I have a couple questions. Been working, reading the documentation, and tearing through the scripts to figure them out.
1. How do I set the camera height in space? I have removed all of the normal FPS player scripting and replaced the model with a static axis object. The camera is still floating in the air well above the location of the model.
2. How does the Settings.xml and Actions.xml file work? I have made changes to both but the changes are not reflected in the game. For instance I have set the settings to run in a window but it doesn't. Also, I would like to use the scroll wheel on my mouse to change the distance the camera is from the player object in chase mode. How would I do this? I have not been able to find a single place in any .js where the actions in these two files are mentioned and as I said, changing them does nothing.
3. How can I tell Dim3 to show all of the meshes in an object but no bones, poses, or animations? I have been experimenting with importing objects with around 8,000 polys once tessellated into tris, so I have been cutting them into segments and importing each mesh separately...now I want them all to show up automatically.
about the camera:
add
Code:
obj.size.eyeOffset=0;
anywhere in
Code:
if (camera.setting.type!=DIM3_CAMERA_TYPE_FPP) {
camera.setting.type=DIM3_CAMERA_TYPE_FPP;
obj.look.upAngle=80;
obj.look.downAngle=35;
obj.look.effectWeapons=true;
iface.console.write('Camera Mode FPP');
}
just make sure it's in its own line and between the "{" & "}"
also, once you decide on a number, change
Code:
obj.size.eyeOffset=-7500;
to match that.
Sorry, I don't have time to explain anything else right now
DownshiftDX Wrote:2. How does the Settings.xml and Actions.xml file work? I have made changes to both but the changes are not reflected in the game. For instance I have set the settings to run in a window but it doesn't. Also, I would like to use the scroll wheel on my mouse to change the distance the camera is from the player object in chase mode. How would I do this? I have not been able to find a single place in any .js where the actions in these two files are mentioned and as I said, changing them does nothing.
Actions tells what how actions, which are things you respond to in scripts, are named and shown in the interface. What they will really change for you is what you see in the key setting UI.
Actions is a project file -- it's part of the project. Change it there.
Settings.xml is different -- it's a per-person file. What you see in the folder is the DEFAULT settings.xml, what your project will default to when a new user runs it for the first time. The real settings.xml that is used will be copied into your documents folder, in a folder named the same as the engine. Edit it there for changes. There are only a *couple* hidden changes, most all are meant to be edited through the engine UI.
The reason for this is OS X is a multi-user environment (as XP) so the dim3 settings have to reflect the user logged in.
DownshiftDX Wrote:3. How can I tell Dim3 to show all of the meshes in an object but no bones, poses, or animations? I have been experimenting with importing objects with around 8,000 polys once tessellated into tris, so I have been cutting them into segments and importing each mesh separately...now I want them all to show up automatically.
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. The meshes are really meant to be things you can turn on and off, not bits of something you always have on. You can do that, if you wish, but it'll be a lot harder to work with.
[>] Brian
Brian, he wants to show all meshes in the animator at once. I believe you cannot do that at the moment.
teh1ghool Wrote:Brian, he wants to show all meshes in the animator at once. I believe you cannot do that at the moment.
Would be a useful feature for making 3rd person game creation easier.
Yea you can, clik any mesh but the default then click the 2 box icon thing
.
That only shows the first mesh.
@dimwit
This goes in the construct function of my player script, yes?
@ggadwa
You were right in thinking I wanted to turn them all on at once in the engine. (I should have said "that has no bones, poses, animations, within the engine.")
The issue with the number of polys on an object wouldn't be so if the Animator didn't triangulate everything. I work as much as possible in quads within Wings, which is what everybody seems to say is the thing to do. When I import that into the Animator - boom - I have doubled my poly count. What I wanted to know was mostly to do with in the engine. I was able to re-cut my model up into segments (it actually was built that way to begin with so I just told Wings to separate the one object again) and import and nudge each into position. This got me around the 8k poly limit for a single mesh. My current project is not going to have more than a few highly detailed objects in a scene and a lot of the changes to the look will be done using different frames for the textures. Right now the model is not rigged or animated, I am still trying to figure out how to use Dim3 and how to achieve the effects I want. So how would I script it to show everything? I tried obj.model.animation.showMesh('eye-r'); but Dim3 pops up an error telling me the mesh isn't there. (Though it is in the Animator.)
@ccccc and teh1ghool
While I would like to see all the meshes in a model at once in the Animator, I am able to work with it as it is now with the default and one other one at a time.
Here is what I am trying to achieve:
I am working on having a character editor of sorts. The "character" model won't move from the center of the map. (Map will be small one room basic box with some stuff in it.) I would like to have the camera remain focused on a point in space and rotate around it, starting with the character model. The point of focus and the camera position relative to it should be able to move up, down, left, right, forward and back. (Like Wings' camera basically) The idea for the full project is not heavily action oriented, so I am not as concerned with having 30 or 40 enemies and thing on screen all doing the pathing, ai, collisions, etc at once. This is why I would like heavier poly counts on the models.
Cool, character creation! But you REALLY don't need that many polys.... I can make a nice and smooth human model with far less than 500 polys.... nevermind>8000!
Try some bump/normal mapping if you really want it to look that smooth (normal mapping can take a complex model and use the normals or something on a less complex one to make the shading smooth, the only difference between a normal mapped model and a complex one you can see is the [HOW DO YOU SPELL sill-oh-what?].
To show a mesh:
Code:
obj.model.animation.showMesh("myMeshName");
Sadly, while there's a "hide all mesh" there's no "show all mesh". I'll add that, for now you'll just have to show each independently.
dim3 deals with triangles because that's what it's going to ultimately pass through OpenGL, anything else means additional processing. Like others have said, you do need to get the models down a bit, even high end games like Doom3 have triangle or vertex counts way below 8,000 (I could be mistaken but I heard somewhere around 2K.)
[>] Brian