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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / [OPINION] What dbp needs :) visual scene editor

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Chad301
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Posted: 17th Nov 2012 02:42
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I am sure I'm not the only one here, but I really suck at guessing were to place things based on x,y,z positions. Example: loaded in some terrain, and I want to put a box in a specific spot.. guess, check, nope... If only there was a visual window, like a scene viewer, that would rock. Maybe I am missing something and someone has made this already. FPSC has the level painter, thats not exactly what I am talking about but damn is it handy. I hate guessing were I need to be placing objects, I have a really hard time picturing everything in my head. Agree? Disagree? Know of any programs that I can use? I mean holy crap how helpful it would be to load in a... toilet, and just place it were I want it to go, sort of like Unity 3d, or fpsc.
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Brendy boy
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Posted: 17th Nov 2012 03:09
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here

BBB GUI Plugin
Landscape & Map Creator
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MrValentine
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Playing: FFVII
Posted: 17th Nov 2012 03:12 Edited at: 17th Nov 2012 03:24
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Quote: "
I am sure I'm not the only one here, but I really suck at guessing were to place things based on x,y,z positions.

Example: loaded in some terrain, and I want to put a box in a specific spot.. guess, check, nope... If only there was a visual window, like a scene viewer, that would rock.

Maybe I am missing something and someone has made this already. FPSC has the level painter, thats not exactly what I am talking about but damn is it handy.

I hate guessing were I need to be placing objects, I have a really hard time picturing everything in my head.

Agree? Disagree? Know of any programs that I can use? I mean holy crap how helpful it would be to load in a... toilet, and just place it were I want it to go, sort of like Unity 3d, or fpsc."


I was having a hard tie reading that... I must be tired...

A solution is using an environment builder such as MapScape from Evolved or 3DWS through the TGC store... and texturing a small cube with a specifically named texture, say "toilet.png" and make the texture 100% transparent to save you from using hide object commands in DBP, and simply calling a delete limb or exclude limb etc. once you place all objects at those locations... but frankly, a toilet could be placed within the map editor... I would primarily use this technique for animated objects such as flames, particle effects... etc...

However say you wanted to place an AI object/entity at the same locations and just drop them nearby, the same process applies

Hope this was helpful, I am now off to bed... [Well I will try to sleep...]

EDIT

Hahahaha I had a feeling I did not need to link Evolveds website, and I was right lol, thanks Brendy!

EDIT

OK, I promise to bugger off and sleep.... soon...

I noticed this just before leaving my desk...

Quote: " [OPINION] What dbp needs visual scene editor"


err, Yes?

EDIT

Alternatively, you load your terrain, position it, move the camera to where you want the object placed/dropped, capture the camera position, [the XYZ] and then viola you do not need to guess much longer, alternatively to give this some more thought [I am shutting down while typing this... cannot see that evidence here can you? yes my brain is more awake when I am sleeping or half asleep] launch the map loader with debug data of the camera position, and pop that on the side and start coding... while it is still there... come on, we are coders!

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Chad301
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Posted: 17th Nov 2012 03:26
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ok so for this mapspace, lets pretend i want that toilet as an ai entity, that is still done inside the db editor right? I couldnt just put it in, export the position into my project, and make it walk around? I will have to play with it for a bit to see what it does. Thanks guys
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MrValentine
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Posted: 17th Nov 2012 03:30
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Again, back to LIMB commands, but I would load it in separately from the terrain object... save any issues... that's just the way I would do it, I am sure you could just Clone the limb at its position and exclude/hide/delete the Limb once you have it cloned or manipulated...

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Chris Tate
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Location: London, England
Posted: 22nd Nov 2012 03:40 Edited at: 22nd Nov 2012 03:42
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Quote: "I mean holy crap how helpful it would be to load in a... toilet, and just place it were I want it to go, sort of like Unity 3d, or fpsc. "


You can. FPSC Was created with DBPRO; and DBPRO can load FPSC levels.

