Old discussion and screenshots thread

[Verdite]

Yeah the UI done my head in. I studied blender for about three months, so i know a good deal about the animation process, but that type of animation is done via bones and mesh painting... So from the message i recieved from you a while ago, i can assume that it wont work with SoM that way.

I'm fluent with Metasequoia, but i havent seen any form on animation with it. I wonder what software SoM was developed with? The primitive tile in metaseq is exactly the same dimensions as a flat som map tile...

[Holy_Diver]

I'd be surprised if Blender gave you only one kind of animation to work with. If you look into it, you'll probably find a number of different animation styles. That said, if you go to the trouble to make an animation that way that looks like a tinman animation, I will amend x2mdl to treat it as such. Basically you just need to paint the mesh so each separate mesh is either black or white with respect to one bone (white to one, black to the rest)

Bone+skin animation is really not a problem for Som. I just gotta finish up all the code on the scarecrow animation side. It can do anything basically, but you'll probably lose some fidelity in the process. Compressing the scarecrow animations so to yield higher sampling rates will probably be a subject of interest for a some time afterward.

PS: It seems like to me most of the Som artists used PSone tools to do stuff, though Metasequoia might be possible (I'm not sure why it's so popular around here / know nothing about it) ... the map tiles are basically just a radius of 1, which is a pretty natural number to go with if you think about it.

[Madison Lastrega]

now your in MY realm :) Maya will not do any animations that som will understand, it is set into its own formats MA ( Maya Asscii) and MB ( Maya Bininary) , and another thing Maya is not CHEAP AT ALL 4 grand for a production copy:) I used Maya 7 to do my video,)OOOOOLD VERSION) And I used a production copy.... However you can try maya 2011 for 30 days for free to see if you like it..... ( then if your crafty) uninstall clean your registry and install every 30 days:) , but save your time and all else , I use BLENDER and META to model for som, to make cool movies and models that pixar would smile at , use Maya:) Blender and Meta work well together, both can communicate very well, Holy is right , All Maya export properties are 3 rd party, and once again have to be bought or otherwise, so for a small scale build Maya is NOT the way to go:) ......... on the good side of things....... Som animated objects, are nothing more than simple frame based Direct-x Models...... Blender can Make those and export to direct x with no problem at tall......... problem is we have no x to mdl converter yet to make the PRF, and file coexist....... and this has been the issue since John was around:).......... Holy was working on some importer to do that , but I don't know where he stands with it as of now:) but to answer you Ben, Blenders "GAME mode" is the same as ANIMATION" it can exports Frame animation, so once we have an exporter, making animated models at least will be easy..... I got tired of waiting for it, so Now I just work around it, IE like making 2 or three objects that work togther to LOOK animated, takes more room, but saves Headach:) ‎  ‎  ...........I used Maya for friend to make a cool PRODUCTION grade Clip..... but for SOM it is not gonna do what you , need. For FREE easy frame base animations , please use the all mighty BLENDER:) ‎  ‎  Hope this helps you my friend:) Will help you set up anything you might help with as well//////////// Feels good to be back with you all:).................ML

[Verdite]

Thats alot of cash! Is that more than 3ds max? I think it is... Thanks for the info joe i will have to mess about with blenders animation :) x2mdl works fine getting models into the game, and theres cp edit which does work fine too as far as im aware, the last time i tested both worked well.

Anyway it looks like theres gonna be alot more development in the works with it, though i'm sure Holy will fix it up.

Yeah you made your chronic tree in Maya right? Looked nice!

Thanks alot for the support with Blender, its great to know help is at hand. I've been working hard on my project recently, and i'm pretty sure most folk will appreciate the results.
Dunno if my project will have movies to be honest! Will give it some contemplation. Looking forward to seeing yours ‎ 

[Holy_Diver]

Som .mdl files have two types of animation (as I've explained before) which are probably mutually exclusive. Of course no software you can find (other than x2mdo) will write any graphics files that are natively supported by Som.

I dunno what Blender's capabilities are, though I'd be shocked if they did not include all traditional methods widely used for animation. You might have to switch over to the "Game" mode as ML described, because real-time animation and CGI animation are kinda different problem domains.

The more sophisticated animation type x2mdl does not yet do. I'm not sure what ML means by "frame based" but I will call it frame based... which is based on Quake .mdl files I believe, though the "mdl" part is probably only a coincidence. Basically that's like you just take a snapshot of the model at each frame of the animation and then play it back. Like a movie more or less. I call this "scarecrow" animation, and I'm sticking to that to avoid confusion, because the models you can make this way move like scarecrow (in The Wizard of Oz)

Anyway, that's the kind of animation you don't want at this point. The other kind is what I call "tinman" animation. It moves like suit of armor, ie. is not flexible. This kind of animation works by moving the joints of the animation which are arranged in the shape of a "skeleton". When the joints move, all the parts of the model that are stuck to that joint move in exactly the same way, and so do all the parts that are stuck to the joints that are further down the skeleton tree.

Ideally that's the kind of animation you want for now to work with x2mdl. The bone/skin animation is really just a variation of the classical skeletal animation model where each vertex is weighted against a number of joints (now called bones for the hell of it) so if you set the weights to for each sub-mesh to all on or off you end up with what is essentially a tinman animation. It would still look like bone/skin to x2mdl but I can add some code to accept it anyway as long as the weights are appropriate.

