Wintermute Engine Forum
Wintermute Engine => Feature requests, suggestions => Topic started by: Mnemonic on November 30, 2004, 08:59:06 PM
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Hello everyone,
beginning with version 1.3, WME provides an experimental support for real-time 3D characters. What does "experimental" mean? Well, this new functionality represents important changes to the engine (and the tools) and this initial version is probably far from perfect. Therefore any feedback is more than welcome. If you have any questions, suggestions, ideas, recommendations, or if you encounter any hardware incompatibilities, unusual slowdowns, anything, please post them right here. Thanks.
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From the announcement thread at http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=741.0
And I get a decent frame-rate even at 4x antialiasing - actually the same than without aa, is that normal?
Maybe you have vsync enabled? Or perhaps your 1GHz proccessor is slowing down your GeForce 5600? ;)
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Eventually introducing stencils so that shadows can bend along the hidden scene geometry would be nice. I haven't played a lot of 2D/3D games, but I recall the effect in the Resident Evil remake and RE 0 and it was pretty cool to see the shadows interacting with the prerendered backgrounds.
Although, it's probably a tall order right now, shaders support would be nice someday. One great use of them would be to apply a toonshader so you could use handdrawn/painted backgrounds and not worry about clashing. Of course, you could always do the faux method like Runaway, but then you wouldn't be using 3D.
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As I have said before. I'd like to have 3D items in inventory ;)
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Since I'm not very experienced with WME yet, I would like to ask something. When the mouse is clicked somewhere in the current scene the walk animation of the actor is trigered and it starts to loop. But when the mouse is clicked again during this loop cycle, the loop starts from its beginning thus the actor makes this jerky movement. This happens both with 2d sprite actors and now with the 3d actor. Is there any possibility to fix this? Maybe with a script?
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Since I'm not very experienced with WME yet, I would like to ask something. When the mouse is clicked somewhere in the current scene the walk animation of the actor is trigered and it starts to loop. But when the mouse is clicked again during this loop cycle, the loop starts from its beginning thus the actor makes this jerky movement. This happens both with 2d sprite actors and now with the 3d actor. Is there any possibility to fix this? Maybe with a script?
Something like this has been discussed before, and IMHO the solution would be to have some sort of walk-start and walk-end animations. I think there's currently no way of overcoming this.
Animation transitions are a general problem, but in case of 3D characters it should be easier to interpolate between two frames when switching animations.
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Isn't it possible to make the following: while the character is moving (the walk loop is on) if there are other clicks they would not be rgistered or even better - on 'left button down' the current frame number is taken and the other direction walk loop is started from the next frame number. This I think can be used for sprite actors, but I'm not familiar with how the engine handles sprite animations, so I don't know if this could be implemented.
I personally think that this is the last step that should be made, so the engine would become truly pro. It has everything else.
Black Mirror for instance doesn't have this negative effect.
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Isn't it possible to make the following: while the character is moving (the walk loop is on) if there are other clicks they would not be rgistered or even better - on 'left button down' the current frame number is taken and the other direction walk loop is started from the next frame number. This I think can be used for sprite actors, but I'm not familiar with how the engine handles sprite animations, so I don't know if this could be implemented.
I guess your last line should be "how the engine handles 3d animations" !? Then these would be exactly my thoughts. But since the 3d animations only consists of some keyframes and the animation between them is "calculated", it might get tricky (and not scriptable without new methods). At least for the engine programmer. ;)
But I agree, it's looking strange somehow, maybe I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't different in Syberia (if I remember correctly).
After all - it's a rocking first experimental support and the given possibilities are incredible awesome already. The shadow handling and its fallback possibility work perfectly for me. :) And did you (all) already get the fact, that - meanwhile - we compare WME only to the current and best commercial engines on the market ? ;D
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I guess your last line should be "how the engine handles 3d animations" !? Then these would be exactly my thoughts. But since the 3d animations only consists of some keyframes and the animation between them is "calculated", it might get tricky (and not scriptable without new methods). At least for the engine programmer.
I don't think it would be THAT tricky, it would be certainly easier than some generic animation-switching interpolation :) And Martin is right it would work for 2D characters too. I'll think about it.
