LightWave to DTS exporter prerelease version available

#1 Greetings!

Well, now that the plug-in's release is complete, it is time to kick back for a bit and play with it. I decided that it would be great to see if I could use it to create vehicles that could be used with the Head version of the Torque Engine. Especially with the racing demo.

Using the MilkShape car and tire models as a basis, I've managed to create a fully operational LightWave based car!
LightWave created car in the racing demo

Its biggest advantages are the textures on the tires so we can actually see them turn, and the red racing stripe. I feel that all racing cars should have a red racing stripe :o)

Not wanting to keep this to myself, I've released the car and tire DTS files, as well as the LightWave 7.0b scene and object files on my web site:
www.gnometech.com

Head on over there and you too can begin to create vehicles! Now, as animation is not yet supported in the exporter plug-in, you won't be able to do some of the fancy stuff, but you sure can get started.

- LightWave Dave

#2 Cooool!! A textured car!! Thank you so much, Dave!
I don't have Lightwave so I can't check out your plugin, but it's definitely fun to drive it!!
:-))

#3 Greetings!

I wanted to update you all on where I am with the LightWave to DTS exporter. I haven't decided yet if I should be posting my updates here in the forum, or as a .plan like so many others have. For the moment, I've decided to continue to post here... :o)

Based on some feedback from my great beta-tester Kevin, I've implemented all of the possible Torque material settings other than animated textures. This means additive and subtractive surfaces, self-illumination, etc. This work actually takes the LW exporter beyond what the MilkShape exporter can do. Yay! Check out a sample of what can be accomplished here:

A sample of some material combinations

The two surfaces that have an environmental reflection setup on them are kinda hard to make out. The reflections are really noticeable when you move around the object.

I've tried to implement these materials by matching them to LW surface parameters as best as I could. ie: transparency maps to the LW transparency channel. There are some instances where this was not possible, so I've added another plug-in to the mix. This new plug-in is a surface shader that is used to set up these Torque specific flags.

So, if you needed a surface to be additive, then you'd add this shader to it, open up its interface, and select 'Additive' from the 'Transparency Types' list. If you don't need this flag set on another surface, then don't add the shader to it. Here's a sample of this plug-in's interface:

Torque DTS Material Attributes Plug-in Interface

Don't worry if you don't understand quite what I'm getting at. As usual, I'll be including an example object that you may take a look at to see how these effects are accomplished with the next pre-release of the exporter.

Now that I've got that little sidetrack out of the way, it's back to work on animation...

- LightWave Dave

#4 Amazing work, Dave!!
Too bad I don't have Lightwave... :-(

One more thing on this DTS format, though... do you use the DTS SDK provided with the Milkshape exporter? Or did you implement all this stuff from scratch? I'm asking because it would be really cool to have a DTS exporter for the ArtOfIllusion open source editor, but this DTS stuff is ... well, scary .... :-(

#5 Stefan, using the DTS SDK would be the way to go look at the ms2dts exporter everything you need to include is there. David has been helping me IMMENSELY with writing an exporter for MAYA, and I am so close...to having a pre-alpha version that exports nodes and objects.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask me. I would say you can ask David as well, but I can't speak for him, but he is friendly and well knowledged, just don't go asking questions like how do I compile or include header files =). I'm about to post my first release of the MAYA to DTS source, since I'm missing something, and maybe if the community had a look see they can see something I'm missing. I also plan to post the full source to the final version, the more source the more the GG community learns :)

But the DTS SDK is the way to go, want to know the file structure look at DTS::Shape::save(ostream& out) and DTS::Shape::read(istream& in), except I tried read and got a big assert at the CheckPoint() part.

#6 Greetings!

Stefan, I used the MilkShape DTS code as the basis for my own exporter. I'd really recommend that anyone use that as a base. I know that there isn't any docs for it at the moment, but you should be able to figure out the general flow from it.

And yes, feel free to ask any questions you have.

- LightWave Dave

#7 Oh Happy Days!

Greetings everyone. I wanted to update you all on my progress with the LW to DTS exporter.

I haven't really been doing very much lately. Taking it easy, playing some new games. In fact, I'm thinking of not continuing work on the exporter any more. I'm bored!

...

Had you going for a moment there, didn't I? :o) *ducks the thrown tomatoes and small rodents*

Actually, I've been spending my time on a little topic know as animation. And guess what? It's working!

Five segmented tube with three bones

It took a bit longer than I had anticipated, mostly due to working out the user interface and retrieving the appropriate information from LW. You may see the animation interface here:

Animation sequence exporter interface

All you do is define what frames within the scene are part of each sequence. The position and rotation information for all of the nodes is then exported to the DTS file.

