Terrain and Scene Integration Tools

[Thojorkill]

Ok, here we go.

Long time reader here (since forum inception) - first time poster.

Let me start off by saying, great job with the engine thus far. Great things will come as time rolls along!

Now, let me get to some feature requests and state of the industry.

Indoor maps are becoming less and less popular for fps, or even 3ps games. Sure they exist still, and developers and players will always need them to some extent. But the meat and potatoes of any professional engine (which irrlicht has almost nailed) nowadays is the terrain engine.

Its all about animated water shaders, correct billboarding to target for foliage and trees vs. Camera, CLOD and ROAM algos, proper triangle culling, and seaming heightmaps/meshes together for large areas. 30 million+ triangles in scene at one time is what we should be striving for, coupled with an awe inspiring CLOD or ROAM engine dynamic.

The whole "I'm stuck in lala land with the Q3 brute force walls everywhere" mentality is being pitched out the window in the industry. I'm sure by now this is a welcome change as most of us have had our fill of so many FP shooter Doom clones with fancier graphics/dynamics, that we are about to puke.

I keep seeing the quake engine clones over and over again... That was 6 years ago folks, the time is now.

So, as I am not a programmer (I'm a level designer / modeler / texture person.) I would propose to all the awesome code monkies here to get the ball rolling in regards to terrain. There is some code I'll offer up here, basically saying that terrain generation and triangle management do NOT have to be all that difficult.

My other request would be that we get some kind of seamless integration via plugin with 3ds max. (Atmospheres, particles, warps - IE: full scene imports to the engine on the fly.)

For instance with Netimmerse/Gamebryo I can seamlessly flop my project back and forth from my "scene" in max, to the engine. Sure there is tweaking to be done, but it does not take 12 fourteen hour days to get the example scene I have in the engine like it would with Irrlicht. Camera and actor torquing is all that is really needed (and game specific code of course.)

Basically, highly detailed scene management is a pain in the ass with Irrlicht.

I still see Irrlicht as a hobbiest platform, and that is all well and good for users of free or inexpensive modelling packages, milkshape, any sucky ass bsp (I have no idea how anyone builds crap with these) editors. No need to jerk the carpet out from under these folks, but I would suggest bumping the engine into the next realm with a plugin to max 5 or 6 so we can start building incredible stuff.

It seems that Irrlicht is fast becoming "look what we coded!" As opposed to something a developer can work with WITHOUT a dedicated team of 6 full time code monkies. Actor, poly, light, particle, and animated shader placement management in a scene shouldn't be so damned difficult, and I sure as hell don't want to do it with a bsp level editor... Because... Well... 99.9% of them suck from a time/turnover/toss your monitor through the sliding glass window in frustration standpoint.

I hear with Max 6, there are some awesome scripting tools for gaming and the SDK has hordes of functions to help get some turnover (export functions) in different engines. There is a free FULL trial available at discreet.com.

This would most certainly launch Irrlicht to the level of the gods in terms of "the engine to develop on."

I would hope this didn't seem too much like a bitchfest. But with the release of .5, and still seeing a HORRIDLY stale terrain engine, and old format importers, I guess I was just hoping for more.

I can dream eh?

I am currently without online storage so-

I can send anyone here a sample 3D Terrain engine with source, low overhead, fast! Email me and its yours. 13mb
Same deal with the sample image which consists of:
--------------------
1 Gradient skysphere
1 Terrain mesh 3000x600x3000 units on 16x16 grid
4 Animated Atmosphere Gizmos: 2 Clouds / 2 Underwater (yep them clouds are real, and you can go underwater)
5 Materials (1 animated raytrace mat for water)
1 Wind Space Warp
2 Animated .shd water meshes
64 Animated Object Billboards using the wind warp
5 Poly Objects
2 Omni Lights (1 Omni with Shadows, Reflection, and Auto flared & 1 Ambient Omni)

98418 Faces
---------------------
If anyone would like to help me get/code this COMPLETE scene into Irrlicht, in its original max functionality, send me some mail at:

slammaflathead@msn.com
ICQ: 128868202

An old song just came to mind...