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What I wrote above I meant for 2d sprite characters.
As for 3d actors, wouldn't it be possible just not to restart the walk loop on clicks registered during this loop?
I'm sorry if I might sound stupid, but I'm not really into graphics programming, I have experience in just MFC and audio effects programming.
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:D(intro)
Hi there, this is my first post on this forum. I am not very experienced in WME (that engine rocks!), but I'm working on it. (by the way English is not my native language)
As for 3d actors, wouldn't it be possible just not to restart the walk loop on clicks registered during this loop?
I'm sorry if I might sound stupid, but I'm not really into graphics programming, I have experience in just MFC and audio effects programming.
:-\(to the point)
I think the walk loop is only restarted when the actor changes direction. The turn animation is run just before the restarting. My suggestion is only to turn the actor (not change the animation) and to add a function to indicate that the actor is turning (mayby it already exists..). The programmer can decide if he/she wants to run a turn animation (eg. if actor is not walking or turning 180 degrees) or not.
(to Martin: the suggestion was not stupid)
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I forgot to add a couple examples of stencil shadows in other 2D/3D adventures:
http://www.justadventure.com/Upcoming_Releases/MartinMystere/mm4.jpg
www.geocities.com/hainesrs/syb.jpg (http://www.geocities.com/hainesrs/syb.jpg)
Although I feel that my shaders request is something that isn't all that necessary right now, I think stencils are fairly important in this day and age. They're pretty slow, but if used properly they add that extra bit of punch to a scene. Imagine that first screen if the shadow simply disappeared into the cabinet instead of bending up it.
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I'll see what I can do. Actually I've been experimenting with stencil shadows before, but I decided to go with projected ones at first, mainly because of hardware requirements (and because they seemed to be easier to implement :)).
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I understand completely. We just recently got them in 3D Gamestudio, and they are a bit slower to render, esp. if they are closer to the camera. Also, since the zfail method isn't being used, the shadow can never enter the camera view or else artifacting will occur. However, that's not really an issue with a 2D adventure. ;) When and if you begin development of stencils, I have one option I'd like to request:
1. The farther the shadow is from a lightsource, the dimmer it gets. The closer, the darker. It adds just a bit more realism to it.
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I'm more than happy with the engine's shadows as they are but if you want to make them more realistic that would be awesome. ;D
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Hi Mnemonic, hi everybody,
after my first test on exporting a Blender mesh to Milkshape, animating it and use it in WME worked fine, I wanted to write a little tutorial about how to use Blender for WME's new 3d support. The major problem is the geometry file - I tried almost every way (Crossroads, etc.) and every Python script to export a scene with one "walk plane" and one "block cube". Some of those even resulted in a 3ds file with the correct object names (readable in the 3ds file), but I couldn't manage to export lights or cameras and every 3ds file simply crashed WME.
Now my wish ;) - I'd love to have a second alternative file format for the geometry files. Maybe some simple custom ASCII/XML/INI-file could make it a lot easier. We could either tweak those values by hand (...) or after all write some simple exporter or converter (DXF uses something similiar) for programs like Blender. I don't think I'd be able to write my own full-featured exporter to 3ds format directly... (if someone here does, ignore the following. ;) ) but some ascii file exporter shouldn't be too hard IMHO, if WME could handle it after all.
I'm thinking of something like this (I'm using an example in XML format simply because I love XML ;) !)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<wme_geometry>
<plane name="wlk_floor1">
<vertex x_value="20" y_value="0" z_value="0" />
<vertex x_value="20" y_value="0" z_value="200" />
<vertex x_value="230" y_value="0" z_value="200" />
<vertex x_value="230" y_value="0" z_value="0" />
</plane>
<cube name="blk_big_evil_hole_to_hell">
...
</cube>
<camera name="cam_actioooon">
<source>...</source>
<direction>...</direction>
<fov>...</fov>
</camera>
<lamp name="lamp_mysun" type="spotlight">
<source>...</source>
<direction>...</direction>
<intensity>...</intensity>
</lamp>
</wme_geometry>
Just an idea of it. But absolutely free. ;)
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Ok, Jerrot, I can see your point :) If someone (ahem) makes the export script for Blender, I will make a loader for WME. I'd love to support Blender, but unfortunately I'm unable to write the script myself. Actually, writing plugins for various 3D programs is exactly what I was trying to avoid when choosing the 3ds format, but I obviously overestimated Blender's 3ds exporter...
