"(3d chars over prerendered backgrounds), and it affords scripting."
Well, that could be indeed enough for now...yet it'd be very good to be able to load geometry for the level...
In the meantime, somekind of vr thing...That is, is a bitmap, and as you rotate the "camera" the continuos long bitmap woul drotate accordingly.I think the engine actually only does a horizontal scroll, is more a work of the gfx artist to make that seamless, or actually grab some vr from reality with a camera.
Yet though, is it planned for the future 3d scenery loading?
BTW, I am mostly interested on ease of developing...meaning it being as less code as possible, as I am not a programmer...That and the comercial prices.
"The .x-exporter is nice, but unfortunately I don't know of any porgram yet that can import .x and export to .ms3d"
Max can do. There's somewhere a fully featured user made milshape exporter for max, bones included, and etc stuff. My purchased Ultimate Uwnrap maybe can, but never tested. I do all x<-->other format conversions with it, plus with some other converter I have.
I was suggesting actually a direct Wintermute loader of *.x format, as I see it as the more implemented format by third party plugins in 3d tools, in what is formats with bones and weights.
" - which is what we need for WME. But can you point me to the woking Milkshape exporter you mentioned? The ones I found so far didn't work at all"
maybe after all it does not work...My first language is not english; maybe I understood badly, but thought the one posted as text in the last post here was actually a working anim version... :
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30004&start=15And while I'm here, and speaking bout Blender.... :
- md2 format (old format, often bad shading. Limited to 4096 verts, I think. Often wobbling of vertices, that is , trembling "meat" a bit weird. For not using floats for coords or something)
http://scourage.servebeer.com/programming/blender i tested it to work perfectly both import and export. Remember: no bones (and no weights, but bending smoothness is preserved, reason why often is preferable even to ms3d format! ) .No spline interpolation: the animation is not as smooth as u see in ur 3d packages. The interpolation between frames is linear, that's why. Solution: keyframe most frames, but that's very memory and performance heavy, as md2 as like snapshots of whole mesh vertices at each keyframe. Reason why is god idea for distant lots of low pol chars like in rts games, bad idea for Graphic adventures or today's hi pol fps models. Specially I would not use it for graphic adventures.For other purposes, is yet handy.
- md3 format. This one works, try it, I did, and worked.
http://www.freewebs.com/estrato/misc.htm Notes bout md3:
Also is based on vertex animation. No bones. Advantages over md2: it allows more graphic formats, resolutions of bitmaps, etc. More vertex count, so more allowed on package on exporters (ie: md3 exporter for gmax only allows the limit of md3: 8092 ) What i see as a disadvantage is the typical chunked mode way of md3 models. I hate to part model in pieces and trust the engine to caculate a melting of 50% between parts...i prefer to treat it as an md2, full piece, so I control how weights act.again, is not real weights, but md2 and md3 vertex animation are really a bake of your weights and bones animations; in thi sway is more accurate than an ms3d or HL1 model animation. (i can animate with accomodation tricks: I just have that possibility PLUS smooth weights when the feature is available, and is soooo much better
)
- md5. A great format, very optimized for games, and very powerful. yet though, usually loaded with the basic bones and weights only, as typical shareware games user or indy gamer doesn't have such 3d cards...
This is simply the best format. But is such a disadvantage that certain packages do not have support for it that for now I yet position it bellow *.x
Blender md5 exporter :
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1711Blender md5 importer :
http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=6901- x format. The more stablished.(already spoke enough about it)
Ben's (original exporter author) export plugin :
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/glabro1/python.htmlBen's recently started Blender
Importer :
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/glabro1/import.htmlJust notice that specially with x format in Blender, is needed to read the sort explanations Ben has in his site.
The Jox modification of Ben's exporter. It is the one I actually allways use :
http://development.mindfloaters.de/DirectX_Exporter_Mod.8.0.htmlI have the latest version allways, tell me if it doesn't go, I can upload somewhere...I am not the developer.
So, imho, full piece (md2-like) md3 files (specially good for low pcs, so yet a nice options: bones and weights are a bit more performance hungry when is not used the card but only software mode, yet so many engines do this way) , or *.x (best) , or md5 would all be all good (and sorry, imho better option) ways to go than ms3d files, for what is animated human or animals characters. For level geometry or static objects, is all the opposite, there a ms3d file rocks.
Just my 2 cents.
