Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:00 pm Post subject:
Banshee wrote:
I've committed the revision with a 'fixed' OBJ exporter. There are still some awful bugs to solve on it.
Note however, that I've splited the 3D Preview window in two. The 3D Preview Window's sole purpose is to preview what you are creating.
The second part of this split is the new 3D Modelizer, inside Tools. Its purpose is to prepare and exporter the finished volumetric voxel as 3D model. Note that once you open the 3D Modelizer, any changes made in the original voxel will be ignored by the modelizer.
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 3:18 am Post subject:
And now the program can convert quad based models as triangle based models. Using the 3D modelizer and converting quads to triangles...and then, renormalizing the mesh, you get the following effect (with Yuri Boomer):
Note 1: You can export .obj based in triangles as well.
Note 2: Quad to triangle conversion is only available at 3D modelizer. It might be added as a quality option later on both 3D Modelizer and 3D Preview Window.
bsub_000.gif
Description:
Yuri Boomer with triangles and triangle based perfect normals.
Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Location: somewhere south of the north pole
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 6:52 am Post subject:
Smooth out those bumps, and an improved edge detect and your (our? ) quest for perfect normals is over! _________________ This is a signature QUICK_EDIT
looks better
but try something to prevent smoothing of remap so there´s no AA-effect _________________ just a simple logo by bricks @ raminator, on Flickr QUICK_EDIT
can you use the voxel's stated normals somehow in the final mesh? anyway i think the viewer has lighting which is too subtle to notice the effect of normals by the way.
btw maybe you should look into COLLADA .dae for a model file format. it's supposed to be the new universal format for 3d models. i've considered supporting it myself although it may be really complicated and take a long time. QUICK_EDIT
The smoothness is optional, just like anything there. The result can be a bit less smooth if I actually ReNormalized the mesh when I took these screenshots, which I was lazy to do.
raminator wrote:
leave color smooth out for remap
You can opt to not use it. But restricting it from remappable is a bit complicated at the moment. I'm making no restriction if a vertex belongs to a remappable area or not, specially because a vertex can be in a frontier.
ViPr wrote:
can you use the voxel's stated normals somehow in the final mesh?
The five latest pictures that I posted uses the normals stated by Westwood Studios. Of course I had to make a sort of an average to convert face normals to vertex normals.
ViPr wrote:
anyway i think the viewer has lighting which is too subtle to notice the effect of normals by the way.
Yea, I must admit that I haven't paid much atention to that. It uses the default settings from OS: Voxel Viewer. I'm not focusing on customizing lighting in the 3D Preview, neither the Modelizer. If I make a feature focused on rendering the voxel in a scene, then I'll take a look at the lighting.
ViPr wrote:
btw maybe you should look into COLLADA .dae for a model file format. it's supposed to be the new universal format for 3d models. i've considered supporting it myself although it may be really complicated and take a long time.
I'll take a look at that once I have textures. But could you try to use that in your tool as well? Because textures in .3ds sucks... QUICK_EDIT
well, as far as i understand at the moment, any self respecting programmer working with 3d models should use the .dae format. so as long as i intend to be a game maker then i should use it and of course if i do program for it then that will be used in 3ds2vxl. the only problem is that because of my depressed mood nowadays and because of the other things i have to do for work i don't get much time to work on these things.
btw can you elaborate on all the things about .3ds that you do not like and maybe state how .obj might have some advantages over .3ds? QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 10:32 pm Post subject:
The advantage of obj is its flexibility with the amount of vertexes per face, as well as its organization. .3ds forces triangles with one texture coordinate per vertex (which forces the creation of vertexes to not avoid loose data when dealing with textures). Perhaps it is not that bad... or it is even the ideal thing, as far as I've been researching recently.
Another thing that scares me with .3ds is how each program reads these files differently.
And finally, what's the version that I should fill it with? QUICK_EDIT
i don't know what version. i don't think i ever had to use that. can't you output some simple 3ds file from blender and see what version is written in the file using some code you can write.
btw i think .3ds does not have stored vertex normals. that's going to be a problem. QUICK_EDIT
.3ds does not support normals maps. in order to test my normals map code i had to support the Doom3 model format, except those used only tangent-space normals maps and not object-space normals maps as far as i am aware. supporting the latter should be much easier though. QUICK_EDIT
the shaders, and hence the texture type support, for 3ds and even 3D Studio Max are pretty bad in my opinion; they don't make much sense and they are missing a lot of things.
nobody should feel bad if they don't understand them. i think a lot of programs (3d renderers and games) have this problem, and they all have slightly different interpretations of what the texture types are and what they should do. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:13 am Post subject:
Hey guys,
There are some updates with this research. There were fixes on the way the cubes were originally generated, which fixed many problems with the normals that were generated with the program and with other programs as well (see Deformat's picture above). I've also added a mesh optimization feature, among other effects for testing. Also, the models ignore inner voxels, which reduces the amount of faces and vertexes.
Here's some results (without normal smooth):
YR Yuri Boomer Submarine
TS GDI & Nod Mobile Construction Vehicle
RA2 Soviet Demo Truck
And here's my road map:
1 ) Transform pixels into vertexes. (done)
2 ) Interpolate the vertex positions. (done)
3 ) Interpolate the colours. (done)
4 ) Find the correct normals. (done)
5 ) Interpolate the normals. (done)
6 ) Smooth curved areas of the model by adding vertexes. (not done)
7 ) Build a texture atlas for the model. (not done and I'm stuck with that)
8 ) Generate diffuse texture. (not done)
9) Generate any normal map related texture (yet to decide between bump mapping, tangent mapping or any other solution) (not done)
10 ) Simplify/Optimize mesh (done) QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:24 pm Post subject:
With today's revision, we had a major speed up in the code. I've modelized this monster sized voxel from Sane Disruption in less than 2 seconds, using only 78mb of RAM. In the previous revision, it would give me an out of RAM memory after 5 seconds... using over 4gb of my RAM.
looks nice...but then...
it´s way to smoothed texture and remap has AA to other colors
but i think you will fix that or make it look even better _________________ just a simple logo by bricks @ raminator, on Flickr QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 11:17 am Post subject:
Yea. The idea is that the normal map, which will probably be some sort of bump map, reduces this smooth effect in a later time. Regarding the remap, I'll figure out a solution for it later. To export it to Generals and C&C3, I'll have to split it in a different texture. QUICK_EDIT
I dont mean to sound retarded or anything, but is the whole idea of this to make a 3d object from a voxel, then use it as a .shp? and also I tried it, I saved one of my voxels as an .obj, then imported it into Blender, but it didnt bring the textures with it. Did I do something wrong? or do I have to retexture it in Blender? QUICK_EDIT
think beyond TS and Ra2 modding, if these can be optimized enough, they can be used in generals, and even TW/RA3 with even less optimization. _________________ Please, read the signature rules of the forum. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:40 pm Post subject:
@crevio: At the moment, it is not exporting textures, because it doesn't get the texture coordinates yet. It's not simple to do it and I'm working on it. QUICK_EDIT
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