Enhancing the model viewer.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:31 pm

i'll check it out, looks pretty good.

it turns out i'm still stuck here in xml land, which is pretty much work-related.

i've demonstrated several programs already to my boss who happens to be the co-owner of the company. he liked the demo and would like me to continue on that direction.

but...

two major bugs showed-up and these two requires a 3D program to simulate past event, as previously captured data will then be fed to the analyzer to figure out what happened to the user's resources.

data will be pulled from a central server which is then projected inside a gameworld where several clients will view the sequence of events. this is the awesome part of the work, at the same time, very hard to implement.

that alone is pretty big, it's like writing a game, except it's not a game.

anyway, i've digressed and now off-topic. though i'll be back to add more code to the viewer.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:46 pm

Dorth wrote:I put whatever weight I have that this become the new model viewer distributed with Irrlicht, especially if functionalities keeps on adding up ^^

I think you should be ready to lose quite a bit of money.

I mean seriously, no disrespect to anybody, and I hate being the "devil's advocate". But to be realistic, don't you think niko would be a little bit pissed considering that someone is trying to mimc irrEdit as an open-source implementation when he is trying to sell the source of irrEdit to make some money for his company.

Really, I would have to take that into consideration when doing this. The irrEdit source code doesn't cost that much, and I think it would be great if someone actually supported his move, and brought it.

Anyways, that's just my two cents, and it doesn't reflect the ideas of niko, or even the community, it only reflects my ideas.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:50 pm

halifax: have you used irredit? would you pay money for that tool?

i've demonstrated it to people here, and i'm not going to write what they said here.

sorry. it's just the way it is.

i don't want to pop the balloon, but there it goes....

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:59 pm

Uhm, did you notice that irrEdit has a built-in light mapping tool, integrated scripting abilities, etc?

Frosty Topaz · Post by **Frosty Topaz** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:39 am

Personally the only problem I have with IrrEdit is the lack of support for building scenes using CSG methods. But it's not exactly hard to do that in radiant and import it as a Q3 BSP so...

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:49 am

I have worked with many 3d editing tools and level design tools in my life. And IrrEdit is so annoyingly different in behavior in many aspects that in the end, it's easier for my whole company just to write a custom editor each time tailored for the game we're making. If it was well made, or if I'd had the source, I'd modify it to suit my needs but right now it,s pointless. NO I would not pay a cent for a tool I don,t use. I might pay for Irrlicht, but never for IrrEdit or Irrklang (against which I got other biff.)

That said, I am grateful for Irrlicht and this tool IS open-source, based on an open-source graphic engine, already public on the site of THAT graphic engine, it'd make sense to add it.

christianclavet · Post by **christianclavet** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:28 am

Hi. Guy.

Just readed your posts and I just want to be clear. This is NOT a IRRedit replacement. This is not a level editor with lightmapping at all. This is model viewer enhanced for testing also animations and tweaking surface (So i'll be able to check the animated models with their Normal/Specular maps and check if they are ok before importing in my engine project. (The First King)

This code is open source and I will only use IRRlicht commands in there. I think is a great demo for showing some 3D application using only the base IRRlicht and no addons. So it give an idea on the potential of the engine for creating tools and applications.

Code is getting bigger and bigger now...

Adding things like crazy!

New things implemented.
- Animation control window is now working, you can define the start and end on a specified frame. And play it back on the selected Model
- Added a selection tool window that is used to select the model we want to check (can load more than one model now)
- added a new button now to move the model in the viewports (more easy than the request). I will try to add rotate and scale/strecth in the future (2 more buttons).

Here are the screenshots:

This is representing the SELECTOR windows and Animation control window.

This is the four viewport view with the new button to move the selected model directly with mouse in the viewports

You will need to put that picture in your "media folder":

here is the file: http://www.clavet.org/files/main.cpp
Same location as in the first post of this thread.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:44 am

thanks, chris, that is really awesome.

what i'd like to work on is adding Cg ( IGPUProgrammingServices ) in there as well. i got the tools a while ago on how to generate the maps for parallax mapping, it's right there posted on the nvidia developer page, the tool is a photoshop plugin. i guess the circle is now complete for this one.

also, it would be nice to have just one file for now. that will force us to think small, like not going crazy over declarations and whatnot. it's still ok to explore and experiment in every direction, though.

>> nvidia texture tools <<

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_t ... tools.html

>> gimp normal mapping plugin <<

http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/normalmap/

>> video demo <<

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gjgbp7L ... re=related

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:26 am

the thing that bugs me is the missing silhouette effect for normal mapping. i've never seen a solid real demo for ogl and dx9, though.

maybe silhouette is a dx10 feature, because of the of the new achitecture.

but then, this article keeps my head scratching.

