture options we'll have, from being able to color our textures and apply grime and scratches, to the breath of new textures we will seemingly have in this Forge. Not just Halo texture either, some real world textures like grated steal and dirt! This is a drastic improvement from Halo 5, not only did Halo 5's textures look glossy and unrealistic in comparison, but we also will seemingly be able to customize our texture to our heart's content at this rate. I can't wait to see what the community creates with this much flexibility!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User Creations
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------








We also got to see some absolutely stunning creations from not only Cliff with his recreation of the campaign mission's Forerunner architecture, the lighting and the art of which looked excellent. We also got to see the first official look at what seemed to be a polished Forge Map by Forge Council Member Sikamikanico! Sikamikanico has been in the community for quite some time and has had quite the portfolio of maps, this map looks to be a recreation of one he did in Halo 5, it's amazing to see how much of a drastic improvement this map has had art-wise from Halo 5 to Infinite. These user creations are just the start, we'll probably be seeing more in the coming weeks with the new Forge videos 343 plans to release, hopefully, we'll see more awesome creations but if we don't we are still seeing a lot of awesome creations from the community through the leaked forge build on PC, I hope to see all of your creations prosper when we all get our hands on the tool in November!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing remarks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This news is fantastic, not only have we learned so much officially but we also are getting closer and closer to the official release of the tool, without all of us here in the community it wouldn't be the same, I know the wait has been agonizing, but on the bright side, we're getting a fantastic tool that we'll know is ready for us to go to town on when November comes around!

Since this article was posted today, I just wanted to put a small tribute out to all who were lost back on this day 21 years ago, and may we never forget the tragic events of that day. Godspeed to you all. A moment of silence if you would.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.

On a final good note, we're ramping up things here at ForgeHub, from streams being back on track, to articles and videos releasing, to game nights (soon), and our social media presence too, we're looking forward to continue to build the Forge Community with you all and as always we look forward to promoting the best and brightest out there in the community! A new episode of Creators Spotlight will be released on the 20th of this month, a little late but we'll be back on schedule with those soon enough! Thank you everyone again for joining me for this long newsfeed and I hope you all have a wonderful day!​

See y'all star side
-Crush​