InterpolationBuffer

madinitaly · Post by **madinitaly** » Tue Dec 09, 2003 10:40 pm

Hi everyone. I was trying to build my own mesh format loader for md3 models, and thanks to the clean code of Irrlicht (great work, Niko!

) I was able to have significant results in just two days (err... nights actually) of work.
(Here are two screenies: http://aitolikon.sourceforge.net/Shot-09-12-2003-01.jpg http://aitolikon.sourceforge.net/Shot-09-12-2003-02.jpg).
Limits for now are: only one surface per file (but this is going to be easy) and no animations at all (I'm very new to this).
So, my question is: how technically does interpolation buffer work in Irrlicht?
I'll store (key?)frames I read from the file somewhere (MD3 files easily have 200/300 frames stored), but then how do I update the interpolation buffer?
Also, looks like md3 models don't use interpolation at all. Looks like all frames are stored in every file

can it be? If so, do I really need an interpolation buffer? Or have I got to fake it by providing vertices positions by myself for each frame?

Thanks for your time (and again thanks to Niko for the engine!).[/url]

stampsm · Post by **stampsm** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 12:16 am

a md3 loader would be nice

madinitaly · Post by **madinitaly** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 2:48 am

OK, I just realized I don't need interpolation. I wrongly assumed that md3 models stored keyframes just like md2 ones, only a bit more of them. Instead they have vertices (and tags) coordinates and normals for each frame stored in.
Now I simply need to learn how to actually animate the mesh... I taught it would've been easier without interpolation: just return a different list of vertices in getMesh according to current frame, but it simply crashes with an "abnormal program termination" message in the console

niko · Post by **niko** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 11:05 am

Nice.

Try to find out where exacltly this crash happens (use a debugger for example), then it's easy to fix the bug.

November235 · Post by **November235** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 11:12 am

It's Bender!

madinitaly · Post by **madinitaly** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 12:34 pm

niko wrote:Nice.
Try to find out where exacltly this crash happens (use a debugger for example), then it's easy to fix the bug.

It is indeed what I'm doing now

Debugging is a necessary part of programming.

November235 wrote:It's Bender!

Yep, I took the models from Polycount (I don't have Quake3 myself, never liked it).

stampsm · Post by **stampsm** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 10:11 pm

if you get it working it would be a nice addition to the engine

right now i am trying to read through the source to find out how things are done myself

wornaki · Post by **wornaki** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 10:27 pm

yeah, that would be great. It would allow a lot of artists to express themselves without the need to convert so much between formats...