dukeschen
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Posts posted by dukeschen
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I'd like to contribute to the project. I'm not sure how much time I can give with my business and a personal animation I'm trying to finish for the spring.
I've been knocking around in the torque game engine for few years now. I could probably give you some input on bringing in avatars from AM, and buildings from quark. I'm psyched you guys have decided to use torque. I think it's a really versatile engine and I hope I can pitch in at some capacity.
I posted these files a while back and thought it might help to post the link here. It's a model I originaly exported to 3dmax for torque. I rebuilt it in AM when Chris came out with the plug-in. The animations were quickly done to fill in the slots. So bear that in mind please.
This model will work in an unaltered version of torque. In order to change the number of animations or their purpose you need to alter the script files and cc files related to the player model.
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The date works for me.
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I can't make it for the 28th., out of town that weekend unfortunately.
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The date looks good for me. See you there.
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Click on tools/options/modeling turn off "display normals"
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Download Quark army knife. It's a free level editor and will open the .map files of the orc village buildings. You can find them in .../example/starter.fps/data/interiors. You'll notice that even the small buildings have a "portal" in the open entry to the interior. When the player enters the building through the portal, erronious info about the exterior terrain and lighting stops being processed thus keeping your frame rate high. I'm not a programmer and that's a simplified explanation of what the portal is doing.
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Don't get me wrong obsidian games exporter absolutely rocks for avatars and vehicles or any intercactive element. For a static elements such as a building, the engine makes great use of the .dif format. In most cases a building in the DTS format is a big hit to the frame rate. Maybe just the exterior won't be so bad but from any research I've done it's always been considered a taboo.
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I wouldn't recommend modeling buildings and structures in Hash. Your Frame rate would take a massive hit if you introduced an entire structure as a "DTS" file. The engine is designed for using ".dif" files that can be created in programs like Quark army knife. The interior code for Torque is impressive and allows for entering and exitng buildings without "zoning".
Learning to model interiors in a map prog like quark can be frustrating for a modeler used to advanced tools available in softwares like hash. Although you could export your model to a prog like milkshape and then export from there as a map file the results are poor and redundant. A simple cube made in hash then exported via milkshape to a map file would become 6 "brushes" as opposed to a simple cube formed in quark would be one brush. There are restrictions on what shapes can be used to form interiors such as avoiding concave elements and "light leaks". I would recomend recreating your structure in a level editor like Quark since exporting your hash model to a map would take just as long to massage it into a useable interior element.
Torque is coming out with it's own level editor called "Constructor",,(it's been a long time in dev.) and promises to be more intuitive then quark.
There are specific tools available in Quark for torque such as portals and torque specific elements.
If you purchase Torque there is a ton of info in the forums concerning level editors and the process.
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I don't know if these files will be any use to you but I have a set of dsq,s and a dts that will drop into TGE without any altertion to scripts or code. Download this file
and place them in ../example/starter.fps/data/shapes/player
It'll replace the default Orc guy, so back him up in another folder.
I used the TSM rig, if you want to see the project files and animations they can be downloaded here
The animations are crude first passes just to fill in all the animation slots that the default Orc model uses. Also the Texture is from a MAX model I was using and is only quickly pasted on the AM model. I just thought it might be useful for disection.
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Ugh ,, my bad, I re-opened the project file with the TSM rig and everything is exporting fine. I must have been using baked actions or something and then abandoned it for a simpler rig. Ignore my original post I'm wrong.
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Paul, Do you animate with the model rotated for export? Or do you animate with the model in a normal orientation and then reapply the action to a rotated version?
With TSM my model kept showing up folded in half within the engine.
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Dennis, Are you using the AM 2001 rig? I ran into issues with it as well. If I remeber right, both the TSM rig and and the am one has issues with the postioning of the geometry bones. The sophisticated constraints cause issues.
I found by making a more simplified rig with just a basic IK leg sys and some torso /head controls works. You can also use helper bones at the joints with "oreient and translate " constraints. I think the issue comes when your rig has bones aiming in the opposite direction of the geometry bones and are used in a constraint method to move them,, not sure.
Another thing to try is take the the first frame of your root pose in the action and export that back out as a model. Then export it to the game engine as your DTS. Then start every action with the first frame copied from your root pose.
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I'm planning on stopping by Saturday. I have a few wip's I'd like to share and get some cirits and comments on.
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I thought these links to Torque documentation discussing the creation and export of 3ds max models to dts might shed some light. If you read through the tutorial it might take some of the mystery out of the naming conventions for the nodes and their purpose in the engine.
(You may need to be an owner of a tge liscense to access the pages,,, not sure.)
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Dropped a biped model in torque with the beta exporter. Worked like a champ.
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I just caught this thread at 11:00 a.m. I'm gonna jump on a subway from queens, should land me there around noonish.
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Say Chrs I've got a project file floating around that has an assortment of models with naming coventions used to match the bones in the original torque model. There's also models with torque specific entities included as nulls and what not.
If this would be helpful to you let me know.
I've been monkey'ing around in torque for few years now and would be thrilled to see a direct pipeline from hash. hopeyour able to continue with it.
Have you seen their new TSE engine?
January NYNJAMUG meeting
in A:M Users Groups
Posted
So far that date looks good for me. I'm hoiping to make it down there.