As soon as x2mdl can write out scarecrow models I will adapt it to work with bone/skin input by virtue of simply sampling the bone/skin animation at regular or adaptive intervals. I actually know pretty much everything about the scarecrow layouts, but I need to setup a visualizer so I can confirm the code is correct. Ideally something more efficient than using Som itself to that end. I think will probably add some code to Ex for drawing scarecrow models sometime in the next year so I can add an avatar to Trismegistus based on the npc Tom picked out for the player, which I'm pretty sure is a scarecrow animation.

PS: The tinman models are actually much more efficient and will be easier to optimize in the future. So even after scarecrow models are an option, I encourage you to stick to the tinman layouts if you can. Especially for monster hordes. At some point it will probably be practical to add vertex weights to the tinman npcs via Ex. Or probably more practically just replace the "skin" part of the model so the joints would be more one piece like than two overlapping stubs.

PPS: I'd be surprised if you couldn't buy a legal version of Maya for around 250$ for what you want to do, but I recommend just sticking with Blender even if the UI is a bit heavy handed. Same for GIMP versus Photoshop. I often feel like GIMP just won't do what I need it to, but eventually I figure out how to do it. The filters though can seem a bit limited. I have not tried really looking for filter plugins though. And hell I could probably write my own if I wanted to after adapting GIMP's pseudo antialias filter for Ex a little while back (which Ex is not currently use) to try to smooth out the edges of knocked out pixels a little better (I think a true AA algorithm is necessary... unfortunately I did not find one just laying around)

[Verdite]

Quality. I use GIMP too and find it really user friendly. Its easy to get into.

Ill use that info as a reference, thanks.

Just a question... You say you use GIMP, and Maya... Do you use them to create SoM customs at all?
If you do, or have done, i'd like to see them. Not for any referencing, just a casual browse for enjoyment! ‎ 

[Holy_Diver]

Quality. I use GIMP too and find it really user friendly. Its easy to get into.

Ill use that info as a reference, thanks.

Just a question... You say you use GIMP, and Maya... Do you use them to create SoM customs at all?
If you do, or have done, i'd like to see them. Not for any referencing, just a casual browse for enjoyment! ‎ 

Well I have a background with this sort of stuff. I started programming actually out of frustration with the state of 3D modeling software... which at the time (if not still) didn't really provide all the tools you really needed to get things right. Well I started out with engineering software (by way of school/work programs) then started to prefer more sculpting like CGI software (for art projects) but that totally lacked any concept of precision. I still use both in projects, but neither marry very well. I'm a natural at that sort of thing and am pretty much a triple threat in terms of all the technical know how and ability you need to pull off a game or whatever. I'm very capable no matter what I set my mind to, but over the years I've gravitated more and more towards programming. Because that's where the real power and intellectual challenge is to be found. Being a production artist is a lot like being a slave. Either to a real master or the limitation of your tools. So I try to limit myself to critical stuff like concept art and polishing up other peoples work but I can still get anything done if necessary.

I've not done anything Som related since getting involve and technically do not even know how to convert something into a Som compatible file other than with the tools I've created myself. I've not had a good enough reason to anyway so far. I'm 99% happy with the stuff that comes with Som and prefer a minimalist approach to adding original graphics to your game. Five good hand made things to make your game stand out/work is probably enough in my opinion.

[Verdite]

Fair enough. Personally, i see handmade models as a reflection of imagination. So essentially i'm making a game that gives people a bit of insight to my creativity, which i'm sure ML is doing too. I suppose in a way its an art expression, only in game form. You could achieve, to an extent, a certain degree of this with the original SoM assets, but it would only be a fraction of your creative potential.

Honestly i like the SoM map pieces, i just wanted to branch out and make something unique. Yes i'm looking forward to seeing more modifications you'l make with EX, especially if you can increase the draw distance on high resolution, without having pieces dissapear! ‎ 

[Holy_Diver]

Fair enough. Personally, i see handmade models as a reflection of imagination. So essentially i'm making a game that gives people a bit of insight to my creativity, which i'm sure ML is doing too. I suppose in a way its an art expression, only in game form. You could achieve, to an extent, a certain degree of this with the original SoM assets, but it would only be a fraction of your creative potential.

That's good for you if you can afford to do that. I can model stuff very quickly just as well as about anyone, but still it doesn't seem worth the trouble to me. And I don't think it's good to set the bar so high for DIY games. I think after only a few games with like five key assets each you'd eventually rack up quite a large number and the asset pool would balloon quite quickly filling in the gaps people need.

That said Som comes with 100s of assets and I don't think enough has been done with them yet by a long shot. I just imagine a world where I think people's expectations should be lowered in terms of visual variety if what they want is truly good games. Or in other words, its less what you have than what you do with it. The poster child for that is the game industry which spends billions of dollars on fresh assets only to end up with the intellectual equivalent of barf for all that wasted human potential

[Verdite]

Well it all depends on how you look at it really... What some would consider wasted potential, others would consider quite stimulating and well worthwhile.
I think any potential someone has should be applied coherently as they want it to be, and as their own reflection, unless there are guidelines.
If someone does that, then i dont consider it a waste, in fact i consider that very commendable. If it doesnt fit someone elses expectations thats tough, all they need to do is go back to what they are used to.