I've got the brawn... You've got the brains... Lets make LOTS of money....

Keep on coding guys, once again, I'm not knocking the engine as I believe you are doing an awesome job for FREE for the community. I just think you could go alot farther with this engine then you could possible imagine with some max/maya full scene integration and some solid terrain implementation. However, as said, I'm no coder beyond some basic understanding of c++, so feel free to print this post and set fire to it

Dan
aka Thojorkill

[niko]

Just a short reply: The .x file format doesn't satisfy your needs, right? I mean things like lights and advanced materials are not exported with that. So you would like to have a special exporter for all this? Don't expect me to write such a thing. I rather would like to use free existing exporters, because it is a lot of work to create exporters for all 3d packages, and keep them up to date with new version of the software.
About the terrain: I am working on it. You are right, it is no big deal to implement this. The only problem is the time: I've got really a lot to do. My current TODO-list covers about 300 items, and 10 of them are really big ones. (Terrain is one of them).

[Wolf Dreamer]

I can send anyone here a sample 3D Terrain engine with source, low overhead, fast! Email me and its yours. 13mb

Will any isp accept such large files for email?

Do you use ICQ? I think this would be interesting to check out.

Or I think you could upload it to a free geocities account perhaps.

If someone can get this and upload it somewhere, please do and post a link.

I think the Irrlicht Engine is making good progress so far. And instead of bsp format, you can use octree. I think that is suppose to be better for outside terrain... I never really understood how all that works. Its all about telling it not to bother drawing things after a certain point.

Perhaps all those making free engines and components will come together one day, using the best each has to offer, and a great triumph for humanity shall be upon us... uh... *yawn* sorry.. its rather late, and my brain decided to go to bed earlier.

[buhatkj]

irrlicht does do 3ds models, so it shouldnt be too hard to get 3d objects from max into the engine. but they arent animated, and irrlicht doesnt do full max scenes yet. plus yknow max costs like 3500$ a copy. most of us do this in our spare time, and make absolutely no money at this. how can we possibly afford such a thing to even learn it enough to script that kind of an exporter???
ridiculous.
so naturally of COURSE irrlicht is more focused to people using milkshape or anim8or, or wings3d, or any of the many other free/cheap/simpler modelling packages out there.

one of the big things amiss in irrlicht is standard file formats, or a standard scene format. many of us have either come up with our own, or if we were doing a shooter just used .bsp's. nothin wrong with that. and if your in the right mood, and old skool indoor shooter can be just what you wanna play. mindless violence is something we all need now and again.

not that what you said, having a whole scene come right outta max and load right up in the engine wouldnt be COOL, its just hard to code.
if im not mistaken, niko is working on LOD, i dunno bout ROAM, whatever that is...
and yeh, we all want a better terrain engine, but there is a lot else to do too...

as i understand it on average it takes around 18 months to get a working fully functional 3d engine, working full time with 2 or 3 main engine coders.

niko is ONE guy, working in his spare time from college. he has some help and suggestions from people in this community but largely in order to maintain API cohesion, its mostly just him.

personally, with all of the rushing and bombardment he gets with feature requests and complaints of "why doesnt irrlicht do X" i think if it were me doing this id have snapped months ago.

basically what im sayin is, have some patience, irrlicht isnt even really a year old yet....give us some time here dude. we'll get there. if you need an advanced 3d engine that bad RIGHT NOW, there are many commercial ones available to you, and maybe that will suit you better.
-Ted

[Masdus]

Just a couple of points. Firstly is sound like what your asking for is a game engine not a 3D engine which is what irrlicht is. In terms of being able to develop a game with a minimum of coding you should look at products like blitz basic, dark basic and A5. All of these are commerical but if you can afford max 6 these should be no trouble.

ROAM and standard LOD whould not be good algorithims to use for a game terrain engine. Both algorithims where designed several years ago to reduce the ammount of CPU time need to render terrains. With the advent of decant 3d cards neither agorithim is much use and the CPU is not used that much for the rendering anyway. The two best method currently a geomip mapping and chunked LOD but many commerical games use well designed "brute force" engines.

