Another shot at ODE

Jameson Bennett — 2006-06-22T18:18:05+00:00

So, I've been playing with ODE lately.

After tinkering with ODEItem and working professionally with an integration based on the resource I decided to try a completely new approach to the problem. The integrations I have worked with, although networked and relatively stable, were poorly designed and cumbersome to extend and use. A complete design, rewrite and integration later, I think I may have a good solution for a fully networked ODE integration.

Currently all ODE 0.5 features are supported (nothing in 0.6 affects the integration), but my initial use is very limited focused on the networking problem. It runs very well both single and multiplayer, and I have had up to 5 players at one time, all parties reporting very smooth action on even on older machines. Stacks of object are stable, but I have reached limitations with TGE's collision, one of the major issues that has come up on GG forums many times over the years. This is the only major flaw in the current solution (what ever happened to the component system Fagot had designed to address some of these issues?).

There are other features to add and tweaks to make, but it is looking very promising. Check out these movies to see it in action:

Single player:
.wmv
.mov

Multi player:
.wmv
.mov

Monday Apr 11 19:35

Jameson Bennett — 2005-04-11T19:35:02+00:00

My first .plan here on GG: Smoothing out the art pipeline for new (and old) modeling tools and spending some quality time with Normal Maps.

I've finally gotten some time to really dig into the TGE/TSE and have been looking into ways of streamlining the art pipeline, especially for being able to view models quickly.

Although several years ago I used to be a 'mainstream' 3d app junkie, using Maya, 3DSMax and Cinema4d for my 3d work, Ive migrated to some new tools over the last couple years that I have found incredible for modeling and texturing.

By far I feel that Zbrush (www.zbrush.com) is the most amazing 3d modeling tool to come onto the market. Originally created as a '2.5d' tool and following an 'artist canvas' paridigm, the latest revisions (since 1.5) have made roughing out and creating incredibly detailed 3d models a breeze. A warning: because of it's roots, it is difficult for someone coming from traditional 3d to get ahold of...literally took me months till I felt comfortable in the application and I am still amazed at it's flexibility daily. The interface and mental model you keep during the modeling process is utterly different than 'norm', but this is the thing that allows it to be what it is. I highly recommend anybody that does modeling take a serious look at it...also, persons with a traditional painting and sculpture based pipeline seem to really run with it.

For general modeling purposes, I use Silo (www.nevercenter.com). Silo is an inexpensive but incredible low poly modeling tool with a lot of unique features, and like Zbrush is supported on both Mac and PC. It lacks a UV editor, so I do most of that in Blender if Zbrush is not cooperating with it's incredible auto mapping features.

One issue with moving away from a mainstream tool is that it becomes unlikely that a .dts exporter will be available to view the model in the engine while you work. This then creates a cumbersome addition to the workflow of importing your model into the exporting 3d app, setting up the scene with bounding box and detail nodes and finally exporting so you can see your work. This can take some time, depending on the exporter and was a big burden on my pipeline.

To speed up workflow for viewing the meshes built in many of these unsupported 3d apps, I looked into several options for importing meshes from them. I finally settled on he .obj file format as it allows you to store vertex, face, material and texture data and can be exported from nearly all 3d modeling applications out there. Ive built a tool to allow easy .dts creation from standard .obj files and posted it as a resource here:

Obj2Dts

You can download it and find instructions for use on the resource page and more detailed instructions at the Web Site link. Hopefully it will be useful to others as it has sped up my workflow drastically.

On another, somewhat related note: Zbrush will create normal maps from your 4 million poly meshes down onto your original low res models very easily. I tried several months ago to build a pipeline that would move the models with normal maps I was creating in zbrush to TSE. I was having trouble with this, using several exporters and blaming them, but after building my own I am confident that I am generating compliant meshes with good normal data(and of course with verification in Dave Wyland's ShowTool Pro). To clear up the remaining problems, I have been looking the normal map issues Jacob Dankovchik reported a while ago.

The problem seems to be related to the UV texture coordinates in some way being involved in the lighting calculation, but I am still digging into some bump.cpp and hoping for a helping hand if anyone is familiar with the bump mapping code.

I would really love to get this solved so I can start running with a solid Zbrush to TSE pipeline. You will be seeing some amazing artwork in upcoming .plans if we can get this fixed!

Blog for Jameson Bennett at GarageGames.com

Another shot at ODE

Monday Apr 11 19:35