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If someone (ahem) makes the export script for Blender, I will make a loader for WME.
:) Maybe *I* could have a try on this... ;) We can talk about the necessary values and their formats on IRC then...
writing plugins for various 3D programs is exactly what I was trying to avoid when choosing the 3ds format, but I obviously overestimated Blender's 3ds exporter...
Yes, me too, actually. But in general I guess your chosen way is the right one and hopefully there will be some better 3ds export script in Blender some day. Anyway - for now it would be great offering such a custom file format as secondary alternative.
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In addition to stencil shadows, I'd like to request a "render to texture" feature. This way realtime mirrors and reflective surfaces can be achieved, as well as, other goodies that the technology allows. I was reading an interview about the game "Still Life" and this feature appears to be included(reflections from 3D objects on 2D surfaces were mentioned). I guess you'd have to utilize the hidden geometry in some way. If you wanted a reflective street surface, you'd have to set up your special camera and then render what it sees to the face of the street surface. Sounds like a pain to implement, but it would be a great feature for the eyecandy crowd.
Also, somewhere down the line, you might want to implement some kind of level of detail for the 3D objects. If you have a 5000 poly model, there's no reason to render all of them when the character is scaled down to a speck on the screen.
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In addition to stencil shadows, I'd like to request a "render to texture" feature. This way realtime mirrors and reflective surfaces can be achieved, as well as, other goodies that the technology allows. I was reading an interview about the game "Still Life" and this feature appears to be included(reflections from 3D objects on 2D surfaces were mentioned). I guess you'd have to utilize the hidden geometry in some way. If you wanted a reflective street surface, you'd have to set up your special camera and then render what it sees to the face of the street surface. Sounds like a pain to implement, but it would be a great feature for the eyecandy crowd.
True, it would be nice to have this feature and it should be possible to do by extending the "hidden geometry" definition somehow. I'll think about it.
Also, somewhere down the line, you might want to implement some kind of level of detail for the 3D objects. If you have a 5000 poly model, there's no reason to render all of them when the character is scaled down to a speck on the screen.
Also true, but in case of adventure game this isn't really critical, IMHO. Since you typically see the same character(s) all the time anyway..
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True, it would be nice to have this feature and it should be possible to do by extending the "hidden geometry" definition somehow. I'll think about it.
Keep us posted. ;)
Also true, but in case of adventure game this isn't really critical, IMHO. Since you typically see the same character(s) all the time anyway..
You're right and I kind of threw that one in later. You might run into trouble when you have more than one character on the screen and on older hardware, though. The 3D engine I use has a four step LOD system and you can define the percentage from the camera to the player for each one to kick in. It is definitely a framerate saver when you get into "deep" levels and lots of models. Again, that's a realtime engine, so it's more important with them.
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Thanks for the character relative direct control scripts. This can be scripted by the user, but a possible future update would be to provide a camera relative version. If you've played Grim Fandango, you'll notice it gives a choice of either character or camera relative..I don't know if Monkey Island 4 has that or not.
The only other thing is that Trinity seems to get stuck on the crates. I'm not sure how to deal with that, though. She also can walk off the screen, so you might want to add some extra hidden geometry for the next version of the 3D demo.
Anyway, thanks for the new toys. ;)
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Thanks for the character relative direct control scripts. This can be scripted by the user, but a possible future update would be to provide a camera relative version. If you've played Grim Fandango, you'll notice it gives a choice of either character or camera relative..I don't know if Monkey Island 4 has that or not.
In case somebody wants to implement this in his/her game - it's simply done by switching the keys VK_RIGHT and VK_LEFT in the direct_control.script (or better: use some variables for the keys there, so you can switch between them).
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Hey there Jan,
What also could be an option is to support B3D which is the 3D animation+mesh format for BlitzBasic. An open format specification is available on the website (I can look it up for you if you like). There are several third party tools that support exporting/importing to this format. What is cool is that it supports "weighted bones" animation (3ds does not. darn I wish I could explain this better). B3D generally keeps more information inside the format than e.g 3ds files. For example, you can say "the head must be shiny and the limbs musn't".
