Wijitmaker
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Posts posted by Wijitmaker
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Great! Do you think the mini bones would be hard to lengthen without disrupting the skeleton/rig?Everything seems to work though -
Well done, mate. In your view, which effects are missing before the engine's capablities are on par with AoE3?
I forgot about this but I thought you guys might find this interesting. I had some copies of an old game developer's conference that was held in 2005 with the AOE3 lead and senior programmer. They were talking about the new graphical engine features prior to the release of the game. You can see the slides in my attachment. There is more commentary here:
If you had a membership and access to http://www.gdconf.com/ you could probably see the whole bit there.
There are some details shared there about AOE3 cliffs that might be applicable to the terrain displacement discussion going on here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16197
About the grass... how would that work, you won't want to have grass everywhere? Would you have to have a grass masking map for terrains that would get the grass? Could you color the grass to match the pixels of the terrain, and perhaps use RGB pixel values to define height variation (greener = taller)? These are the questions that popped in my head when I saw that video.
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Ah, yep... that was it! I thought it had something to do with the new "My Media" button - but I guess it doesn't. Cool, thanks Erik - I think I'm good
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Thanks guys, I had a chance to work on this a bit and I think I've found some success. The files you posted Amish had that same odd error I was getting before with the bones shooting out the back of the unit. So, I didn't spend to much time with those. I'm sure the edits you made to the mesh were an improvement. I can take a close look at those later. I wanted to focus on getting the skeleton structure into blender though. And I think I sort of got it...
Check out this file, it contains a .blend file and a .DAE file. I exported the .DAE from 3ds Max version R7 with the plugin recommended on our trac wiki. Then I imported it into Blender 2.59 which Ben suggested might work better. It seemed to work! The only problem in the animation is in the root of the animation. It also did some weird things with the bones still. They look like points and not bones in many places. But, maybe there is something in blender to alter their appearances?
Please check out the files though in your version of blender. Maybe there might be hope in getting this to work! Unfortunately I can't figure out how to add attachments (maybe I'm over my limit?). So, I'll email the file to Erik, and he can post it.
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Splendid!
myconid, DUDE - who are you? You certainly aren't the average programmer that visits our forums. What is your story? Are you a student? Working as a programmer? Do you work in game development? Your making this look to easy (not that I'm complaining - because the game is going to be forever better because of the additions your making).
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That is great! Maybe I could take a look at the .dae it exports and help get a skeleton created in xml for it. Would you mind posting the blender and .dae file your trying to export?
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Ok, thanks for the feedback guys. I think my first task will be to re-export all of the existing animations out of max again, but not as .psa files... instead as .dae files. I think you'll find that there are actually quite a few animations. I'm not sure what happened, but several years ago someone went through and "cleaned up" the folder structure for animations. A bunch of (now empty) folders were created and a lot of the files were moved around... I believe some animations may have been lost, while others were duplicated. So, hopefully that might fix one of the issues mentioned above.
Then I'll see if I can learn blender enough to get a template created. I'll probably need some help at some point, and I'll ask Zaggy for some assistance.
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Yep, sure would - great idea.
As an aside - For guys who have been around a while (like me) I think there is a level of irony that a windows .exe of your patch hasn't been readily available for testing purposes. 6 years ago, we were struggling to find people to build the engine on a linux on mac computer. A sign of the times I suppose - and a sign of being a part of the OS community
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Yeah, that is the problem. Unfortunately 3DS Max doesn't export .bvh files. I did a quick google search and it looks like there are some hacked scripts that might do the trick though. The bvh file is intended to be a motion capture data file. So, the 3DS Max developers didn't plan on exporting motion capture data - instead they only needed to import it. Once the animation is in the software, it uses a format called .bip that saves the animation (or you can save the whole scene as a .max file). There are a few other formats that are supposed to be cross compatible. One being .fbx which is pretty much an industry standard, and also .dae... Unfortunately .dae files don't import properly into blender. I think the best option to pursue is... someone mentioned in this thread that an older version of blender imports the .dae files better. I think I need to try that, and see if I can get that working. From what I understand it won't have the IK, but I think you should be able to add that on later in Blender. At least you would have the bones and the rigging (I think).
Can I just backup and ask a question though... what is the ultimate objective here (acknowledging that the low poly body meshes needs some upgrades - which is a separate topic)? Is there some animations that are so poor that they just need to be replaced, or are there just a handful of animations that are missing and need to be created? Or is our target to create a good template for future Blender animators to use for mods and slight animation adjustments? Help me out here, what is the todo list of things you want to see done in terms of humanoid animation.
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I'd like to try some animation, but If i remember correctly the lastest blender rig didn't work quite nicely and Jason was trying to figure out why...
The effort kind of stalled because this discussion got split into 2 different topics. I think the consensus was that we were going to up the poly count. I was waiting on some more direction before I went any further. I hadn't heard anything more, so I thought maybe I was off the hook.