So far, everything works great for forward kinematics. You can also animate with inverse kinematics, but it is a pain to set up for the exporter. I'm working on adding a feature that will make the workflow easier so that exporting IK animations will be just as easy as FK ones. LW's IK animation system is one of the best, but for a plug-in to gain access to it you have to go through a couple of hoops.

Once I've finished this piece, I'll once again release the exporter for everyone to try out. And, as always, some example scenes to help you get going.

So far there are 22 LightWavers out there using the current release, with a PC to Mac ratio of 2:1. Not bad...

- LightWave Dave

#8 WTG Fulcrum ! Pretty soon you may have to be upgraded to Lever ! :-)

#9 Greetings!

Just a quick update on where I'm at. I'll save my usually long diatribe for another time. :o)

Recently, I've been out of the country on business, and then I got sick. Now I'm back in full force!

I've managed to get Inverse Kinematic-based animations to export successfully into Torque. It's great to see a LW object running around.

I'm about to hand off the plug-in to my great beta tester Kevin, and send the source to CJ to make sure everything is still working on the Mac. Once I've received their go-ahead, it'll be time for another public release. I'm hoping that this will occur sometime next week.

And Ken, while I appreciate the sentiment, I usually view a lever without a fulcrum as just a stick on the ground. :o)

- LightWave Dave

#10 Oops.

I forgot to add that today LW v7.5 is to be released (free to 7.0b users). It'll be interesting to see if any changes in 7.5 affect what I've been working on.

- LightWave Dave

#11 make that 23 :)

Any more word on the Animation release?

Thanks btw this is awesome work, I think that setting up the animations in LW will be much easier than it MAX it looks like. Can't wait to start animating my models for my tech demo :)

#12 Greetings!

Wow, I can't believe that this much time has gone by.

Between mine (I've been travelling a lot) and CJ's schedules, we've finally managed to get the animation code to work on both the PC and Mac. I'm currently putting some finishing touches on the new documentation, and hope to release the latest version this week.

At least I better, as I'm off on another business trip next week...

- LightWave Dave

#13 Thanks for the update LW Dave :)

Just got LW reinstalled on my machine after a 2 year hiatus, and am itching to get some work into the game engine.

#14 This news leaves me drooling!

Will we be able to export .dif files?

Do you happen to have a player model as .lws
and a .dts for example. I've been shifting a static
player around in lightwave for hours..he ends up
in the roof or under ground or floating under the gun.

Where are my nodes and pivot supposed to go.
I'm searching now for this info

I hope all the code works,

ok have to go dry off now.

#15 the .dif files are not suited for LW as they have LOTS of CSG constraints that they must conform to that LW just can not enforce, and CSG forms are calculated in an completely different way than polygon based models are. That is why WorldCraft, Quark and the other CSG map/modeling tools exist.

Not that it can not be done, but the return on the effort would be questionable as the output would be suspect at best.

A better solution would be to write something that converted lwo files to .map files, but then again that will be difficult and error prone because of the fundemental differences in how CSG forms and polygon based models are created/stored/manipulated and calculated.

#16 I did a little searching and I came across a LWO -> map converter.

www.petrich.com/games/quake/quake.html

It's about halfway down the page and called "My Lightwave-to-Quake Translator"

It's for mac's though, but the source is included with the download so if anyone wants to port it to the PC (wink, wink)... I'm not really set up for Torque here at work so the only thing I could do was export a simple object and look at the .map as text which seemed to work fine. I don't know what will happen with Map2Diff though. I'm going to play around with it tonight and see if it works but I'm macless at home so my testing will be limited.

#17

Quote:It will take all that file's polygons and turn them into thin brushes that surround those polygons

this is BAD! as it will create horrendous .map files.

There is a similar plugin that does something just as naive for MAX that does not work that well.

#18 Hi Lightwave Dave!!!

Do you know how happy I was to see this post? I almost jumped out of my seat. I love LW! I was forced to learn 3dsmax because I didn't have the lw->dts converter! Thank you sooooo much... good work dude!

Daniel

#19 I tried that LW2Quake converter.
It couldn't read any of my lightwave files so I don't know what to say.

Maybe we should email this fella and see if he's not busy maybe he could get the converters done for Torque on Mac.

Shout if you find a Mac tool, I'll try it!

#20 When I tried it I exported my object as a LW 5 file first and it worked fine, it didn't work with a normal saved file. I looked around for a while and that was the only lw to map converter (mac or PC) I could find so I don't know if there are anymore out there. All the source is there so someone might be able to base a new tool off that, I would do it but since my C++ skills are extremely weak I don't know if I could.