Sunrays, skinning, many many many other questions (40 total)

[EinsteinDarkangel]

I am relatively new to Irrlicht and it would be helpful if someone could answer a couple of questions i have.

1) Is there any way of making Sunrays/Godrays in Irrlicht?

2)I have seen some custom control libraries on the forums (CGUITexturedSkin, ect), but most of these are out of date, would it be possible for someone to explain how to customise:
i)The button control so a custom image can be used
ii)Make a customised menu bar with menus
iii)Make a customised progress bar, one that is overlayed by a picture and has a '3d' look, like the one in Winows 7.
eg. (possibly with a straight loading bar though)

It would be helpful if someone could explain or give me an algorithm for the Irrlicht Classes Involved with these.
for iii) i would probably draw the progress bar then draw an image on top, but i dont really understand how this is done. (I am probably waaay out of my depth here )

3)Could someone explain a library for AI pathfinding, and a tree generator that actually works(6 tried so far...).
4)My 3d program is Blender (www.blender.org), does anyone know how to convert the .blend file into a .b3d file with animation with useful names for the different animations like in the irrlicht tutorials
5)What does LOD stand for??
6)What would be the best way of creating the animated 'gun' in a First Person Shooter? Should I create an entire model or should i just make a 'gun' model.
7)What is a good, easy-to-learn network engine, ive heard of RakNet but ive also heard there are other examples
What is the best way to insert movies/animated clips into irrlicht
9)Is there a function which 'pauses' the 3d rendering, eg. in most games, when you bring up the in-game-menu, in one-player-mode the game stops?
10)Does anyone know if the fire module 'Prometheus' mentioned at part 7 in this article has been released, open-source or otherwise: http://www.vanzine.org/fire. It appears that he used some complex algoritms to make ery realistic, real-time fire, but for the life of me i cannot find the code! (The PDF is the description, the others are just screenshots of Prometheus in action)
11)Ive taken a look at some of Sio2's Demos. Is could someone explain how the refraction demo is programmed?
12)How can you override the controls for the Crouch(Key C) control for the FPS camera?
13)Could anybody recommend any tutorials for Irrlicht for people who have advanced beyond the basic tutorials in Sourceforge
14)How do you Transfer from one group of GUI controls to another eg. Going into a different screen in a game (Main to Options), do you hide the first screen then show the second? That seems very inefficient.
15)Are there any tutorials for creating ultra-realistic water?
16)does anyone know of any good tutorials for creating ultra-realistic 3d models?
17)Does anyone know of any good 3d editors for crating outdoor massive 3d worlds? (Blender is terrible for this, im having trouble with Gile[s]) What format should i use, ive heard there are troubles with the Quake format.
18)Are there any good tutorials on using Ragdolls with Irrlicht? Also are there any formats other than .irr where a light is imported as part of a mesh?
19)What type of lightmapping does Irrlicht use? 2d or 3d?
20)Does anyone know how to create realistic moving water? Waterfalls?
21)Is there a way to Dynamically create realistic grass in Irrlicht
22)Is there a way other than generating thousands of different trees to make high-definition forests in Irrlicht?
23)Is it possible to create a compiled file that has the 3d models incorporated? Do resource files work?
24)Is it possible to 'skin' the main Irrlicht Window (not the GUI, the actual window) in a cross-platform manner?
25)How are 'level crossings' (going from one map to another) normally implemented? Wouldn't you need to erase everything from the first then load the second? How would you do this? How would you measure progress of this in a progress bar (and please...none of the cheap Windows progress bars which count 10-90% in the progress bar as the progress, just plain normal progress bars)
26)Does anyone know of any places where i can get seamless repeating textures for free?
27)How would you implement a seperate console window for a game, would you create a seperate thread for it then 'listen' for prompts in the game loop?
28)How would i create plants with photoluminescence? Possibly for an Avatar like world?
29)Are there any good, up-to-date tutorials on skinning Irrlicht GUI windows?
30)How would you create a seperate interface for when a character steps inside a vehicle? With things like Vehicle health, ect (I also want character health so that the character can still be shot inside the vehicle)
31)How would you simulate an atomic bomb blast's effects, say vaporising parts of a q3 map but leaving other parts intact, what type of particle effects should i use to do this? It would require deformation of the mesh, ect
32)How should i create underwater effects? This will be for only part of a world. The Irrlicht water node is only a 2d effect, water does not continue underneath the node.
33)How would i create and render planets in real-time, with things like halo from the sun, ect? (I know this has been solved in a previous forum, but i cant get hold of the source)
34)What are the advantages/disadvantages of the different Physics engines?
35)Does anyone know of any useful tutorials for the SPARK engine, Gile[s] and Sculptris?
36)What is the best way of changing a character's expression, should i have the head and body seperate, and just change the head, or should i re-render the whole body?
37)Does anyone know of any free books on Irrlicht? Has anybody written any?
38)Does anyone know of any plant generators (as opposed to tree generators, things like bushes, mosses, ect)
39)Does anyone know of any free Character generators? MakeHuman is alright but i cant get the models to import into my 3d program.
40)How would you limit the amount of frames per second being rendered to a maximum? Say to 60, to prevent Irrlicht from consuming all CPU resources

Any other help, no matter how dumb it may seem, will be appreciated. In this particular field I am a relatively big noob.