New models and a common universal baseline rig for blender could really be developed in parallel. Perhaps some attention in the Blender world would bring someone to the team who is capable of doing animation and rigging in both max and blender and could us set up a new default template in blender that is capable of using .dae existing animations and a blender rig.
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Did you guys know that there was an actor made years ago for testing? Check this out if you have time:
binaries/data/mods/public/art/actors/flora/trees/pine_animated.xml (hopefully it still works)
See what kind of performance issues you might have if you load a map up with these actors as a comparison (probably poorer?). This test tree was also made to animate a fall on "death" (they should actually fall when first attacked).
I like myconid's method a lot better though, no animating required and I'm guessing better performance
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Maybe somebody could make this topic public. But, this is seven years in the making (made possible by myconid), and it is a beautiful thing to behold
The two UV channels is such a huge advantage in comparison to that combined light/shadow and diffuse texture map previously used in that thread. -
Yes, it is really noticeable on the stairs and the deep interior portions.
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Sweet, yep I think we are on the same wavelength. Cool, that would do the trick.It should really just affect the ambient light! If I do that, you can achieve what you're describing by fiddling with the ambient/sun colour settings in Atlas. -
I guess, the reason why I'm asking is because if there was some control - it might be visually advantageous to increase and decrease the intensity of the AO map. For example, in a wintery (lower light) fog atmosphere I would think the levels of the AO would be less intense. The human eye would dilated allowing you to see what is the shadows better than if it was a high noon on a bright sunny day, where the contrasts of the shadows would be much greater (which I especially notice now in age as my eyes are getting older).
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Yeah, that is great. Would it be difficult to give the engine have the ability to tweak the level of contrast in the AO map? Perhaps giving map designers the ability to save a deviation from the default setting in the map file?
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To add to plumo's request, maybe a screenshot to show off AO with simply a plain pure white diffuse texture on 2 structures - one with AO and one without.
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When you say "take all the .drs files from a 32 bit install and copy them into a 64 bit install", do you mean having the mod loaded with MPS then permenantly installed, and just using those .drs files?
What I'm suggesting is... request all of the .drs files from a friend who used MPS and has permanently installed the R@W mod on their Windows 32 bit computer. Then take their .drs files and using windows explorer - drag and drop them into your 64 bit install (or another instance of your install - rename your original files if you'd like, perhaps a second install on another partition). I think this would allow you access to view and modify this new .drs with the Advanced Genie Editor 2 tool just like you would have used it for the original .drs files?
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That is down right awesome, fine work! I knew you could do it
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Just had a thought (and it is probably more complicated), instead of a config setting... what if players were allowed to dock the panels wherever they chose during the game? There could be predetermined locations (bottom left, center, and right) that the panels would snap to. Just grab something representing a handle and move it to whatever configuration you choose.
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For the split vs. center preference, would it be difficult to allow the user to choose via a configuration setting?
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I'm digg'n the smooth LOS, very nice - thanks for the videos and pictures too - its great for us windows users that don't have an .exe to play with and aren't savvy enough to compile.
To make things like dynamic snow possible, I want to focus on adding extra UV channel(s) to the models... and perhaps something more important than aesthetics - damage texture maps which could communicate visual gameplay information to the players.
I look forward to checking this thread out each day looking for what is new
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Hi BF_Tanks,
I made the R@W mod over 10 years ago and I've forgotten a lot of what I did and how the tools work. But, I'd be happy let you do whatever you want with the .slp files. I'm not sure how AoK is modded these days, nor what the capabilities are. Is it possible to simply take all the .drs files from a 32 bit install and copy them into a 64 bit install in order to get the mod to work?
I could be wrong, but I think the mod was open and available for anyone to modify it in mod pack studio as they desired. I think you would just need someone with MPS installed to pull out the individual SLPs you want.
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What about using some of the cloud/fog code in Flightgear? AFAIR they're pretty good at semi-realistic clouds. Not sure if it can be easily used in Pyrogenesis though.
I'm not so sure about how much ground clouds for fog would be used, and it might be a neat affect - but another visual that would be nice would be to have would be ground shadows that are cast onto the world. I think this could be done with a simple scrolling black and white texture map (similar idea to the animated textures suggestion - which would be another great addition for waterfall objects, wheels, and tracks).
If you are going to start looking at the particle engine, please take a look at the feasibility of rendering environment particles to simulate things like falling snow and rain.
Awesome work so far - please keep it up!
Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)
in Game Development & Technical Discussion
Posted
Aye that is impressive. It would be most impressive it moved with the trees
Would performance be helped if it was thinned or the quantity of it lessened? Or perhaps if instead of applying directly to terrain, it could be applied to an object that could be placed on the terrain by a map designer.