Lastly while the simple act of pumping out the triangles is not too difficult, add the needed features such as trees, water take are quite difficult to do well. Espically if you want all the lastest features like real time reflective water, trees and grass swaing in the wind ad atmosphere effects.

That said I'm currently looking a coding a terrain engine with procedural land scapes, realistic water features, skysphere with atmosphere effects and weather effects. Anyone who saw the project gscape will have some idea what i'm aming for. I'm currently doing a lot of research so to try and develop a could structure and then i expect to start coding in a month or two.

[vermeer]

hehe, I am not sure programmers like to be called code monkies.(if it means what i think )..

The industry? well, as well pointed out, is a one guy huge effort....Giving away a free engine. Imhow it matches already lots of industry like features...and is almost being born now...

Quake 3 was amazing. If the levels looks as nice as those in a personal-hobby-made engine made by one person, then I think it'd be cool enough...

I modeled with Max, and also with many other things. And some people ask me with which version of max do I model my models (99% made with Wings and Metasequoia, free non big industry software...being used by more than a Maya pro that I know...)

I agree that Max is more powerful than most things in games. But imho depends in a 95% (and not less) in the quality of the artist. I have seen wonders made with Blender.

You already have lots of featues and possibilities to make outstanding things in Irrlitch. Imho my main lack is time, more than an irrlitch feature. (it's artists fault )

I think you want to stick with max, and want to port every single matter of Max into the engine. I have seen it done. But besides that is not totally possible by WAY qualified and professional coders, it asks for a huge effort itself...and what for? To support a 3500$ 3d package...this is hosted in source forge.net, and as far as I can see, based in the open source philosophy. I'd rather prefer to see (in the very distant future, once the engine is "complete", and Niko very bored ) integration with Blender for level editing. It has already quite powerful features (cloth, hair plugin, particles, bumps, etc,etc, etc)

And again, I think the decission Niko took was quite clever. x format do support lots of advanced features. Surely many more than will be used due to low number of artists doing work for free engines. (or working for free ingeneral)

x is supported by many packages. And trust me, even doing the "simple" thing of testing a x export by panda exporter, was a pain.

Indeed, you could do this (I did it for sometime) work in an ut2k3 mod, hl2 one, or the like (check there's qualified people in it first, what you want is not doable by whoever) .If you yet feel the need of working in a free engine, do so (as I also did) but be clear there will be limitations, Niko can't live in front of a screen..

[saigumi]

Holy cow.. that Gamebryo engine he was talking about better do all those nifty mesh, particle, etc loading things...

Description Single Use Unlimited Use

Gamebryo for one platform $50,000 $150,000

For that price, it better make me coffee, also.

Besides, Irrlicht does do other mesh types (addExternalMeshLoader)

[Masdus]

i'm pretty sure netimmerse was the engine used for morrowind. Although it supports alot of features it should be noted that the terrain paging of the netimmerse engine is slow (thats what all those loading promts that pop up in maorrowind are for) The Gamebryo enige as i understand it is an imprvement on netimmerse and is currently used for a number of MMORPG that all claim to have seemless worlds, which i guess would indicate that they have fixed that. Gamebryo is the flagship product of a commercial company so i think it would be unfair and perhaps overly ambitious to expect a similar package for irrlicht. As i stated earlier irrlicht is not a game engine, although there are some projects to build a game engine on top of irrlicht. As such it should not be compare the products like A5 and blitz which aim more a developers with little to no coding experiance. They allow for rapid game development but do have serious limitation because of this.

[voltare]

Irrlicht seems to be heading in a direction that would make it possibly the best free 3d engine out there, if it isn't now.Something I woiuld like to see, and I'm probably going to be making it, is irrlicht-based 3d game engine, and reality factory-genesis3d-based tools and models.Or maybe just modfiy the rf tools to use with irrlicht....if it's even possible.What those guys have now is amazing.....With irrlicht.....it would be world-shattering.......