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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Vertex manipulation (V2?)

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Fallout
22
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Sep 2013 16:12 Edited at: 17th Sep 2013 16:13
Does anyone know what the plans/capabilities will be for vertex manipulation in AppGameKit v2?

I want to create a texture atlas. I'm planning on maybe 100 meshes, some of which will share textures, some with their own unique textures. I usually create an optimised texture atlas programmatically from 'n' number of images, and then shift all my models UV coords programmatically to fit the atlas. I can't do this in AppGameKit at this time by the looks of things (maybe with the use of a shader, but that seems like an unnecessary overhead).

I'm happy to do this in advance with DBPro or GDK (I'm writing all my tools in these programs anyway), but I don't believe DBP will export the required OBJ/AGO file formats, so I can't UV shift my meshes.

I've been poking around to try and find out what mesh control we'll have in V2, but no cigar. This is fairly pivotal for me TBH, so if the functionality isn't in V2 I may have to backtrack all the way back to native development. This would suck muchly, as I've kinda sold myself on the ease of using AppGameKit now.
Van B
Moderator
22
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Joined: 8th Oct 2002
Location: Sunnyvale
Posted: 17th Sep 2013 16:28 Edited at: 17th Sep 2013 16:29
There are some examples (at least one) of exporting OBJ files, maybe you'd have to go that route - like make your own .OBJ exporter with your amended UV coords, or even amend the UV's then save it as a .X for converting later.

Don't give up on AppGameKit - there is always a way, to me it sounds like you might need some sort of model and texture setup program, which would let you add features as you need them, like setting UV coords dynamically, scaling them, splitting meshes, setting pivot points, all that stuff really.
I'm am 100% sure that V2 will have nice vertex manipulation like DBPro, I'd bet a kidney on it.

I am the one who knocks...
Matty H
16
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Joined: 7th Oct 2008
Location: England
Posted: 17th Sep 2013 17:49
obj files are probably the easiest files to create and export, so this may not be a big issue if you can do all you say offline in external tools.

You can read vertex data in Tier 2, bit of a hack, since all the data is protected, you can derive from the object class and make it public, then cast your object. Something like that anyway, not sure that helps here though.

Fallout
22
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Sep 2013 19:20
As much as I'd like the vertex commands in V2, I could really do with a new kidney too. I guess that's a win win for me then.

Maybe it'd be worth making my own OBJ exporter. Sounds like a bit of a faff again, but going native I had to write my own MS3D importer, so really it's horses for courses. It's also not too much of a faff to open my model in UU3D (which I use for wrapping), scale the whole model UV, then drag it onto the new location in the texture atlas and export to OBJ. It's just so much nicer when you can finish a new model, and run a few tools to regenerate it all for you.

Not given up on it yet. I'm actually leaning towards Tier 1 instead of Tier 2 now, since I think the added complexity of Tier 2 makes it less appealing than going native. I'll try and work around this issue and stick with Tier 1 for now and see how I get on!

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