Anim8or Community

Hmmm... can I just point out one problem/error with your example number 4.3, the 4 tris where you delete the line connecting the mid-top verticies, if you remove this you will not result in 4, but in only 1 triangle in the lower right.

If not then you yourself are also incuring special instances as an8 cannot just fill holes, but instead also has to draw a new line. An8 may not know that you want a new line to connect verticies 1 and 4...


Steve also mentioned the same problem with examples 2 and 3, how does an8 choose which tri to keep? It cant.


Trev

I think steve means he is not sure how to distinguish in programming.

But just in case, lets hold L, what we see on screen with any gaps in time replaced with a space is:
L        LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.
This pause is controled by control pannels typographic rate or something like that.

In VB ther is Key Press, Down and Up events, but quickly testing there is no difference between keydown and keypress... According to the docs, KeyPress should only go once, but I made a button change colour from green to black and it just kept going on both events...
Keyup also applies to both...

Very odd...

The only way I can see to overcome this is to add a timer event and
onKeydown
enable whatever
ToggleON = true //Imediatly assume toggle
If time > x ToggleON = false //time x has ellapsed, no longer a toggle

On KeyUp
if ToggleON = True then ToggleOn=False //reset for next time keyup is checked, dont disable as key was toggle.
if ToggleON = False then Disable whatever //key was held so disable on keyup


Something like that anyway.

Trev

P.S. Oh, I have a feature request, Export Model as shown in frame.

eg, You have a guard figure in a sequence and he is say hunched over, the original object is scarecrow, I would like to export the Hunched over Guard (sequence frame) as an object for printing.

The same princibe could be applied to scene too, although Im not too sure how used it would be.

If the scene also exported the lighting shadows etc then that might come in usefull (Im sure this might have been discussed before and I can always import an unlit level into PG now and export shadows from PG and re-cut the mesh in an8 for final re-import into PG)

Ive never understood what this was before today.

I managed to get it working and gave it a whirl, pretty cool.

The deleting points/lines yet keeping face and UV co-ords is amazing, Add edge and auto-fill sounds great.

Ill need to play more to fully understand.

What is dissolve by the way?

I also agree that MMb should either be minimised OR at least have an alternative.

I do have a MMB and wheel, but having been recently using An8 on someone elses laptop I found soo much functionality missing without MMb... Big one was unable to deselect things...


Trev

Yeah sure,
It seems like some sort of buffer overrun as its based on the number of points selected.

If I keep the number low (havn't tested fully but Ive been keeping below 16 verticies) then it works fine and I like the new Average position as oposed to either/Or position after merge.

If I select a large number of verticies say > 32 then it starts to drag other verticies into the selection causing faces to either disapear or invert.

It happens on both 98 and 10.

I dont know that sending a model would help, so ill show a picture.

What the... now its not happening...

Well, the minut it does again ill post a pic

Trev

ok, just tested the above mesh and it happened again


Merge points at 0.001 causes error circled in red

Slex, I think you have already figured this out but An8 already checks the full DIR of the texture location AND the local .an8 file directory.

So, if your .an8 file reads
texture { "9479F24040Other"
  file {
    "D:\\Anim8or\\GE Modeling\\GoldFinger\\Maps\\PillBoxes\\9479F24040Other.bmp"
    }
}

An8 will first check here. IF no file exists it will then check the current working DIR (where you clicked the an8 file)

What could be usefull might be to check Local DIR/Last String loop.

eg, lets say I had all my 4bit textures in a folder named Textures 4Bit, .an8 would read
texture { "9479F24040Other"
  file {
    "D:\\Anim8or\\GE Modeling\\GoldFinger\\Maps\\PillBoxes\\Textures 4Bit\\9479F24040Other.bmp"
    }
}

Now, lets say I moved the project to a new HDD or opened over a Network Share.

An8 would look for the texture and fail on the first check, it would procede to local DIR and also fail because the texture is 1 more folder, so, get an8 to attempt
for n = 0 to entries - 1
  LocalDIR+last entry(n)
next

This would produce the following
D:\\Anim8or\\GE Modeling\\GoldFinger\\Maps\\PillBoxes\\Textures 4Bit\\9479F24040Other.bmp FAIL
LOCALDIR\\9479F24040Other.bmp FAIL
LOCALDIR\\Textures 4Bit\\9479F24040Other.bmp SUCCESS

Trev

Id like to add that by Object here I am pretty sure he means Objects held in the object menu and not seperate 'Meshes' Within an object.
Sometimes it can be confusing and a mesh can quite correctly be concieved as a seperate object, but in the terms of this modeling it is not.

I have of course just realised what is going on here and infact have already done this approach with guns in GoldenEye.

Trev

Seldon, Actualy if Im not mistaken,
Black(0) = -(Max/2) 128 = 0 displacement White(255) = (Max/2)

It works either way I suppose but that is normally the way.

Have you tried Terrainim8or?

Last I tried it did heightmaps.

Maybe it doesnt exist anymore?

There is one program I tried and its quite good (well, Im missing a lot, if you knew what you were doing its very powerfull). Its Large 3D Terrain (L3DT).
It has a wounderfull dynamic subdivision process where triangles will get smaller, more detailed in high frequency areas, while producing large undetailed tris in open areas.

You can also set Tri-Limits and it will process the mesh again with the dynamic subdivision untill it reaches the tri-count.

Trev

Ah, well, Its a modual for being inserted into a game map.
Also, Polycounts are importiant even though they may be culled, so surfaces that i regard as being underground or something will not be filled, Same for surfaces that intersect other surfaces (like the partition in the Type22 Pillbox, it has no top nor bottom faces as these would waist ram (not by much I know, but hey, every little counts on the N64)

Thanks for looking into it though, its really neat to render with the high quality rendering from An8, then replicate it on a vertex level (to a limited degree) for importing into GoldenEye. (youl notice I cut the shadow lines on the holes and also added the bright spots on the floor. Other effects I do later with the ability to shade per-vertex (an8 really needs this too))

Trev