Extruding a scene..Part 3

thanks a lot bazza, i appreciate all your help and i hope some day i’ll be good enough to help you with something….
thank you, pirate

The last part.
I was going to give a detailed description of the fixtures and fittings but I’m sure you can re-create these without to much of a problem.
I added some pipes along the top of the walls and into the wall recesses, some handrails and some light fittings.
The pipes are just Cylinder primitives with a texture applied and the end caps removed, TIP…create one pipe then duplicate it, scale and position as required.
Same for the hand rails, these are just an cube primitive with an extrusion for the rail support which butts up to the wall.
The light fittings are just a flattened Cylinder primitive, the top end cap is deleted and textures applied.

You could take this further by adding some creates…maybe some cables strewn across the floor.

All these fixtures and fittings are made children of the basic scene, take a look at the hierarchy panel on the left of the pic.
At the top of the Hierarchy tree is the Parent (Shell), as you create a fitting you drag it onto the parent object in the hierarchy panel…it becomes a child of the parent object. You can still move the child as you wish but if you move the parent object all children will move with it.

So to export this model all, I have to do is Right Click on the parent object, from the drop down menu choose Select Hierarchy. All the objects will be selected.
Next, Right Click on the parent object again and choose Export as DX Object.
Thats it…nearly

[img:3i4p8ydh]http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6243/3dcdeckiu0.jpg[/img:3i4p8ydh]

What I really wanted to do in this part is to show the improvements you can add to the scene by using a lightmapper, see my comments at the start of Part 2.
About three years ago I was on the brink of giving up with 3D modelling. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but I couldn’t seem to re-create that professional ‘ feel’ to my models you get, not just in games but in TV documeteries and the movies.
I had 3DC and Blitz3D for my 3D engine, what I was missing was the bit in the middle, a lightmapper, suddenly everything changed and I can now create some very realistic looking scenes. IMO…lol

So I loaded this scene into Gile, set up the lights, adjusted some of the textures and rendered the scene and lightmaps.
So now compare this screenshot from Gile with the 3DC shot at the top of this post.

You can’t get this sort of visual quality with 3DC, this ISN’T a fault with 3DC because 3DC isn’t a lightmapper, it’s a 3D modeler. Although I’ve no doubt Richard would love to have something like this within the 3DC package.
Even the high end modeller guys ( 3DS Max, Lightwave, Maya etc) use an independent lightmapper like Gile to create these effects. They do have features that bake/burn the shadows into the textures but this isn’t the same thing as a lightmap.
I seem to be the only 3DC user on the Gile forums, everyone else seems to use one of the high end modelers but my work seems to be as good as anyone elses, so I’ll stick with 3DC.

So to compare these two images….
The mipmapping (Blurring the textures the further away they are from the camera) has got rid of all the nasty jaggies and ‘ shimmering’ you see in the 3DC pic. The more detailed/contrasty the texture the worst this gets, the floor texture is a good example.
In the 3DC shot the floor texture almost starts to break up the further it is away from the camera.
By setting the texture for the ceiling lights to Full Bright I get the appearence that they are actually shinning.
Above all, the nice shadows and shading in the Gile pic, give the scene depth and atmosphere.

It isn’t really fair to compare these two images because as mentioned earlier 3DC isn’t a lightmapper and it can’t do the things that Gile can do, but looking at it the other way….Gile can’t do the things that 3DC can do, but if you use the two together…..who knows, this time next year you could be releasing your own game, working with the movie guys on King Kong 2 or creating yet another pre-historic documentry full of strange and wonderful creatures…lol
I just wanted to show that you can improve the appearence of your models by using other apps/tools.

So thats just about it…from a basic cube, through a series of extrudes, textured, loaded into Gile, lightmapped and ready to be exported into a 3D engine.

Hope someone finds this useful.
Bazza

hey bazza,
i just got gile last week. you have talked so highly of it and i can see from your work that it does what you say it does…time has been slim this last week so i have not got to play with it much..i tried to open one of my models in .x format gile showed all the textures for the model but no model. i’m sure theres on there because i load it in dbpro all the time..i’m sure i’ll figure it out eventually but if you have any advice for a new guy that would be cool…
thanks, pirate

Yes…I’ve come across this before…It seems to be a problem with the way 3Dc Exports the .x file and the way Giles imports it.
But I don’t load the .x file into Giles anymore because of the the way it’s exported from 3DC. All the textures are exported as Mat 01, Mat02 etc, not with the texture name which is what you need really.
I first convert the .x file to a .b3d file in Blitz then export to Giles…but thats not much help to you.

I have a DX8 to B3D converter written by one of the 3DC guys, I can send you that if you let me have an email address, which will get you started.
I’ll also contact Fredborg who wrote Giles and send him one of the 3DC .x files…he’s usually quite quick and will send me a new importer that reads the 3dc .x file.

Bazza

Hi Pirate…a correction to the last post.
Which version of 3DC are you running?
I’ve just loaded this deck scene into Giles using the .x file without a problem…are you running the latest version of 3DC.

Bazza

version 7.0.2.2…the model i was trying to load was not made with 3dc it was made with deled and exported to dbpro as .x file maybe that has something to do with it.
pirate

Yes that could be it, can you try this…
Import the model into 3DC then export it as a DX object…it should now load into Giles.
Let me know
The problem seems to be the way the .x exporter is written, there isn’t a hard and fast way of doing it.
The version of 3DC you are using will export a .x model that loads into Gile OK

Pleased you got Gile…I’ll try and do a quick Gile[s} get started tutorial in the Off Topic Forum when I get time.

i loaded one file into gile that was .x but
most of the textures were messed up some of the model was white the roof was on the wall the doors were where the windows should be and some of the grass was on the wall…
pretty bad, pirate

i just seen that gile has a dbo exporter which if i can get the file inported in blitz format i should be able to export it in dbo format which will make my programs run faster in darkbasic pro. i put in a request to have dbo format added to 3DC but everyone said why don’t you just use .x. the reason is loading time and speed of the program. i’m going to try it now…
hope it works, pirate

[BLOCKQUOTE class=’ip-ubbcode-quote’][div class=’ip-ubbcode-quote-title’]quote:[/div][div class=’ip-ubbcode-quote-content’]Originally posted by pirate:
i loaded one file into gile that was .x but it was all white with no texture. do you have to have textures in same file as .x file…
pirate [/div][/BLOCKQUOTE]
Yes…you should ALWAYS do this, it’s good practice, especially if you are exporting your model to another app/tool.

Bazza

the .x file loads perfect into darkbasic pro but comes out all screwed up in gile so gile is not reading the .x file correctly..at first i thought 3dc was not exporting correctly but it is..thats a relief because i diddn’t want to change modellers.maybe bazza can check with the guy that made giles and see if he can fix the problem…pirate

You would need to send the .x file to Fredborg so he can check out the problem. Use the support email address at the Giles site. He’s usually quite quick at getting back to you.
But give him plenty of info on how the .x file was created.
I doubt it’s really a Gile problem, more a problem with the way the original .x exporter was written.
Fredborg can check this out if he has the .x file…he’s very good with file formats.

I’m currently working on a basic Gile tutorial for the 3DC forums but it will take me a while to get it all together.

Bazza

hey bazza,
the last .x file i tried was made in 3dc not in deled..the deled .x file will not show up at all in gile..the one made in 3dc shows up but the textures are all in the wrong places…i will try to send the .x file to fredborg and see what happens…
thanks for your help, pirate

Ok…I would like to see the 3dc file sometime.The one with the textures in the wrong places when imported into Giles. I’m curious.
Let me know if you don’t get it sorted.

Bazza