Meshes (This will start a war)

[BIYA]

Recently on my server there was a discussion about how hard meshes are and how devs make everything so hard to figure out. What I would like to see is a stripped done 3D modeller that has only one feature and that feature is to make a straight line. Anything can be made out of straight lines. Drop all the other features like squigly lines and other stuff. Also, what will be nice if the 3D modeller could be like bzedit in some ways... Take a line and be able to alter it by the X Y Z axes. Techicaly making a whole world out of lines and possibly just makin a single object as a mesh or a object.

Today I noticed that many mnakers have problems with all these meshes, vertices, normals, and other weird stuff. Some of us dont have the mined power like some devs to even figure out how to use a 3D modeller. If ya'll want to see this game flourish into a game that every computer in the world will have a copy of? Then this idea will be the biggest thing there is totaking this game to that level.(not saying that the 2.0.0 release wasnt that bad) Im mean geeezzz if this game gets people that know how to make amazing objects you devs might be getting payed by big gaming companies. Look if we get a program like this there is no limit to what people can make. Cars, paintball guns that look real and shoot, computers, houses, cities, countries, world, a universe, anything you can imagine can be made with a straigt line....

If this editor is made it will help out alot of us mappers and whoever makes will we be loved by alot of people... Possibly be paid for doing it...

Thanks,
BIYA

(Dont yell at me )

[RPG]

How about we find a GOOD 3D modeler and read the documentation and learn how to use it?

OR, could we reverse the modeltool so it converts BZW maps into OBJ's? That way we could graphically edit the entire map. Hey, I thought of a really good idea!

[BIYA]

You did!!!!

[RPG]

But wait... OBJ's are limited to a single mesh, aren't they? Don't know much about the format... but if they are... crap.

Maybe without much hassle another tool can be made to convert BZW's into other formats (which I know nothing about) like 3D studio *.3ds or lightwave *.lwo

[trepan]

OBJ's can contain multiple meshes (groups).

[Supertanker]

Things already are happening to the game.

[toaster]

The good 3D modelling tools don't force you to treat objects as meshes. They generate meshes as their output. So you don't have to think of every object you build as a mesh. For instance, you build a cylinder, then slice portions out of it, then add other objects touching it, makes some edits to them, and save the object, you get a mesh or two as a result.

[RPG]

Well the good news is that we can convert a BZW file to a OBJ file without much loss, right?

[BIYA]

Sorta but I cant really get that thing to work right for me...

[JeffM]

what do you mean by a "line" a line has no surface area. To make anything with a surface you need a triangle at a minimum. And that is what the BZ meshes do now, you define faces that are triangles.

I'd like to see how you propose to make things out of "lines"

[Memnarch]

What I think he means, is not just ONE line, but a 3d model made entirely of just straight lines? criss-corssing, etc.

[BIYA]

Yup thats right .... Excuse me Jeff if I dont really know what im talking about but im trying

[JeffM]

I still don't get what you mean, what do you mean "criss crossing"? are you talking about edges?

for an exampe. how would you do a box?

[BIYA]

Err forgot that meshes have lots of polygons I think like an line fomr each corner to the other and then to the other corner and so on. A whole bunch of X's.

[JeffM]

those would be triangles. You would need 3 "lines" to make a triangular face. so a box would have 12 sets of 3 lines, 2 for each side.

something like this?



This is EXACTLY what you have today.

You can't infer faces with just a simple edge list.

the points in a mesh face are just the end points of that faces edges.[/img]

[BIYA]

Looks like what I was talking about...

[JeffM]

that is a screenshot directly from a mesh editor. That IS an obj file.
So I don't see how anything with "lines" will do anything more then what you allready have, other then just add more data needed ( the edge list ).

There are formats that use edge lists. They are mostly used in systems that use a concept called a "manifold body". where each face needs to know what other faces share it's edges. a simple game does not need this type of information. Edge based definitions still have the same data as our current meshes, they just add the edges as aditional info.

