Vector graphics in Irrlicht

[chronologicaldot]

Anyone interested in adding vector graphics to irrlicht?

I've toyed with the idea. Currently I use Inkscape for vector graphics work, but it'd be nice to put vector graphics in a 3D setting, especially if you could use it to make displayable, controllable paths for entities.

[hendu]

SVG is an extremely complex standard. Even most libraries can't handle it all.

[chronologicaldot]

Okay, so we can skip SVG. Check. Now what about just implementing something simpler?

[hybrid]

Well, use any of the existing SVG or whatever rendering libs. They should be able to render to an image or maybe even to a shareable texture. That's it probably, tighter integration into Irrlicht wouldn't make much sense.

[Mel]

Or maybe setting up the vector data not as graphics, but as renderable geometry, like the curved surfaces in the Quake III Engine

[chronologicaldot]

Or maybe setting up the vector data not as graphics, but as renderable geometry, like the curved surfaces in the Quake III Engine

That's one thing I had in mind. The biggest issue I can see with that is shading, depending, of course, on how you implement it.

[christianclavet]

There this open source library that can be used with Irrlicht that can render SWF(Vector + Animations), I know it's used a lot for rendering animated game GUI`s
http://tulrich.com/textweb.pl?path=geek ... ameswf.txt

With this a developer can hire an artist doing animated GUI in flash an reload the SWF into the game.

[chronologicaldot]

Not quite what I'm looking for but definitely interesting. Thanks for mentioning that!

[sunnystormy]

Don't mean to necro an old thread... >_>

Because we don't have SVG support natively, would a vector art pipeline be to create a texture in inkscape, and then export it as a PNG?

I think Blender has native support for the standard, but I was just curious how I would go about implementing vector-based textures.

[CuteAlien]

You can always convert it into a bitmap with some tool. The problem is that it won't look good once you start scaling the bitmap.

I also had to work with some vector format this year (dxf). I used some external lib for import and then created a custom node which implemented the vertex display. Don't really know another solution for now.

[sunnystormy]

@CuteAlien

I see... so I would need to make sure the vector art is scaled appropriately before exporting it as a bitmap. Good to know.

Thank you!

[christianclavet]

If you can, try to have a big bitmap. Downscaling is much better that scaling up.

[sunnystormy]

@ChristianClavet

Thank you, I will keep that in mind.

[chronologicaldot]

In case anyone is still interested, I found this: http://www.antigrain.com/
It can be used for rendering vector graphics to a user-implemented interface - which in our case can be a front end for IImage, and thereafter be converted to textures for rendering.