Something Tasty...

[iWasAdam]

Now what in the world could Adam be up to now? 


Surely he couldn't be writing a new low poly 3d render system based in 2d - that would be stoopid! 

[Derron]

Yes why should he? Except he wants to "model" the ships for his game there - else it would be a side project just distracting from the game he presented as "tasty as well" ;-)


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

oooh, you're getting too good at this game

Yep. on all counts. I need to model the ships and also want to 'know' the exact stuff like normals, correct rotation, etc

[Derron]

Can't you model all your stuff in a common 3d tool (blender et al), export as ".x" or ".obj" and write a tool which "flattens" the data? In other words: convert the 3d mesh into whate-ever-yours-is-if-not-3D-data.

You do not reinvent the wheel each time - but at least you reinvent the spokes :-)


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

Can't you model all your stuff in a common 3d tool (blender et al)

I could but I'd have to learn how to use Blender - and I HATE Blender. I've tried a few times to work with it and just hate the workflow.
I have used Maya - but it was just overkill. I used to use Max all the time, but there is no Max for mac and it's get very bloated as well - uber slow startup.

What I need is a very slim, fast low poly 3d editor. Rameses was great, but was 32 bit and Blitz (at the time) was full of bugs. Hence me holding off starting to 'do it right' until I had a good reason to :/

There's also an issue with actual 3d (openGL, DirectX etc): It does all the work - you don't have to think about stuff like depth buffering, normals, etc. What happens if you want or need to check that sort of data on models - GPU debugging is virtually impossible.

[iWasAdam]

Got the normals working and also facing triangles 


the green/red things are the face normals.
- green for facing the camera - we can render those
- red for facing away from the camera - don't need to show those - just show the wire instead

[Qube]

What I need is a very slim, fast low poly 3d editor.

Have you tried Cheetah3D - It's lightweight, fast work flow and has some nifty tools for modelling.

[Derron]

Maybe you will start to like Blender with its 2.80 release.

Just get used to the shortcuts:
g ... to grab/move selected "whatever" (vertices, clips in the video editor, widgets, ...)
r ... to rotate
s ... to scale
and x,y,z to constraint to an axis
f ... to fill a selection of vertices/edges to form a polygon
e ... to extrude your selection
(and way more stuff for advanced usage)

Dunno what conveniences you miss.


I understand that you want to learn something and that you want to know "why something does not work" and not to be in need to file an issue, to wait for a bugfix etc.
Yet you will loose a lot of lifetime to create a tool which has features most other tools already provide.
I mean ... at least try to code your stuff in a "library" way so all the "pseudo 3D"-functionality can be reused in other projects.


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

it's now working with culling and basic triangle sorting - so proper solids can be displayed.

Cheetah looks quite nice.

Yet you will loose a lot of lifetime to create a tool which has features most other tools already provide.

Not really as I have all of the code from Rameses but now I know where the issues were and what I need to do correctly.

I mean ... at least try to code your stuff in a "library" way so all the "pseudo 3D"-functionality can be reused in other projects.

Yep - Rameses was just a 'can i' project. this time I know I will need to have everything in a library

[iWasAdam]

and now with flat shading and a light!

[iWasAdam]

I think the easy thing to say is I have a very specific workflow in mind.
E.G.
Take a base shape - say a square, extrude it to form an open sided box. flip some normals, maybe move some vertexes around, etc
But...
this could be done in one of the views or even the 3d view

or

select a face and flip the face normal.
so pick a view, select the face and with a key or button flip the normals
then extrude the selected face along the normal

If you aren't following me - don't worry. it's a very specialised type of 3d modelling.

The other thing is to do with the texturing and shaders. Here I also want to do something different. All 3d packages use some form of UV unwrapping to a texture. My personal view is it is better to take an existing image and apply it. sort of atlasing like sprites. Again I think I know what I'm doing and I'm also aware that this isn't the way people think it should be done - buts that just me

the selection and normal flipping in the 3d view is already done, I'm looking at the extruding bit now...

[Derron]

Blender: click on face, "w" ->select-> Flip normals, "Alt+E" ->select-> Extrude along normals.

Say when I have to give up convincing you


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

possibly the year 7000?

Nothing in the world <Mwa Ha Ha> will convince me to use Blender. Tried it - hated it, tried it again hated it even more. Not gonna happen... 

[iWasAdam]

yay extrude and extrude reduce:


and the same but with extrusion in instead of out:


I'll need to work up a modified version if you are extruding more than one face with connected lines. but it works really well as a test 

[iWasAdam]

now that WAS hard...
But very satisfying


extruding convex/concave shapes creating and removing new vertexes and keeping the extrusion intact!