If WME wants to support 3d characters, I guess 3ds won't cut it (and maybe B3D too). Perhaps WME could have its own format where for example the technical focus is on facial expressions and such?
Also, it would be cool to be able to do this (pseudo code):
var gun = loadMesh("gun");
var arm = actor.getBone("arm"); // find the bone called "arm"
gun.parentEntity(arm); // attach the gun to the arm limb. NULL = detach.
gun.turnEntity(40,0,0); // turn the gun so that it positions the right way.
Now, the actor is walking with the gun!
I must admit I never fiddled with 3d characters in WME (Project Joe only has some pre-rendered characters as you know) but 3d is a very important
feature for WME I think.
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The characters use the Milkshape-format (Ms3d), 3ds is only for the invisible scene geometry. I don't know if it supports weighted bones (actually, I don't even know what that is :-) ), but your example with the weapon can already be done. Something like this is implemented in the 3d-actor demo, you can pick up the teapot and Trinity holds it in her hand then.
An own format for WME is in my opinion not the best idea unless someone has the time and patience to write converters for all the other formats out there :-)
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The MS format doesn't supported weighted bones. This fact came up over at the Gamestudio forum recently, although I can't remember how Milkshape got into it. I think it would be nice if one day WME did support a format that supports every major feature under the sun. It might even be nice to have it's own format and offer the source so others can develop plugins for 3rd party modeling apps. That way, you get a format that does everything the users want(from beginners to advanced). However, that's probably a very tall order, and unlikely to happen any time soon.
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Perhaps Cal3d (http://cal3d.sourceforge.net/) might be such format. I don't suppose anyone has any experience with it..? But it supports weighted bones and provides a number of exporters for various 3D packages. It's released under LGPL, though, that would mean an external DLL.
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I don't have experience with cal3d. Strange that every game dev company kind of re-invents the wheel by developing their own format.
I think its important that good importers/exporters exist (e.g MAX and MAYA exporters to e.g Cal3d).
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Strange that every game dev company kind of re-invents the wheel by developing their own format.
Well because there isn't any generally adopted (and flexible enough) format available, I'm afraid. I was looking for one and MS3D turned out to be the most suitable, even though it has its flaws.
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Hello,
I've tryed the 3d character demo and
the actor, when walk through the screen seems to come "transparent",
more on lighten areas of the background.
it's a my problem or is know yet?
thanks
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Hello,
I've tryed the 3d character demo and
the actor, when walk through the screen seems to come "transparent",
more on lighten areas of the background.
it's a my problem or is know yet?
No, I don't think it's a known problem. Could you take a screenshot, please? Also, what video card are you using?
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Hi,
I've a GeforceFX 5200 and (it's not only a MY impression) yes, I can see the crates through Trinity!
I'll try to make a screen shot and I will send to you.
thanks!
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Hello!
I've tryed to take a shot,
but in the varius shoots I've taken, the strange transparency effect
does'nt appear.
Mayb it's a problem with my confguration.
thanks anyway!
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i just tryed the 32 demo worked just sweet for me ATI x800 pro ::rock
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may I suggest reading this what I posted here:
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=1018.15
I may help with testing, , conversions, packages, samples, etc...with x(preferently) or md5 format.
Though I may first guess how's that of comercial games.
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Well, now I'm registered. Wow, was it fast.
Well, I'm same than guest above and the linked thread one. A gfx maker, crazy old person. ;)
edit: Also here: http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=1018.msg8129#msg8129
And here: http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=976.0
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New member here, I'm a 3dsmax and Biped user....now as I see it things don't look great for me. Wintermute does NOT support weighted verts right? Weighted verts give characters a very natural and fleshy feel when animated, you should try and implement this as soon as possible I think. Besides, animating in milkshape is a real pain and I really prefer biped/3dsmax. Let’s say I have a model, rigged an animated in max with biped…is there any way of getting that certain character in the engine?
http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/2143/hunter0kv.jpg think of something like that....
