New Article at freshmeat.net

Saalen · Post by **Saalen** » Sat May 08, 2004 2:35 pm

Hi, a short article was released today at freshmeat.
It covers the strengths and some lacks of Irrlicht : http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1182/

Tyn · Post by **Tyn** » Sat May 08, 2004 5:09 pm

Seems like a fair, if slightly short, review of Irrlicht. His complaint about model formats seems somewhat redundant however, as there are plenty of free modelling software which can export to a format usable by Irrlicht.

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Sat May 08, 2004 5:53 pm

I have seen this on the article:

Also, as of version 0.6, the "skybox" object is only capable of displaying 16-bit textures, thus showing color banding on higher-quality images. I find this to be a nuisance.

It seems that this guy has not played too much with IrrLicht, because that is very easy to fix: IVideoDriver::setTextureCreationFlag(ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_QUALITY, true);

qwe · Post by **qwe** » Sat May 08, 2004 11:35 pm

hi all,

I wrote that article.

Thanks for your criticisms.

Jedive wrote:I have seen this on the article:
It seems that this guy has not played too much with IrrLicht, because that is very easy to fix: IVideoDriver::setTextureCreationFlag(ETCF_OPTIMIZED_FOR_QUALITY, true);

I tried this once. It may have been with the 0.5 engine, though I thought I did it with 0.6 as well.

And my gripe isn't with the model formats in general, but with the animated model formats. MD2 is somewhat outdated and there are very few modelers for it that support animation.

Tyn · Post by **Tyn** » Sun May 09, 2004 9:55 am

Well, my answer to that would be to suggest a better animated model format that you can edit using a free model program and I am sure Niko will add it.

A good article, just think the criticisms are a little unfair when I haven't seen OGRE or any other engine using a model format that would be better than the ones in Irrlicht.

qwe · Post by **qwe** » Mon May 10, 2004 2:15 pm

.x is great... except for the fact that it is widely unsupported by free/open-source modeling tools. Of course, just about every animated model format is fairly proprietary to the company that created it.

What the open-source community needs is more 3D/cad tools, and open standards for model formats. hmmm...

and a guy posted a comment with this link: http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/b ... index.html which is a md2 exporter for blender. pretty cool.

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Mon May 10, 2004 2:30 pm

.x is great... except for the fact that it is widely unsupported by free/open-source modeling tools.

And very poorly supported in IrrLicht

For animated meshes, i think i'll stay with .ms3d

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed May 12, 2004 7:06 am

".x is great... except for the fact that it is widely unsupported by free/open-source modeling tools"

That most surely will change soon

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Wed May 12, 2004 7:27 am

grunt, that guest was me.

Blender most surely will end up having its Blender x exporter supporting bones and weights.

And that's totally open source, Blender also can be run in Macos, Linux and Windows.

So...that'd be way much more than usual game engines do have.

It seems though, that animated x format still have some issues in irrlitch... But imho is a matter opf go polishing

Just can't imagine the wonderness once Blender can export in x format bone animations with weights...That'd rock absolutely.

For static, OBJ seems to be good. As well as ms3d.

I totally dislike md2 now. It deforms the mesh a lot. In 2000 tris models, it's seen weird. Not an irrlitch fault; it happens in any md2 viewer.
Way better is md3 in that area.
and way better than both, animated x format.

As much as I know...Ogre, Neoengine, do not have much bette rloaders. I mean, usually these type of engines add support for Maya, Max...and after some of these, coders get tired of adding formats.While adding x adds support for once to Maya, LW, Max, XSI, Hash, etc. There are x plugins for all of them. Can only imagine the work of doing and exporter for each...

But for this reason, yep, then x format must be poolished in irlitch...imho...

BTW, Ultimate Unwrap seems to output x files that Irrlitch likes...also, some people just resave with the free (I think is in dx8.1, and 9.x SDK, which are TOTALLY free, and downloadable. It maybe good though that if legally allowed, someone hosted meshviewer, as I have an slow conection and needed that utility the other day, hard to download 200 mb for that thing...)

I need it for testing tools with developers...

as I say, resaving in mesh viewer fro dx sdk, solve many problems.
must be a matter of syntax. Or something. SOme none supported feature...

X has the problem that is a very complex format fro coders, but in the other side, is probably the only one so powerful, and so supported.

I have worked a lot with it, and conversions of bones and animations, and weights, made with many packages, would have been totally impossible if not.

X is added as an import format in :

- Gamestudio (soon to have weights, there, at that is even better Irrlitch

)
-Tv3d Engine. Free for non comercial uses, this engine seems good, and supports vb and c++, I think.Supports bones and weights. And import of them.

-Dark Basic Pro, imports perfectly x with weights and bones. ppl is even starting to do rag doll stuff with x weighted and boned imported files...well, only very advanced people. Rag doll is complex

-ANY c++ and dx coder, make use of x animated format. I suppose X-Box games do support this directly.

-Quest3d, comercial.
-as ultimate unwrap comverts to b3d, md2 and many others, you have all that .And happily, Ultimate Uwnrap supports weights, not like Milkshape, that doesnt, and being an artist, that is horrible.

-Urgh3d. Support x format, and Character Fx is proved to work with it exporting as x file.

-A pair of other free engines, which names now I don't remember.

....So... is a great move, you see many good engines, several comercial, did added it.

I'm 98'3 % sure that Blender will export that fully.

I have been playing with Blender bones lately, and once you pass the very hard learning, is damn powerful.

qwe · Post by **qwe** » Thu May 13, 2004 2:09 pm

I agree with just about everything you said

Besides my disliking of the X format because it's microsoft's brainchild(BOOO microsoft

) I think it's the way to go for animated meshes.

And blender. Blender has the potential to be an incredibly powerful 3D studio(which it is) except for the fact that its interface is TOTALLY different than any other that I've seen. It's literally impossible to start modeling as soon as you download it. Their online docs are sparse as well, practically forcing you to buy their $30 book. bleh.

But why am I complaining, really? I mean, 3ds max is in the $3000-$5000 range, so $30 is a steal

Whoops, maybe I spoke in error. It looks like you can now download the Blender 2.3 guide in PDF format-- something you couldn't do before.

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Thu May 13, 2004 2:31 pm

i can't find that guide

qwe · Post by **qwe** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:33 pm

http://download.blender.org/documentation/
or, direct link to the gzipped manual
http://download.blender.org/documentati ... .23.pdf.gz
The user's manual(vol. 1) weighs in at a whopping 32 megs...

that's gotta have a lot of images in it

This may not be the verbatim Blender Guide, but it has enough material to get started with... the online html version has a nice little tutorial about modeling and animating a gingerbread man.[/quote]

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Thu May 13, 2004 4:47 pm

Oh, thanks, I was looking in www.blender3d.com instead of www.blender.org

Lord_ZealoN · Post by **Lord_ZealoN** » Thu May 20, 2004 5:31 pm

I'm user of blender (the best 3d software XD)

for qwe:

http://www.elysiun.com

is the best community of blender in english.

for jedive:

http://www.nicodigital.com

Is the best community of blender in spanish with 3000 users (200 active XD).

The tutorials and users of blender is huge, and is not very difficult to find this material.

P.D.: Registrate que ahí hay tutoriales interesantes y te ayudarán/ayudaremos en todo lo que podamos.

P.D.2: Mirate las normas del foro que aquí te multan eh? XD

Jedive · Post by **Jedive** » Thu May 20, 2004 11:22 pm

Asias Zealon