As you can see....i am partially mad.....i want to create a high-definition high-poly game in Irrlicht which I will probably not be able to run for years anyway because of graphics and CPU requirements (though it will probably take that long just to get the graphics done...I'm very slow at designing graphics)
PS. I cant afford any proprietary software, just assume i have no money

Thank You.

[EinsteinDarkangel]

Sorry about the small image size. Full size image is here:
http://c.imagehost.org/download/0423/kb ... 4-57-03-79

[Lonesome Ducky]

1) Yes, Irrlicht can use shaders just as any other engine can.
3) Micropather is the best pathfinder I've used, and tree [d] is the best tree generator I've used.
5) Level of Detail
6) Make a basic model of the arms with a skeleton, then animated with a gun (or at least this is what I did)
7) There was a wrapper specifically created for irrlicht. I think it was irrnet, or something like that
Look up an ogg theorea video player in the search bar, I remember there being one floating around
9) Just don't move any of your nodes, etc.
12) There's a thing called SKeyMap, should be in one of the tutorials
13) Not very many. Most of the knowledge will come from your own experimentation
14) Usually, you'd DELETE the first, then CREATE the second. Then DELETE the second and RECREATE the first.
15) There are plenty of water shaders that can easily be found by searching
17) Massive environments usually use a custom editor because they need many optimizations a normal model does not have
18) There are plenty of physics wrappers for irrlicht that (I'm pretty sure) implement ragdolls.
19) Not sure what you mean. Irrlicht uses a 2d texture for lightmapping, but dynamic lighting is 3d.
20) See 15
21) Once again, search is your friend
22) Use billboards for distant trees instead of real models (cuts down the polygons a lot)
23) Yes, usually by writing the model data right into the source (bad idea imo)
24) Yes, but you yourself need to write it cross platform (and I don't think it's trivial)
25) If you're going for oblivion style, cells are loaded way before you reach them. Otherwise, usually when you reach the limit. Yes, you'd delete the nodes you have and load new ones
26) Look at CGTextures
27) Irrlicht usually has a console window?
30) ...You'd display that information?
31) Mesh deformation is a very complicated, but well documented, subject. Search
32) There's a water shader somewhere on these forums with underwater caustics.
33) Also not so trivial, do a search
36) Most games will have the head separate
37) There are none
38) ...Search
39) You'll most likely have to do them yourself
40) Use device->sleep(time);

In summation, search the forums or google. We won't do all your work for you, but we will try to point you in the right direction when it isn't otherwise possible.

Also, is this all for one game? If so, I think you're in WAY over your head. You seem to have limited programming knowledge from the questions you've asked, and combining this all would be FAR too complicated for that kind of skill level, especially for one person.

[Adler1337]

26) GIMP has a make seamless button that can make any image seamless.

[ACE247]

This sounds allot like me about a year or two back.
Back then I collected every possible irrlicht add-on EVER released and sorta butchered them into one huge framework. Its horribly complex and I still haven't gone through all the debugging...

So if youre looking for any scene nodes add-ons you just cant find. Ask me, I collect em...

[EinsteinDarkangel]

Where do I find information for using GLSL shaders in irrlicht?

[Kalango]

Hey EinsteinDarkangel
Not to let you down about irrlicht since you're probably a beginer but...
If you plan to add most of the things you asked about in your game, i just want to let you know that you will have a lot of trouble and work to do so. Irrlicht is a mid-level graphics engine that handles mostly basic operations and organization like scene graph, scene management, etc. The most high end functions you may look for still need to be implemented on your own.
This is not lack of features of the engine, on the contrary, the engine purpose is to be simple and extendable.
If you want to learn graphics programming, shaders and how things work, and eventually, make a game, irrlicht is for you. Tho if you plan to only make a game and dont care much about how stuff works and how to build nice looking scenes almost from scratch, you should try another engine with more implemented, easy-coding features.

just to give you a heads up man, i say that irrlicht is capable of doing most of those things and more (with a lot of hard work), anyways good luck!

[hybrid]

Where do I find information for using GLSL shaders in irrlicht?

Maybe you should go through the Irrlicht tutorials first?! Answers to this can be found there. And much more.

[EinsteinDarkangel]

Irrlicht is currently the only development environment that i can run.
Don't get me wrong, i love irrlicht, but i am going to need a lot of resources to do the stuff i want to do.
(eg. CrystalSpace won't compile, Unity won't authenicate, many other problems with other engines!)

[EinsteinDarkangel]

What version of OpenGL does Irrlicht use? I need to knwo so that i can download the correct Shader begginners guide

[EinsteinDarkangel]

My knowledge of Irrlicht is progressing slowly because i am using a beta version of Blender(3d modelling program) and all the tutorials are written for the previous version or in video files (I have dial-up). This also means i cannot access any video files related to Irrlicht too

[hybrid]

No, just download the SDK. It contains all tutorials (in slightly less layouted version) and binaries to check things out. You can use any version of GLSL that your gfx card supports.

[EinsteinDarkangel]

Is there any way to have a regular mesh (not a .irr scene) have integrated lights for, say, photo- or chemi- flurescene?

[EinsteinDarkangel]

are there any tutorials you know of for using micropather with Irrlicht?

[Lonesome Ducky]

It's no different than integrating it with any other engine. It only gives you the path between two points. Seriously now, if you can't figure out how to do that, you best start with making a Pacman or Tetris clone.