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1

Technical forum / Re: 3DS Max + Panda export plug-in

« on: July 04, 2010, 12:49:21 PM »

Wonderful!!!! Thanks so much, metamorphium.

Now why couldn't I find that? I suppose it just goes to show that searching for things when you're in a bad mood doesn't help at all 

I am, once again, a happy bunny.

2

Technical forum / 3DS Max + Panda export plug-in

« on: July 04, 2010, 11:59:02 AM »

Okay - having just been severely disappointed with Carrara, I've had another look at Blender. Unfortunately, the latest version with the new interface is not yet stable so I'm not tempted to go that route yet.

So can anyone tell me if the combination of 3DS Max with the Panda plug-in for x format exports results in animated characters which can be used in WME?

Or, if the Panda plug-in won't do it, is there another way to get stuff out of 3DS Max and into WME?

Failing that, someone please point me in the direction of something which WILL do the job. Pretty please?

3

Technical forum / Re: Is Carrara 8 compatible?

« on: July 02, 2010, 02:43:48 PM »

Well, after doing a lot more homework in the last few hours, it appears that Nihil is correct - getting an animation out of Carrara is a virtual non-starter.

Static 3d models will export, and obviously any render is still usable. But as for making a Wintermute actor, it's as useful as a plastic haddock. Sorry if I've been misleading you, Sommnia. Lesson for self - stop believing hype!!!!!!!!

Looks like I'll need Blender after all - unless someone tells me that it also won't do the job it's supposed to do.

4

Technical forum / Re: Is Carrara 8 compatible?

« on: June 29, 2010, 11:38:58 PM »

Carrara will also save 3d models (whether imported into Carrara or created in Carrara) in both 3ds and x formats - exactly right for Wintermute. The dae (Collada) save in any Daz product is still questionable (but may have been fixed in the latest version of Carrara) - but that doesn't affect Wintermute. So, as far as characters and props go, Carrara can and does enable you to make stuff for use in Wintermute.

The big difference - as we were discussing above - is in the treatment of the environment. In Carrara, you can create vast, sweeping landscapes in 3D and populate them with highly detailed 3D models of buildings, people, plants etc. The main problem is that level of detail - game engines can't handle it and still run with anything like practical speed. It's OK if all you're going to do is set up a scene and render it (that's the virtual photograph), but making anything move in real time is a huge problem. Models for game engines need to be made at a lower level of complexity (although there are methods of making them appear more complex than they really are). So, the Wintermute engine (which was originally written as a 2D engine) will not handle your vast, sweeping, 3D landscape - but it will easily handle a 2D representation of it. You make your complex environment, render it in Carrara and import the finished render as a 2D background image into Wintermute. Then you put your low-resolution characters and props in front of that image. Now all the engine has to do is handle the characters and props - the background is a single-plane static object.

Odnorf is quite right in saying that Unity is a good engine - as is DX Studio - but even those engines, designed with 3D games in mind, will slow down if asked to do too much. It isn't too difficult to induce them to drop their frame rates to unacceptable (i.e. visible flicker) levels. And, of course, those two engines are not free if you're thinking of going commercial!!

The question of how far to take your representation of reality in a game is a complicated one. However ... you can create a five-mile wide landscape in Carrara, but would you really expect one of your game characters to walk five miles in real time to cross it? No - so you are going to use scene transitions even in a full-blown 3D engine. The advantage of using a program such as Carrara with Wintermute, then, lies in its ability to allow you to set up a 3D scene once but to create many 2D renders from differing viewpoints with differing lighting. From your single Carrara scene, you could easily manufacture a couple of dozen Wintermute scenes in day and night versions - a whole gamesworth of scenes, in fact.

5

Technical forum / Re: 3D limitations

« on: June 29, 2010, 02:54:18 PM »

I love getting the very answer I wanted to hear 

Thanks, Odnorf.

6

Technical forum / 3D limitations

« on: June 29, 2010, 02:28:31 PM »

So far, I've only played with a single actor and the teapot prop - but I have ambitions  . I wondered, then - is there any way of defining the limitations of the engine as far as 3D goes? Would it be a reasonable expectation, for instance, to put four 3D actors sitting on 3D chairs around a 3D table and animate all four actors at the same time?

I can't see any theoretical reason why this wouldn't work, but there may well be a good technical reason. So - just how far can I push Wintermute's 3D capabilities befire I run into trouble?

7

General Discussion / Re: Most ridiculous inventory puzzles EVER!!!!

« on: June 28, 2010, 04:23:32 PM »

There's nothing wrong with a good LOGICAL inventory puzzle. However, inventories themselves can be illogical. The ladder ("Is that a ladder in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?") has already been mentioned. A ladder near to where it could be used is OK. Picking that ladder up and carrying it around for the next four hours while interviewing the Prime Minister just doesn't ring true. Nor does putting that vial of highly concentrated acid into your pocket.

Basically, if the game logic is to be sensible, then so must the contents of your inventory be sensible. You can, in the real world, pick up a ladder and move it, but you can't carry it around for a week in a very small bag.