>> Fast Silhouettes <<

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articl ... le2334.asp

anyway, i found another cool demo here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbJUGN0rIIw&NR=1

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:56 am

limitating in files does not limitate in complexity, only in readability and ease of use.

christianclavet · Post by **christianclavet** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:06 pm

Yes. The more I work on it, the more I find it limiting (coding).

One day, I'll have to separate in includes, because the code will be hard to manage.

EDIT: Humm. Thinking about this more, the best idea is to do exactly that and now. Thanks Dorth!

This now will end for this "snippet" thread and I'll open a "project" thread for the next version. This current code will stay, so if anyone need the code and don't want to get a full source with includes it will still be available.

I need to create more icons, pictures, etc. and would will still need to add other elements. So I prefer having a nice .ZIP file with the source and a demo (binary) with all the elements needed inside.

Just one question so far, how about your impression on the current workflow? Was it hard to operate? I'm using my experience from using Lightwave(since version 1.0) so I'm designing this application with a similar workflow in mind, and try to use simple things to do the trick. Just want to know if your ok with the current workflow.

For the project, I'll annouce it shortly, when the code will be separated in Includes and that I've put some of the things in classes (viewports, selection list management, etc). The source and binary will be on my sourceforge FIRST-KING site for download. (Mainly a tool for it, that I'm working on, so it's logical that it goes there)

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:56 pm

nice to know things are moving fast on your side.

sometime in the next few weeks, i'll probably move on and head on to my direction, after adding Cg i'll be moving to adding procedural building and city on it. that's definitely not in your roadmap, though.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:18 am

Yeah, I was just throwing that out there. I in fact do you irrEdit for level editing, and I love its plugin system, and lightmapping tool as hybrid pointed out. The scripting is very nice too. And in fact I would buy irrEdit if I had the need to, which would be the point when I would want to use it as a base for writing a level editor for the games I make.

@christianclavet: Yeah, no disrespect, and glad it won't be an irrEdit replacement. You're doing a great job either way.

Either way, I didn't want to put this project down in either way, dlangdev & christianclavet, because as I said I hated playing devil's advocate, but it isn't like I was the only person thinking it.

Keep up the good work guys!

christianclavet · Post by **christianclavet** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:52 am

Hi, dlangdev. Since you have access to the source. You only have to take it and pursue in your direction. The current code I think is good when you need to start any kind of 3D editor.

Halifax, the project is far from being down. It going to be a sub-project for my First-King project. Will be annouced shortly in the project thread when I will have separated the functions adquately in include so that the source is more manageable to extend.

I'm already thinking of doing this:
- Define all your animation points for a mesh and save it in a XML file, then reload that XML file with the defined animation for that Animated mesh.

- find a nice way to change the Drivertype before loading the application (OpenGL&DirectX) (Save preferences, with the preferred driver)

- Check if I can manipulate bones on SkinnedMesh objects and display them with handles (this could take a long time, I put this after my project). If this work. I could perhaps even have a way to select the vertices and modify the vertex map. So it could become a complete animation tool.

- Sync an animation to another when playing back animations (good for Quake2 type anims so the weapons follow the body adequately). We can play nodes now at defined speed, but nothing is in sync with each other.

- Selector could be changed to select other types of nodes (Lights/Ground/Octree...) (buttons at the bottom that will refresh the list from what is available in the scene graph)

- Improve again the viewports (reposition the separation of the viewports, select the type view in the single view, etc)

- Load .IRR f for testing your characters within a scene. (Normaly prepped inside IRRedit)

- Save .IRR scene to save your work in progress

- Perhap even put a camera rig (or two types, or even more) for starting a simulation using my already developped camera rigs. Thinking of a First Person Cam and Third perso cam.

- Activate shaders to use Normal maps/Specular maps. This is needed for my project to see how the maps will look in the game and will need to have a basic idea how this will impact on the framerate). I'm thinking a lot about Nadro IRRcg for this.

- More control over the lighting/shadows volumes nodes, position add/remove shadow casting, change color, etc

- Have a better grid, have more gui info for the view and grid (ex: write the grid value in IRRlicht units. So the grid can be scaled depending on the project and will know the unit size. Alpha,Color value on it, etc.

-checking to see, If I can create a FileLoad/Filesave request with more functionnalities (I'll really need to have file extension filters, and would like to have a preview (pictures, and picture for representing the Mesh type). Less important, but it would be nice.

This is in no way meaning that next week, the project will include that. These are the features I'm thinking to implement. The First King project needs will come first and this could change.