Tutorials, Tips & Tricks

[pixel_legolas]

Why not blender if you are looking for cheap 3d programs that has "a little weird inteface at beginning"? It probably has more stuff in it then anything else. I even saw super nice realtime game demos that looks like CRYSIS almost

[acocq]

Or what about FRAGMOTION (www.fragmosoft.com) ?  A great tool, at a great price. 

[Wrapscallion]

Blender?Seriously?If I wanted to go the most complex, yet powerful as heck route, I'd go ahead and buy Maya or Lightwave, XSI or Max, and toss in Zbrush, than even attempt anything in Blender ever again.Everything I export out of blender, has every single bone in the wrong place, or animations reversed, or missing alltogether.And sometimes, the thing won't even load.

Blender is now bloat-ware, and should be regulated to the scrap heap.

[pixel_legolas]

I was just mentioning a free software. Don't compare it with maya or max That's another league I have never used it myself and have heard it's not intuitive but free is always free

[acocq]

I have used Blender to some extent. The UI takes some getting used to, no question about that. I've tested it for exporting to Torque and GameStudio and that worked reasonably well (better than I expected in a free piece of software).

No offense intended, but there are a lot of people who use blender quite successfully (especially in the Indie community), so one might be inclined to argue that the problems you describe are not shared by the majority of users.

'nuff said ... back to topic ...

Cheers,
Andreas

[BigDaz]

Can we keep this thread for purely for links and take the discussion elsewhere please?

[Ron]

Found a very good alternative for installshield. Its www.innosetup.com, free download and you donate what you can for purchase.

Worked perfectly my first try. It combines your .exe and .dat into one compressed setup.exe file and has about a 3:1 compression ratio. You can make user start menu folders and shortcuts too.

[erikals]

...about 30 hours of Lightwave video tutorials...

http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/training.php

[Ron]

Accidentally found this one, but very pleased....

Its a little hard to explain. I was re-visiting my tachometer and speedometer gages. I cound not get the rotate sprite to work (its in the documentation, but I'm guessing its not until the next release or I am jus not getting it  ).

Next I tried to make the 3d model follow the player camera. This would have worked well, except the FOV changes according to vehicle speed and makes the gages jump and in size on the screen.

Anyways, since I couldn't the the gages needles to rotate as sprites or orientation following the camera, I have a 3d model of the gage. I am additing a additional viewport thru script to focus on the model. In the past, I always made a background object black and then hid everything under a hill, in a building or behind grandstands).

I found out very much by accident, if you move everything way below the surface and do not have a skybox or anything else visible beyond the needle, it becomes transparent.

Other types of games could use the same theory too, such a make your current weapon rotate in 3d, etc.

Here is the picture, probably explains better than my text 

[Squat]

How do you add a viewport like that? That's EXACTLY what my weapon GUI needs.

[Ron]

In the main game script, before the loop, add

Code:

Viewport@ gages = game.AddViewport( "Gages", 0.0, 0.6, 0.4, 1.0, 0.0f);
gages.FadeOut( 0);
gages.Show();
gages.FadeIn( 0.5);
gages.SetViewToPlayer( "Player");

Then in the Player camera control script:

Code:

if (viewport.GetName() == "Gages")
{
camera.SetPosition( 50.337448, -10.900662, 1.083020);
camera.SetFocus( 50.338650, -12.978725, 1.123665);
camera.SetUp( 0, 1, 0);
camera.SetFOV( 30.249998);
camera.SetTransition( 1);
}

else
{
 ..... (regular camera control here)
}
{

I put the gage below the surface and then use the editor to find the view I want. Then under the Cinema button, copy the camera position and use those values for the gages viewport.  I look down in the -y direction so there is nothing to render in the background except the 3d object.

[Squat]

Thank you so much Ron. AWESOME! I'm going to give this a try soon.