My import and export scripts were added to [VertexMonkey]!
Modo Import/Export Script (Ogre3d Mesh and Ogre3d Mesh XML)
As far as I’m concerned the top artists tools that I have access to are Modo, ZBrush, and Blender.
The only reason that I use Blender is that it has pretty good import and export scripts to Ogre. I’ve seen faces, normals, UVs, and bones export perfectly out of Blender. That said I can’t really model in Blender. The interface doesn’t like me. And I haven’t found very many video tutorials on Blender to describe all the things you can do with it.
http://blender.org
That said, ZBrush3 is coming out May 15th. I expect it’s going to be cool. However Pixologic probably won’t provide many details on their SDK, so I don’t expect an importer / exporter soon. They have awesome artists post video tutorials and they have a decent community. ZB2 only shows one viewport at a time, I don’t like that.
http://pixologic.com
And then there’s Modo. Probably not as well known as XSI. The Modo interface is plenty easy to pick up. Luxology has over 3GB of video tutorials on every aspect of the modeling tool and they give out the tutorials for free. Modo supports as many viewports as you want to add to your layouts.
http://luxology.com
I prefer viewing models in Modo, detailing in ZBrush, and exporting with Blender (only because I have to).
Anyway, I wanted to enhance my pipeline by importing/exporting to Ogre directly from Modo. I now have an import script that runs inside Modo that can handle verteces and faces. I plan to convert it to an exporter. You can follow my progress in this thread.
http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=16386
Ride in a Shoe
I think if I ever went on a hot air balloon ride, I would prefer to ride in a shoe.
Boost Libraries Conference 2007
If you plan on being in the Aspen, Colorado area, don’t miss the [Boost Libraries Conference] during May 14-18!
Over clocked XPS
The new dell overclocked system is awesome.
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April Snow
April 2 we awoke to a surprise inch of overnight snow.
Animation Sheet
Gimp has a [Layer Grid] plugin to handle slicing up an image into layers or converting layers into a grid. Simply copy layergrid.scm into the C:/Program Files/GIMP-2.0/share/gimp/2.0/scripts folder. The script can be executed from Scripts->LayerGrid… when an image is open.
Emotive at GDC
Emotiv offers the latest brain computer interface.
Emotive displayed a closed booth at the GDC. This new controller operates on thought alone. [You gotta check this out!!!] The middle of [this video] shows off a new technology.
Pictures from 3D video at 21 weeks
Sector13 [Flame Trails]
Here is another type of explosion timer, the flame trail. The effect uses a set of billboards with varying alpha values.
Blender Ogre Import Script
[Blender] has an Ogre [import script] which requires [Python 2.4] to be installed. After everything is properly configured [Ogre] mesh files can be imported into Blender, edited, and exported back to [Ogre] mesh files.
Beef Up Your Wireless Router
Josh Kuo posted an interesting [blog entry] describing the open source project [OpenWrt] and then he details a list of Linux services that protect the network. OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for embedded devices. Essentially I plan to use this to load extra usb drivers in my wireless print server to load two 500GB iBooks. That way I can have a wireless-mirrored storage system to keep all my files safe. I should also be able to load drivers for a wireless usb quick cam and possibly drivers for a scanner. Maybe even drivers for a USB hub could be loaded. If that happens I can connect more than two devices to my Netgear wireless print server.
Sector13 [Explosion Timers]
I mixed in a little mesh data into the new explosion timer techniques. I added large gibs and minor gibs. The only thing missing is some flame trails.
Intel Game Demo Contest 2007 (May 5th-August 15th)
“Contest begins March 5th, 2007. Registration Forms must be received by July 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007. Community judging to determine finalists will begin July 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007 and run until August 1st, 3:00pm PST 2007. Executables of finalists must be received by August 15th, 3:00pm PST 2007. Winners will be announced at Austin Game Developer Conference on September 5th, 2007, and published on the contest website the same day.”
Visit the [2007 Official Rules ].
Jupiter Rings
Using GREYCstoration_win32.exe -iter 100 -interp 2 -restore img.jpg, noise can be removed. This is the result after 100 iterations.
The original image:
Sector13 [Hardware Occlusion Query (HOQ)]
I had a chance to document the process that I used to perform [Hardware Occlusion Queries] on the Ogre Wiki.
Image Denoising
Slashdot posted an article [ Open Source Image De-Noising]. This is an important program to remove the graininess from photos. From the demo pictures it looks like this algorithm works very well.
It’s amazing how well this tool works.
Source Image:
Denoised Image:
Sector13 [Explosion Editor]
For the last week, I have been creating an explosion editor that allows the content editors to name a series of timers to control explosions.
After the explosion is created it can be assigned to a ship.
Handheld Star Picture
This is what happens if you try to take a picture of a star without a tripod. This is a 30 second exposure aimed at a star while I tried to keep still.
Sunny with Snow
This shot is a little hard to capture for an amature photographer. The sun came out this afternoon and then the blue sky started pelting us with snow.
Snow Surprise
The snow started pouring down at 9am.
BSP
This weekend I plan on creating a [BSP file]. BSP files are commonly used for map arenas in games like Quake and Unreal Tournament.
VS 2005 SP1
Microsoft just released service packs #1 for [express] and [TSE] for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Microsoft also released a new [DirectX for February 2007].
City of Villains
Tim and Linae have been playing a little of the game "City of Villains".
This is Tim’s Villain, a Matermind named Dread Command:
Snow Day
“Alright!” I took of a video with the camera while sledding the big hill. Watch [the video].
It was a bit of a technical feat to make this video. The camera records a MOV file. So I imported into QuickTime and exported as a AVI. I used Windows Movie Maker to put all the AVI videos together into a single video and output as a WMV file. I used the Divx Converter to convert from the WMV format to a DIVX file. And then I used Flash 8 to convert from a DIVX to a Flash FLV file that plays in the Flash movie.