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Author Topic: 3D characters discussion  (Read 43870 times)

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Mnemonic

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3D characters discussion
« on: November 30, 2004, 08:59:06 PM »

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.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2004, 09:54:46 PM by Mnemonic »
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odnorf

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2004, 11:48:16 PM »

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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Orange Brat

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2004, 05:40:33 AM »

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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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2004, 09:43:01 AM »

As I have said before. I'd like to have 3D items in inventory  ;)
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Martin

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2004, 03:22:23 PM »

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?

Mnemonic

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2004, 03:49:05 PM »

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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Martin

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2004, 07:21:53 PM »

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.

Jerrot

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #7 on: December 02, 2004, 10:13:28 AM »

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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Mnemonic

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2004, 10:17:57 AM »

Quote from: Jerrot
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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Martin

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #9 on: December 02, 2004, 11:29:54 AM »

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.

ReD

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2004, 01:55:05 PM »

: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)

Quote
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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Orange Brat

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #11 on: December 03, 2004, 04:58:02 PM »

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

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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Mnemonic

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #12 on: December 03, 2004, 11:29:21 PM »

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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Orange Brat

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #13 on: December 04, 2004, 03:25:02 AM »

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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Lawrence

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Re: 3D characters discussion
« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2004, 03:34:06 AM »

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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