Quote: " I hate guessing were I need to be placing objects"


As suggested, Mapscape is your friend (Or 3DWS if want its terrain tool). Another thing is taking the concept of moving the camera around, as you are already doing; and use it to move you your objects around. In other words, it's not just the camera that you can control with arrowkeys.

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 23rd Nov 2012 10:30
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Instead of guessing, what I do for each level is move around it and have the X,Y and Z position displayed on screen, pick a spot in the scene, write down the co-ordinates and move to the next point in the scene.

MapScape, FPSC and 3DWS are useful alternatives of course.

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MrValentine
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Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 06:52
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Sorry for the bump, but wanted to inform the OP of my upcoming InGaCreMo 2013 Entry as it relates to this topic entirely almost...

Chad301 - Where did you get with this issue? have you resolved it as of yet?

My entry aims to resolve exactly this...

Please wander over to the InGaCreMo 2013 thread if you are interested

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chafari
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Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 11:49
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Hi you all.
I use to do the same as Seppuku arts....move around the level and got x,y,z of every corner I need to place any object. We can make a dbo with several limbs....let say 100 limbs,and make our own function....somthing like:
For i=1 to 100
if object exist(i)
Offset limb obj, i,object position x(i).......y.....z
endif
next i

and save this .dbo , of course we need another function to place every object in limbs position in our new project....and all we know how to do that....we could scale different limb sizes to automatically read it size, and if size is xxxx then we place a chear...if it is xxxx we place a table or whatever we need.This is my idea....I hope to help someone.

Cheers

I'm not a grumpy grandpa
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sayerbloke
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Posted: 2nd Jan 2013 21:04
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As with a couple of people above, I've always pulled out pencil and paper when working on 3D co-ordinates. Displaying XYZ on screen and moving around is useful too though .

One of the first things I made in DBPro after finishing some early tutorials was a 3D environment editor... basically just the ability to select objects and then move or rotate them, etc, while displaying the output to the screen so I could record the final values when the object was in the right place. I had plans to adapt it so any changes would be written to a text file, to make it easier to write the results back into my main source code. From there, I figured I could make version 3 of the editor, which'd allow reading from a file, effectively loading a map rather than creating/modifying objects in the main source code, but the whole project only got as far as helping me with what I was working on at the time and remains unfinished (Am I sounding like a proper games programming yet? lol).

I've not really done anything with limbs so far. They should maybe be my next thing to read up on once I finish my current project .
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Sasuke
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Posted: 4th Jan 2013 13:01
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Well it's quite simple to set a gizmo. A Gizmo or Transform Gizmo is what's used to translate(move), rotate or scale objects in an editor via a mouse. It's the red green blue yellow axis thing. But there's a few requirements that are easy to set up.

Gizmo example:


First you need to create a content or reference class, this stores all the editable information about the object, texture etc...

Advanced example (Unreal Ed Content Browser)


Then you need an entity or brush (or whatever you'd like to call it) class, these are the actual physical objects in the world. The entity class just references the ref class, basically like instancing from a original copy.

Next you need to setup an a selection tool, a way of selecting entities. Standard method's are click, rectangular or paint, easy to set up using linked lists(effectively the most efficient method).

Now that we've got are entities selected. We can move them with are Gizmo by adding the XYZ drag, angular and scale drag vector to the selection and update the entities.
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WLGfx
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Posted: 4th Jan 2013 20:46
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A long time ago I started on a version of a scene editor which worked as far as I got it. BUT, without DBP's light-mapping I decided not to take it to the next stage until that was fixed. The main thing I focused on was setting up the scene objects data such as position, scale, rotation, which could be retrieved directly from the loaded file data. Zones could also be used for spawning areas, collision areas, etc. You couldn't use it as a modeller, more for placement of models.

If DBP had its light-mapping working again then I'd re-write it specifically for DBP.

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
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