Sadly I think you all just need to spend more time learning the tools. I know the mesh thing is a HUGE change from what you all used to have. But realy it's not rocekt science. 95% of all other games in the world uses meshes in some ways to define the game world.

[RPG]

But JeffM, can the modeltool be reversed to convert BZW to OBJ? Maybe convert an entire map file, changing the meshbox's and mespyr's to respectable OBJ meshes?

Or, maybe since it's harder to read & edit the map files now should we move to a binary map file, that is in a common format (OBJ, another 3D format?) so many 3D modelers could edit them?

[JeffM]

the tool could be made to do anything sure.

BZW supports more features then OBJ or any existing format does ( teleporter links for one ). so going back would lose data. Binary formats don't work well across systems. and it you are going to a custom non human readable format then why not keep what you have, since you'r not going to read it anway.

Since there is no format (besides posibly a blender file with custom objects, or the quake3 format ) that can hold all of the data bzflag needs, we have object converters to pull in the data the modelers CAN have.

Basicly with out somone doing a LOT of work, you are NOT geting a fully integrated editor. Changing formats will not just make it happen automagicly

In the end it all has to be broken down to triangles, as that is all that OpenGL can do, draw lots of 3d triangles, realy realy fast.

[trepan]

some notes:

- the bz meshes are made up of polygons, not just triangles

- it would be easier to have bzfs or bzflag save the world into
a OBJ file format then to make a new executable.

- a BZW to OBJ converter will be lossy. The lost information could
be stored in comments, but the recipient 3D app will probably just
ditch the info anyways.

[The Purple Panzer]

I'm currently struggling with them (meshes), but I don't think we need to change much with the game, server, or clients - perhaps make the learning curve less steep, but that's about it.

If anything, I find the lack of even basic documentation to be a problem.
For example, meshes have faces as subelements, and these list
vertices; vertices are (apparently) implicitly numbered, so that a face might (for instance) include vertices 3, 5, and 9. However: does the implicit numbering start at zero or one? I don't know, but will experiment with small meshes until something works and I can figure it out (then I hope to add the info to the v. 2. mapmaking wiki page).

My (small) objection is that it would be close to trivial for someone to document these sorts of things, especially compared to the time it takes to empirically figure them out. If I go through the different objects and subobjects, there are many similar terms which would greatly benefit from some clarification.

Please don't misunderstand this as a complaint - I think if we (the 'consumers' so to speak of the system, being mapmakers, etc.) just pool and publish our experiences, we can both document these things and provide a suitably nicely spanning set of examples to clarify these issues.
In an ideal world this would all be well documented, but the limits on everyone's time should not be ignored - so why not do the best we can?
If we can get over a few hurdles and clarify things, I think this sort of thing will become a non-issue.

[trepan]

both examples of 'vertices' in the man page include a '0' index.

[Teppic]

I thought a wrl to bzw converter would be nice, mainly 'cos any decent moddeling program I've used exports to it, and you get a nice wrl file for ppl to see what the map is like before they d/l it and use it on a server. If only I knew enough about wrl standards, or even bzw for that matter...

[toaster]

some notes:

- the bz meshes are made up of polygons, not just triangles

For the younger people in the crowd: A polygon has 3 or more edges, but is still a flat, two-dimensional object, like a sheet of paper. A triangle is the simplest polygon, having the minimum 3 sides. But polygons can have far more than 3 sides.

No insult intended, Trepan, I merely thought it was worth elucidation.

[L4m3r]

I've already seen some amazing mesh work. Unfortunately, though, its usefulness is mostly limited to cosmetic enhancements- some things are cool and add to the game, but it seems that typically the ability is used to make a good-looking map (not that it's necesarily a bad thing).

I think the addition of cylinders, circular cones, and spheres as standard objects would be nice, as well as the ability to do simple booleans, unless this is already in BZedit and I'm just a n00b (not unlikely).

the only thing I dislike about meshing is when I go to a server and all the custom modelling runs up the poly count too much for my poor school computers... but when I play at home they're really cool.