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Check this thread: http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=1360.0
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;)Thanks a lot...sorry for not searching the forum more..
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As a Lightwave 3D animator i have to ask if the .X format, or any other 3D format chosen, could support morphing of the meshes.
It is an important and crucial thing that makes possible to do facial expressions, talking phoneme, and those animations of the mesh that could be very hard or look innatural done with bones.
Obviously this is the same for who works with XSI, Maya, 3dsMAX, Cinema4D or even blender.
what do you think about?
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Unfortunately not. You'll have to rely on bones.
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But this depends to the .X format or it's the choice you have made for WME?
I understand that WME is a 2d adventure game engine, and to have 3D characters it's a gift that costs addictional work to you, but i believe IMHO it would be great to have inside an adventure game a full 3D animated character.
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The format doesn't support this. Or, to be more exact, AFAIK there's no standard for storing such data in an .X file (because generally speaking one can store just about anything in an X file, IF the exporter supports that). I don't know of any other non-proprietary format capable of storing mesh morphing information.
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Hmm, if this was in response to the question whether morphs can be stored in an object- format, then I want to admit that LightWaves object- format is capable of storing morphs. It is a pretty nice format too (iff) which means you can add new chunks with extra info and still mentain the format readable by other apps...
CU
Skipjack
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Lightwave object format (LWO) and Lightwave Scene format (LWS) seems to be open to public use. In the Newtek site it's very well documented. If i remember corretly it was directly used in Half Life or Doom 3 and at present time it is the native format of an external modeler tool not pruduced by newtek called Modo.
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Unfortunately it's not really feasible for WME's purposes. We need a format widely supported across various 3D modelling packages.
AFAIK both Half-Life(2) and D3 are using their own proprietary model formats.
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Well... i've read some articles about it's use in Doom3 and moreover i've unpacked the .pk4 files of Doom3 and i found files in md5mesh, md5anim and LWO format. LWO that loads perfectly into the lightwave modeler.
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2884 (http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2884)
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5474 (http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5474)
http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/developer/LW80/8lwsdk/docs/filefmts/lwo2.html (http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/developer/LW80/8lwsdk/docs/filefmts/lwo2.html)
http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/developer/LW80/8lwsdk/docs/filefmts/lwsc.html (http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/developer/LW80/8lwsdk/docs/filefmts/lwsc.html)
i'm not a coder and perhaps you already know this, but i hope it helps in general.
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Ok, thanks. I didn't know they were using lwo directly, I was talking about the MD5 format.
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Hey!
Yupp they used LightWave and the LWO- format directly for Doom3.
The format is a bit oldfashioned, but not that hard to use. We used it successfully in our own 3d- engine back in the days, when we were still looking into doing game- development for profit.
Right now we are more into doing plugins for LightWave (see my avatar).
Wintermute makes me think about trying some game- dev again, once I have the time and the money. Thats why I am browsing these forums.
LightWave also has a .X- exporter. Never really tried it myself since I did not know where I could use that format anyway. Maybe I will give it a shot with Wintermute.
The real beauty about LightWaves format is though, that you have vertexmaps stored in the Object- file. Thats vertexcoloring, vertexweights (for bones and for surfacing as well as SubDivisionSurface- weighting and for morphs. The Format also allows to store a basic skeleton into the object- file with something called Skelegons. Plenty of cool options for game- development I would say :)
CU
Skipjack
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How many polygons may I use for 3D actor in WME 1.6.x for resolution 1024x768?
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That's not some fixed number, it depends on the computer, the graphics card, all the parallel running scripts... actually the IMHO best thing you can do is having some test system (which you declare as a minimum requirement) and do some tests with a scene where your maximal number of actors are visible at the same time. Then test them with some (for the ease of use maybe just downloaded) actors of different polygon size.
You should probably get some value between 1000 and 8000, but this is no fixed rule at all. 150,000 ist definitely too much though (good bye Poser...). ;)
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I know the last post is far away.
I figured out, that for an actual computer, at the bottom end of the performance scale (one of the first 3GHz and a GeForce2...) 20 000 Polys for all characters in one scene is nearly the maximum before bringing the fps to the ground, everything higher I wouldn't recommend if you want that players with even older machines can play your game.