I'm sure you've all met the coconut that is vital to the plot.  You need that coconut, but it's at the top of a tree. You can throw a rock at it. You can hit it with a long stick. You can climb a ladder. You can wait for it to fall all by itself. Those things would, in the real world, all work - so they should all work in the adventure world too. But how many times have you come across situations in which the game refuses to allow you to solve a puzzle in an absolutely logical manner?

That is - and here's the point of my post - simply bad puzzle design. Inevitably, that means bad game design.

So yes - interminable mazes should be done away with. Being asked to solve a sliding tile puzzle in order to get through a door to escape from the raging Bugblatter Beast is plain stupid - and breaks the flow of the game horrendously. Silly and illogical inventory puzzles should never exist - but good, logical ones (with multiple solutions?) are the backbone of adventure games.

8

Technical forum / Re: Is Carrara 8 compatible?

« on: June 25, 2010, 06:03:31 PM »

Happy with Carrara or WM? WM is a work of genius as far as I'm concerned. Carrara? It's OK - although I haven't seen 8 yet. To be frank, I've never managed to push Carrara into doing anything I couldn't do with the usual modeller/terrain generator/scene editor/renderer pipeline, but it is handy, I suppose, to have most of those things in the one place. It certainly cures a lot of import/export woes. To be even more frank, the only reason I ever considered it was that I could never get my head around Blender (but, once again, I haven't tried the latest version in which the interface has been redesigned).

In a perfect world (coming soon, folks  ) I'd have an understandable Blender, a completed Makehuman, the open-source version of Zbrush (fat chance!) and WM - oh, and the GIMP, although it doesn't quite reach Photoshop standards yet. You may detect a preference for FREE there! In a slightly less than perfect world, Poser or Daz will finally get their dynamic cloth to work.

In the meantime, I have to use things that allow me to do what I want in a way I can understand. WM hits that nail right on the head and Carrara does too to be fair.

9

Technical forum / Re: Is Carrara 8 compatible?

« on: June 24, 2010, 09:13:40 PM »

Ah - and I thought I was inexperienced  

No - a rendered scene is a virtual photograph of the 3D scene you set up in Carrara (or Daz Studio, or Poser, or any other such thing) - and it obviously is then a 2D scene. As such, it can be used in Wintermute. In front of that, you can place true 3D characters and animate them. If it's done well, it's difficult to tell that you're not looking at a full 3D environment (just don't expect to see anyone actually walking through a door - but a scene transition as the door is approached is just as effective).

Take a look at the Art of Murder demo to see just how effective the illusion can be.

Oh - I forgot to mention that what you're thinking of doing is precisely what I do - set up a scene in Carrara, render it, and import the render to WM.

10

Technical forum / Re: Is Carrara 8 compatible?

« on: June 18, 2010, 11:35:28 PM »

Depends what you mean, Sommnia. If you mean "Can I import a Carrara scene directly into WM?" then the answer is no. If you mean "Can I import a rendered scene from Carrara into WM?" then the answer is yes. Horses for courses - WM is a 2.5D application, not a full-blown 3D thing. On the other hand, if you were just talking about models from Carrara, then as long as you can export to x format WM will gladly accept it. Treat WM as a theatre stage, complete with backdrops, and you won't go too far wrong.

Having said this, I'm an inexperienced user - so I'm prepared to be shot down.

11

General Discussion / Re: Wintermute as a publishing tool?

« on: September 11, 2008, 01:32:14 PM »

Mike, as long as you don't require 3d walkthrough through the village, it would work nicely. WME is a nice stable tool and if you can live with the fact that you'll switch the view instead of fluent 3d transition (they can be faked using video though), it's spot on.

Thanks for that, Metamorphium. As serendipity would have it, it was Ghost in the Sheet which put me onto the idea in the first place. Isn't the world a wonderful thing? 

12

General Discussion / Wintermute as a publishing tool?

« on: September 11, 2008, 01:17:32 PM »

Hi all ... just bouncing an idea.

I've written a book. It's a boring old local history thing, but it needed to be done. Because the number of copies needed will necessarily be small, publishing the thing on paper is a very expensive no-no. So, I thought, publish it as a CD. Well, I got that together and I have a book that looks like a book except it's now a big PDF file. Then I thought ... well, hold on - if I'm going to do this electronically, then I could do a lot more with the graphics. And, further along in that direction, I could actually build a 3D model of the Norman church around which the book is written. In fact, I could model the entire village, and populate it with the characters I've discovered in the history of the village. And then, thought I, rather than just presenting a page of text, I could get the characters to say the words for me ... I'm sure you all see where this is going.

I've been looking around for a year or so. I've come across engines which look good until you discover that they're merely playthings for C++ programmers who take a very dim view of stupid questions like "How do I actually use this thing?". I can live without a learning curve which might take me the rest of my existence. So, summing up, Wintermute looks to me like just the thing I need.

In fact, it seems so much like "just the thing I need" that I've begun to worry. Can anyone see any fault in my thinking? I know that it's an obvious question and the answer is probably equally obvious. Is there any reason at all why I should not create an animated DVD (see - I'm up from CD to DVD already) using Wintermute?

Incidentally, although I've been playing with things like Blender and Wings, I'm coming to the conclusion that my 3D modelling skills are limited. So bear in mind that if you tell me Wintermute is really what I need, I may just be back here appealing for help of a more practical nature.

Cheers all ... Mike