Irrlicht Engine

BlindSide wrote:I think that Stencil shadows are seperate from the object they cast on (They are an object themselves in a way). So it might not be possible from a technical standpoint.

Well, I know it's possible *somehow*, as it is possible in Virtools to exclude objects from receiving stencilshadows. But as I'm not a programmer I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement it in Irrlicht. Would be nice, though.

Sharks...


with fricken LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO THEIR HEADS!

I'm thinking that the DEV team could present projects for DEV tools that the community could develop in tandem with the IRRLicht dev team.

Like:
- Rig/Bone/animation tool for characters for the new animation system. This tools could also serve to tweak the animation and how the bones affect the mesh.

- World and environnement tools (IRREdit already started)
Tiled terrain, spatting of textures over terrain, LOD and impostor definition for mesh, Axial billboards, advanced particle editor

- Object converter and optimizer(load current formats then save as a full supported format like .B3D). Permit also to do some very useful operation on the mesh (scaling, rotating, alingning normals). This could help a lot to help the user bring their stuff in and correct the problems if they have.

- Shader editor. Some kind of editor that we could type some commands (like HLSL and see the results directly on a "test" mesh like a cube or sphere. I don't know if it's possible but the tool could convert from HLSL to GLSL if it's possible

- Interface/Gui editor (One is in dev, getting good)

- New demos (with source) (for example: IRR scene load complete with collision on certain objects like occtree and animated mesh (bounding box))

We already have some of the tools now, I consider us lucky. But it would be great if all of theses tools could be fully developped when we reach version 2.0.

Using the new mesh writer interface (see SVN) it's just a matter of a dozen lines to get an freely transformed and manipulated mesh in Irrlicht's new internal mesh format.
While someone might want to design a GUI for it I guess that Niko will also add some features to IrrEdit for mesh manipulation (even if it's not on vertex level at the beginning).

christian, the first one I wouldn't agree (and several of the others, maybe are not as important as keep pushing th eengine, as each coder seems to have already very nice workarounds...anyway, the more, the better) , because, we already have Blender and several other packages.

If you have animated characters deeply, you'll know what I mean, the stuff needs a huge load of features, is easier to m ake a modeler that works ok with some basic features, but making an animation tool, that actually produces something usable, is hard to believe.

Instead, I'd see better idea your:

"- Object converter and optimizer(load current formats then save as a full supported format like .B3D). Permit also to do some very useful operation on the mesh (scaling, rotating, alingning normals). This could help a lot to help the user bring their stuff in and correct the problems if they have. "

That could easily kill like 80% of probs ppl have with media and irrlicht.
Specially if it imported like b3d, md5.That pretty covers any package with both. Even so, if the loaders are gonna be done, no need...unless you refer is a tool that also makes some fix like normals problem, welding, or some tweak to prepare to the engine.
But sounds as a lot of extra work...

To be true, imho better if the engine keeps getting solid as now, the tools imho not so much important, perhaps a converter.

EDIT: actually, probably if this fix/convert functionality is done inside irrEdit insetad, maybe much better: is one I/O problem less, and this is allways outstandingly better. Dunno how possible would be that, tho.

Midnight wrote:Sharks...


with fricken LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO THEIR HEADS!

Classic

vermeer wrote: "- Object converter and optimizer(load current formats then save as a full supported format like .B3D). Permit also to do some very useful operation on the mesh (scaling, rotating, alingning normals). This could help a lot to help the user bring their stuff in and correct the problems if they have. "

This is already present in the BLITZ 3D community.

Vermeer,

If you have animated characters deeply, you'll know what I mean, the stuff needs a huge load of features, is easier to m ake a modeler that works ok with some basic features, but making an animation tool, that actually produces something usable, is hard to believe.

I agree totally with you. All the rigging stuff and weightmap creation, Ik, bones would make that tool a complete animation package. I was not asking that much. I was more thinking in the way of an animation file tool to correct thing in Irrlicht. Like the mesh tools I was talking. The tools should not be used to CREATE but to corrrect things like:

- Bones tools: Area of influence of bones, select a bone and modify the influence, rename, delete, etc.

- Weight map tools: ajust the level of influence, also could be fun to change the weight map (but that can be done in the software it was created. A function also for weight map could show in red some vertices that are used in 2 weigh map, so we could remove one of the vertice in a weight map (Heard that a vertice shared among 2 weightmaps cause problems)

- Animation tools: Retime animation(scale time), compose multiples files into a single file (ex: multiple X animated files merged into a single X file containing multiples animations that we could name and call them back into Irrlicht or IRREdit)

Most packages have exporter but most X exporter that I've saw can only export 1 animation per Direct X file. We could convert it in .B3B and then combine multiple animation into the .B3D file.

Here is a picture of a modelviewer from another engine.
It give a good idea of what I mean for a mesh tweaker / Animation tweaker.

Essential: Large Terrains, terrain paging.
And don't know for now, but I would like more thing that the "ogre fonds" say that irrlicht does not have. I like irrlicht and I would like that more people use it for great proyects, why not?.
But for this at least it must be at height of ogre (that even irrlicht supportter say that ist better).
Vsk.