Plan for David "Fulcrum" Wyand
by David Wyand · 06/01/2004 (2:43 pm) · 12 comments
Greetings!
Time to unveil one of the projects I've been working on recently. The new and improved Gnometech Show Tool! Currently in development (now in alpha testing), the Gnometech Show Tool allows the user to view their DTS objects to ensure they have been correctly exported. You may find the current list of features at the Gnometech site: www.gnometech.com/showtoolmain.shtml but I think the pictures below speak for themselves...
The Orc player model has been loaded and the eye node has been selected by the user. With a selected node, the ShowTool draws the node's axis as well as displays its world position and rotation to the left of the view window. The run animation sequence has been selected and is shown a quarter of the way through using the animation position slider. The nodes and their parental links are shown and animate along with the object's mesh. The user also has the Detail Levels window open with the first level of detail selected.
The original Torque Guy has been loaded into a separate layer and is being rendered with a white wireframe over the texture. The head object has been selected causing a translucent bounding box to be drawn. Lights have been disabled forcing the object to be shown with 100% ambient light. The solid background colour has been replaced with a user selected image. The drawing of the nodes and node links has been disabled while the mount0 node has been selected causing its statistics and axis to be displayed.
The user has chosen a black background and turned off the grid. Environmental mapping has been enabled with a user selected bitmap. A weapon (that was loaded into another layer) has been mounted to the player.dts's hand (mount0, but it could have been any node).
The Material List window has been opened showing all of the DTS materials for the current object. The material named player is 512x512 pixels and has the S Wrap and T Wrap flags turned on in the DTS file. If the Flush Texture Cache button were clicked, all bitmaps would be flushed and reloaded (also accessible by pressing the 't' key).
The current object is being forced to display the fourth mip map level. All mip map levels may be inspected while the object is viewed full size. The Sequence List window is open showing a number of attributes for the loaded animation sequences.
The buggy.dts object's collision mesh is displayed over the object. The front right shock object has been selected causing its bounding box to be rendered. The main light has been moved over and slightly in front of the buggy by holding down the 'l' key and moving the mouse.
- LightWave Dave
Time to unveil one of the projects I've been working on recently. The new and improved Gnometech Show Tool! Currently in development (now in alpha testing), the Gnometech Show Tool allows the user to view their DTS objects to ensure they have been correctly exported. You may find the current list of features at the Gnometech site: www.gnometech.com/showtoolmain.shtml but I think the pictures below speak for themselves...
The Orc player model has been loaded and the eye node has been selected by the user. With a selected node, the ShowTool draws the node's axis as well as displays its world position and rotation to the left of the view window. The run animation sequence has been selected and is shown a quarter of the way through using the animation position slider. The nodes and their parental links are shown and animate along with the object's mesh. The user also has the Detail Levels window open with the first level of detail selected.
The original Torque Guy has been loaded into a separate layer and is being rendered with a white wireframe over the texture. The head object has been selected causing a translucent bounding box to be drawn. Lights have been disabled forcing the object to be shown with 100% ambient light. The solid background colour has been replaced with a user selected image. The drawing of the nodes and node links has been disabled while the mount0 node has been selected causing its statistics and axis to be displayed.
The user has chosen a black background and turned off the grid. Environmental mapping has been enabled with a user selected bitmap. A weapon (that was loaded into another layer) has been mounted to the player.dts's hand (mount0, but it could have been any node).
The Material List window has been opened showing all of the DTS materials for the current object. The material named player is 512x512 pixels and has the S Wrap and T Wrap flags turned on in the DTS file. If the Flush Texture Cache button were clicked, all bitmaps would be flushed and reloaded (also accessible by pressing the 't' key).
The current object is being forced to display the fourth mip map level. All mip map levels may be inspected while the object is viewed full size. The Sequence List window is open showing a number of attributes for the loaded animation sequences.
The buggy.dts object's collision mesh is displayed over the object. The front right shock object has been selected causing its bounding box to be rendered. The main light has been moved over and slightly in front of the buggy by holding down the 'l' key and moving the mouse.
- LightWave Dave
About the author
A long time Associate of the GarageGames' community and author of the Torque 3D Game Development Cookbook. Buy it today from Packt Publishing!
#2
Absolutely beautiful... And I love the interface! (But maybe I am biased... ;)
06/01/2004 (2:54 pm)
HOLY CRAP! I had no idea you were working on this. This is exactly what I have been hoping for in Torque -- A way to verify absolutely that my models are correct without having to just cross my fingers and dump them into a live game.Absolutely beautiful... And I love the interface! (But maybe I am biased... ;)
#3
Keep up the good work!
06/01/2004 (3:29 pm)
A good show tool is what torque really needs, and i think this really is that good show tool :)Keep up the good work!
#5
Great work David.
06/01/2004 (4:53 pm)
Great!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's a very nice ui. The current one is really broken.Great work David.
#6
06/01/2004 (4:58 pm)
Excellent work
#7
06/01/2004 (5:39 pm)
Man, now that's a show too!
#8
I'm glad you all like the direction I've taken. I'd also like to thank James Urquhart for sharing his patch for tsLastDetail objects:
The tree on the left is in its normal polygonal view, while the one on the right was automatically generated by Torque at run time as a 2 polygon, view dependant billboard (when the DTS file is loaded). With the Gnometech ShowTool, you may view these detail levels close up (like the pictures above) or when the object is moved away from the camera (like in a game setting).
- LightWave Dave
06/01/2004 (5:49 pm)
Thanks Guys!I'm glad you all like the direction I've taken. I'd also like to thank James Urquhart for sharing his patch for tsLastDetail objects:
The tree on the left is in its normal polygonal view, while the one on the right was automatically generated by Torque at run time as a 2 polygon, view dependant billboard (when the DTS file is loaded). With the Gnometech ShowTool, you may view these detail levels close up (like the pictures above) or when the object is moved away from the camera (like in a game setting).
- LightWave Dave
#9
06/01/2004 (6:26 pm)
This is really incredible, really incredible. When is the earliest time that we can get our hands on this awesome tool? he he:P
#10
If it is not already planned, having the app 'watch' the timestamp on the loaded texture files and reload them if changed (without having to re-focus on the tool) would be a really, really, really nice thing to have.
06/01/2004 (11:37 pm)
two thumbs up!If it is not already planned, having the app 'watch' the timestamp on the loaded texture files and reload them if changed (without having to re-focus on the tool) would be a really, really, really nice thing to have.
#11
Looks good though. Niiice.
I kinda dig the way youve made the UI look like lightwave as well.. scary :)
06/02/2004 (1:18 am)
Looks like youve done a hellovalotof work there :)Looks good though. Niiice.
I kinda dig the way youve made the UI look like lightwave as well.. scary :)
#12
06/02/2004 (4:06 am)
Awesome. 
Torque Owner Johnny Hill
Wow. GREAT Resource LIGHTWAVE DAVE!! :)
John H.