trespasser dino creator

Post by **Remdul** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 4:36 pm

Yep, have been working on the app. Screenshot:

http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/tpdino1.jpg

Almost done, if I don't encounter any nasty bugs it will probably done by this weekend.

Has a buildin 'new dino' wizard; lets you pick your custom skin model, shadow model and select an bone system preset. Presets are tpm files of each type of dinosaur including only the bone objects.

I haven't tried to get it to support loading/editing of Anne, might work on that later after (as well as some other features such as animation preview) once we're done with TC-Isle.

Ps; if someone can think of a better name for the app post it.

Post by **madppiper** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:04 pm

DAMN! These are awsome news...

I've got to get my fingers on that baby, once you're done...

honestly, you're frightening the living shit out of me...

Post by **Remdul** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 9:43 pm

I've upped an early w.i.p. build, to test some VB compiler related stuff.

I don't have an Pentium machine running Windows available, but if one of you guys has could you please check whether you can load the included test file with each exe? Other than that it might be interesting for you to play around with it yet.

Instructions are included...

http://diehard.ath.cx/~pinevalley/tpdc10_wip.zip

I've had some problems at work on a P3 once, didn't handle floating point numbers correctly. Probably was related to the Pentium (Pro) "optimizations" called "Safe" Pentium FDIV checks. but anyway, the default settings made applications crash.

No hurry with this, won't release it to soon anyway, just wanted to know for once and for all what the compiler messed up with...

Post by **Rebel** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 10:31 pm

Damn fine work, Martijn.

Btw, a little off topic though related, is it entirely necessary for us to keep that one static pose of our dinos or can they be posed in any position? The reason that I'm asking this is, if we could have a dino pose that appears as if dino is 'asleep', we can bring it to life only when appropriate. (could be just a noise that awakens it and not distance, so player could sneak by it) I noticed while experimenting the other day that if I killed a dino (with start trigger) it wouldn't die in the standard pose but remained in the exact position that I placed it before its death.

Post by **Remdul** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 10:56 am

Well, I was planning to add some tools on the viewing tab to pose the dinosaur (mainly for testing) but I think that if I save each bone's rotation it'll stay like that in game (using your script).

Would it possible that the animation data could be stored in the level files? Even though the animations seem to be hardcoded there might be some values stored somewhere that affects the animations. Perhaps there are animation scripts (the stuff Andres hacked a few months ago) encapsulated in the levels/exe somewhere...

Post by **Rebel** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:17 pm

It seems logical that a S.Game file would have to register individual bone pos. n' rot. But then again, maybe not --

Post by **Remdul** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:12 pm

Just exported all types of dinosaurs, opened them up with TPDC and it worked great. Have now build in skin mesh/shadow mesh autodetection (don't have to select them manually anymore).

Noticed that the Trike and Steg don't have shadow models nore bones for the shadow models, but the app still supports these dinos. Shadow bones are now hidden in skin mode, but visible in shadow mode.

Anne loads up as well, but I'm haven't checked on the data, if it works the same ways as the dino's skins then we'll be able to touch her up as well. Additionally, we could try adding a shadow mesh (if the engine supports it), so Anne can cast shadows.

Now fixing some minor bugs related to skinning, selecting vertices etc. Hope to get it done by tonight...

Post by **Rebel** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:31 pm

Well, I didn't have any problems using any of the builds you included within the zip, they all appeared to work on my machine. Probably a stupid question, but when done are you going to be able to morph the imported dinos (meaning, moving vertices about to change appearance into other dino) with this prog?

Post by **Remdul** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 6:33 pm

Well, not directly. With a little bit of exporting/importing any model can be used as skin. TPDC generates empty vertex weight data when you select a model. By selecting the vertices you can make the skin work accordingly, and the model is saved as 'skin' (instead of 'mesh').

I could insert some modeling tools, but then the app would become a modeler; it would require other tools as well. So actually I deliberatly steered clear from such tools...

But anyway, might add a whole load of neat tools later, here are some which I have in mind:
-auto-weighting; automaticly generate weighting using several algorythms
-animation preview (e.g. simulates a walk cycle)
-shadow mesh generation (creates an LOD version as shadow model, which copies the skin's weights)
-bump map generator (generates those little triangle textures)
-shadow rendering (preview the shadow mesh in action)
-t-script tools
-editing the physics models

Post by **Rebel** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 7:39 pm

My terminology and/or understanding of the process is limited, since I consider a skin nothing more than textures. But, I guess it don't actually matter if I completely understand how to create new dinos, just so long as you do!

*Have no idea what auto-weighting is, though the remaining listed items I get

Post by **Remdul** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 8:57 pm

Well, with skins people usually mean the deformable model + textures, so you where half right about that.

Weighting is the amount of influence an bone (or joint I should say) was on vertices. So a vertex weight of 1.0 rotates perfectly along, weight of 0.5 rotates only 50% thus allowing you to keep your skin's joints clean (i.e. elbows, knees).

In Trespasser you can't really assign weights to vertices directly (only to which bone it is linked), but there are duplicate bones on some models that only rotate 50% or other (uses the script value RotationRatio).

Anyway, that auto-weighting algorythm should be able to automate the process, so you won't have to select all vertices manually.

Post by **Rebel** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:10 pm

Ah, got it now.

Post by **Remdul** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 11:12 pm

Almost done, fixed the bone system scale and offset, existing weight data is now loaded. Still debugging a few things. There's also a limitation (or shortcoming actually) in TresEd that causes a problem.

Andres, if you happened to read this;

Bone names are missing in the skin objects. Each vertex has a index to a bone, but this seems point to the bone # in the tpm file, though it should be listed with b="<bone_name>" right at the start of the skin object. You get the idea, works the same way as materials are linked in meshes.

* Andres, I figured out that your indices point to the "$J<dino_name>C<num>" bone.

Even though, I think linking the bone by name will be better, considder changing that for the next TresEd version...

Here are a few more screens of two TPMs that came straight from TresEd (steg pic show the existing weighting);

http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/tpdino2.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/tpdino3.jpg

Post by **Remdul** » Sun Jan 25, 2004 10:05 pm

Working on the last few bugs. I'm debugging things as I go thru the entire process of creating a new dino;

http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/compy.jpg

Pulled this one out of the archive, upgraded the textures.

Dug up some older models as well, once I got TPDC done I'll touch up these models' textures and make them work as well.

http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/anky.jpg
http://home.planet.nl/~buijs512/trescom/cera.jpg

Post by **Rebel** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 1:57 am

Neat lookin' dinos thar, Martijn.

(we should paint blood on the nose on one set of compys, have three of them feed on our dead pterandon)

Continue to keep us informed on your progress.