Hi,

As the title says, when I export my model into DirectX format and load it up into my game engine the vertices get messed up. I have tried loading the exported model into several different applications and each one gives different results. But, all applications I have tried load the model with it's vertices messed up.

I have attached a copy of my model, if somebody could take a look I would appreciate it.

Appartment_1.zip (26 Kb, 7 downloads)

It loads OK into Giles and Blitz3D.
In what way are the vertices messed up?
You have some illegal faces on the model.
ie. five sided faces, faces should have either three or four edges but these should be triangulated on export. It's still bad practice though.
Screenshot from Giles attached.

Bazza

Apartement1.jpg (73 Kb, 17 downloads)

Ok, I sorted out those illegal faces, after that the exported model loaded fine in DarkGDK. It was around the doorway(s) that the vertices were getting messed up in the GDK.

The model gets totally messed up when I try to load the it up in 3DWS. But, I don't use that now I have 3DC, I just used it to test the export.

I'm fairly new to modelling, and after you pointed out my errors, I have realised that there is a fair few in this model. So, I think I'm going to start again and do it properly.


Thank you very much Bazza, you're a star.

As a side note, the lightmapping in Gile[s] looks awesome! I've contemplated getting this in the past, does it allow you to export the light positions into an entity list of sorts so you can create hardware lights in your engine for dynamic entities?

Yes you can export the light positions from Giles by giving them what is called Custom Properties in Giles.
You would then need to write a something called parser in your game engine, which reads the model file looking for the Custom Props you assigned.
You could then position a light at each position in the game engine.
However most graphics cards will only support up to 8 light scources, some of the recent ones will support 16.
The problem is that each light scource you add to the scene in your game engine will slow down the frame rate to some extent, the more lights you have the slower the game/demo will run.
Suggest you ask on the DarkGDK forum to see if anyone is using Giles before purchasing a license.

If you haven't purchased a license for DarkGDK I would suggest taking a look at some of the other 3D Game engines first.
As I understand it DarkGDK uses one of the C languages, which is harder to understand than the basic languages of Blitz and Dark Basic Pro.
It depends reallly what you want to achieve.
If you want to get into commercial game writting then you need to learn one of the C languages.
However most of us mere mortals are quite happy to use one of the Basic languages, which can produce stunning results.

I noticed in the DarkGDK specs they list a performance table between DarkBasic Pro and DarkGDK.
This is a bit of a cheat as Dark Basic Pro is one of the slowest of the basic languages.
Blitz runs much faster, but only supports up to Direct X 7 at the moment.
If I were just starting out I would go the 3DC, Giles, Blitz route.
There is so much to learn it can be a daungting task, so keeping things as simple as possible to start with is a good idea.
Even then it's a long slog to get even a small demo up and running, you have to learn texturing, unwrapping, animation and lightmapping to name just a few.

I can help with getting your models from 3DC into Giles and Blitz if you're interested and with some basic game code for Blitz but you would need the full version, not the demo.
I did a tutorial for extruding a scene in 3DC in three parts and also a Giles tutorial for the same scene, again in three parts. You'll find them in the Mini-Tutorials section on the 3DC forum.

Model building is just a matter of practice, with many false starts.
For scenes like your appartment you need to be building in the faces to receive the textures you want to apply.
I covered this in the Extruding a Scene tutorial, Part One I think.

Bazza

Hi Bazza,

Cool, I think I'm gonna buy a copy of Gile[s], the screenies on their site look beautiful.

Yeah the GDK is nice, I have been using it for a few years, I'm a C# developer by trade. In my hobbiest game development journey I started out using OpenGL directly with C++ then I found the GDK which made life a lot easier. But, yeah I have a long journey to take down the modelling track. But, I'm kinda enjoying it so far with 3DC, it's much nicer and easy to use than anything I've used previously.

Edit I have just been looking at the Extruding a scene tutorials you made, the're pretty cool, I shall be reading through them in detail tonight. Good job mate!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: monotonic,

You understand the C languages....great stuff,
wish I could get my head around it. I tried but I guess my brain is getting to old now to take it all in.

I would still hold back on the Giles thing until you are sure you can export the files into GDK.

Bazza