Main Discussion

[David]

solid/smooth set the way you calculate shadows (in short it uses faces normals or vertices normals for calculating light density) It doesn't deform the mesh.
With lights off, it doesn't change anything.

Like Kitarii, I think right model looks much better. It's true in that case there are too much shadowing, this can be easily adjusted in my engine by defining material properties : ambiant, diffuse, specular.



Have all a nice week end !

edit : Did you notice in the demo, characters actually have a little of gouraud shading, just the necesary. When mesh is animated, it's much more realistic when you add a little of shading

[Jasiek]

Originally Posted by david38

It doesn't deform the mesh.

Lol, of course it doesn't... Anyway I think there is a huge difference when there are no lights (which is kind of obvious...).

Anyway, as long as you set a soft light I think it should look ok. Otherwise having any sort of texture other then a single colour on the models is rather pointless...

EDIT:
A finished "generic" grobo.

[Janko_slo]

Wow this grobo looks nice.
Try to add a hat and necktie. XD

[David]

Get the 3D map viewer V2
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=4...db6fb9a8902bda
- resizable window (fullscreen unpossible with FLTK...(*))
- more compact buttons and sliders
- windows/linux binaries
- source code
- Blender file

edit (*) :
void Window::fullscreen ( const Monitor & monitor )
Make the window completely fill the monitor, without any window manager border or taskbar or anything else visible. Use fullscreen_off() to undo this.
Known bugs:
Older versions of both Linux and Windows will refuse to hide the taskbar. Proposed solutions for this tend to have detrimental effects, such as making it impossible to switch tasks or to put another window atop this one. It appears that newer versions of both Linux and Windows work correctly, so we will not fix this.

[ChaosFish]

So awesome! (also mirrored)

QQ (quick question) since I didn't really follow this thread: What's the difference between 3D Map Viewer and Perspective Map Viewer? And are there ways to rotate and switch maps with the keyboard/mouse without moving the bars on the right?

[David]

QA :
- Perspective map viewer uses fake 3D made from 2D LBA sprites. It exports ugly OBJ files.
- 3D map viewer shows a 3D blender map made by Jasiek and Horadrim, remade from the ugly OBJ file

please also mirror perspective map viewer V3, older version don't have exporter !
No way to rotate camera with keyboard yet, will do it on next versions.

[ChaosFish]

Oh missed that one, mirrored

That's some amazing stuff. So you're planning to actually rebuild LBA1 in full 3D?

[David]

Yes, another one trying to make a LBA remake ...
I'm actually making tools so that anybody can get in the project.
Next tool is Character Viewer

[ChaosFish]

Did you check out Yaz0r's character/animation viewer?

[David]

Yes, but as you can see in this thread we are making new models, inspired of LBA but made from scratch
So this viewer will be connected to Blender and not LBA

[leoboe]

Just an Idea:
( I know that this has been suggested many times before but that time we hadn't got those great tool so... )

Wouldn't it be possible to get every sprite from LBA1 to a real 3d-model, so that we could actually replace those sprites in the 3d-space (from the p.m.v.) with the real 3d-models that should have been there anyway.
wouldn't that be easier to do then recreating every map from scratch?

I know there are very many sprites but some of them actally are quite the same but just rotated so wouldn't that be possible.
I mean we could start quite simple and just create the models for one Sprite collection and look if it works.

I had this thought for months now and I really want to hear your oppinion about it.

[David]

That's good idea, and this is what we have done with the pharmacy, check out the 3D map viewer.
I hope Jasiek and Horadrim will make new maps .
Here is the material grid that is connected to my engine
For each cell of the map (64x64) you select a material texture, and my blender script transform that in a 64x64 number array and export it. (they are 6 materials, one cell = one number between 1 and 6, 0=not walkable).

[Darkflame]

nice

Wouldn't it be possible to get every sprite from LBA1 to a real 3d-model, so that we could actually replace those sprites in the 3d-space (from the p.m.v.) with the real 3d-models that should have been there anyway.

Yes, seems to me if you can reproduce it on a tile-by-tile base's it wont be as efficiant in terms of mesh-rendering, but it would be drasticaly less work to do overall.

You could then, purhapes, have custom additions (Like assigning specific light-source points to different scenes)

[Jasiek]

David, I did some work on the part of the Citadel isle that's outside the pharmacy, however it's taking a bit longer. Fr the pharmacy I just selected and copied all the vertices I would need from the original map, and then fill them up with polygons, with an outside map it is a bit harder and time consuming.

[David]

Well at least with this tool you get a base, you don't start from scratch . Also you can pick up some original textures no ?
Watch out with the number of polygons, with my GeForce 5200 I already have low FPS. Allright it's peace of junk but just to warn you. Could be also a problem with transparency computing.

[Jasiek]

Did my demo work ok for you? The map of almost the whole island had vastly more polygons then individual scenes will have here.

[David]

it works pretty good when not looking at horizon, and with lowest resolution.
3D map viewer with 640x480 window has good FPS, troubles start with 1200x1024...
Did you make the LBA1R engine ? What technics are used for waves and shadows ?

[Jasiek]

You can't look at the horizon in my last demo It's isometric only. I used the Conitec A6 engine. I think I can dig up the script for the waves from the previous demo somewhere (it's written in a c-script which is the GameStudio scripting language). The principle was that the whole sea was a huge plane but made of a lot of vertices arranged in a grid, and the vertices of the grid would move up and down like this:
gu - goes up
gd - goes down
first row vertices: 1gu 2gd 3gu 4gd 5gu 6gd...
second row vertices: 1gd 2gu 3gd 4gu 5gd 6gu...
and so on.

pretty simple actually. You could also program some sort of a realistic wave pattern there.

[ChaosFish]

By the way, out of the blue, while you people mess with LBA files, LBA File Information can make your life easier. (in case you're not using it already)

[David]

yes I actually used those file information for perspective map viewer
I put here two snapshots that show you how you can setup material grid
I forgot materials sand rock(cave) carpet and flowers.
Jasiek, where can I get your last demo ?

[Jasiek]

Awesome work there!

The demo is at the bottom of the first post here:
http://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=14288

[David]

I made a water effect here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFJDoREnqs0
there is only one quad drawn there, all the work is made on making the texture. Took me 4 hours to make it with texture maker, it's 20 x 256x256, seamless in space and in time.

I uploaded texture on site page
|
V

[David]

And now grass effect, with similar technic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmkWw5p0Zd0
I will add a random positionning of grass to add realism. (Actually grass inside a pharmacy is not very realistic but ... )

[Jasiek]

I have a nice sprite for the grass. You should make it transparent with fuzzy egdes fo tif LBA more. Also, it would be better to have just the sprite itself move with a script instead of animating the sprite... lot less memory get's wasted that way. That's how my grass and trees moved in my demo.

[Darkflame]

Nice work on both those effects though