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PostPosted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:10 am
by Aloys
Having books before next month would definitely be a good thing ;) especially if we want to start including the prin nexus in the Age.

Something I just realized about the pedestal: did you make sure the height is right? The avatar 'linking' animation require the book linking panel to be at a certain height from the ground; which in turns dictate the combined height of the pedetal and the book. The best way to check this is to look at any pedestal in a Cyan Age.

PostPosted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:29 am
by Besharen
Good point, umm. I thought about that when I first made it, and I was going to check, but I guess I forgot. But it should be very easy to change the hight.

Unfortunately, I have no way of checking the height of a Cyan pedestal (for several reasons – but mainly because I don’t know how to look at Cyan ages)

Could someone do me a favor and check?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:35 am
by Aloys
Looking at Cyan's Ages it appears linking panels have to be at 3.35 units above the ground. Also books aren't laying flat, they are at an angle of roughly 11 degrees.
BTW, you had suggested that books in the Nexus should be acessible from all sides and thus should lay flat. While I agree it would be the ideal solution, looking at Cyan's books I realized it may not be possible, because when you click a book the avatar automatically moves to lineup with the book and face it. Books can only have one accessible side, you can't click one from behind (see for instance the nexus book in the hoods).

A nice looking but probably difficult to actually realize-solution for this would be to have the pedestals be 'motorized'. :) When you move near a pedestal it rotates so that is faces you automatically. This might sound like a weird thing, but it would be a fresh take on pedestals, and I think it could actually look cool. It's just an idea though.

Another solution would be to be able to by pass the lineup movement of the avvie and have it play the linking animation right away. Not sure about the technical doability of that one though..

A more simple solution would be to just have traditionnal books and pedestals that can only be clicked from one side. But if we can do something more original why settle for the easy solution? ;)

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:42 am
by Robert The Rebuilder
Aloys wrote: Another solution would be to be able to by pass the lineup movement of the avvie and have it play the linking animation right away. Not sure about the technical doability of that one though..

Actually, we have this right now in the sample prin pahts/nexus age. When you click the book, you just link without any avatar animation.

I have no idea what it would take to make the avatar shift over to the book and put its hand on it; I think its a combination of a special region with responder modifiers and etc... Any URU Gurus out there know how?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:27 am
by Aloys
Oh, good point, I had forgotten that. That solves my problem.
In the long term though it would be good to have the avatar play the linking animation. However I guess that would involve development work that is not on the priority list at the moment. We'll see about that later then.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:10 pm
by Besharen
Aloys and Robert the Rebuilder:

Ok, things have been a little busy the last couple days, I didn’t get everything done I wanted to. I didn’t have time to add the curve into the texture, so in these models the curves are still objects. When I get back I can do that, or you can do it yourselves if you want. For now, just use these models of placeholders until I can do that. It probably won’t be an issue to have the curves as objects to start because there isn’t much in the age. We would only need to change that if the age starts to get too big.

I did fix the height of the pedestals. Here are the files: I have three different versions you can choose from. They are in a obj. format, and will import into Blender. However, you may need to rotate them 90 degrees for some reason.

Version1 – This is with a flat top.

Flat

Version2 – This is with the angle that is used in Uru, with the 11 degrees angle. We could use the linking animation with this one.

Slight Angle

Version 3- This is with a steeply angled top, like the third set of pictures at the start of this thread.

Big_Angle

Here are the textures. Unfortunately, you will need to re-texture them in Blender. Sorry I didn’t have time to do that.


I know they’re really small, but they tile really well so it looks good.
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image\

I will be away until Sept. 2nd. I will still be able to get on a computer for most of that time, but I won't have any of my files.

Good luck,
Besharen

PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:17 pm
by Marein
[quote="Besharen"] You may need to rotate them 90 degrees for some reason.

This is because in Blender the Z axis is vertical and the Y axis is horizontal. In most programs the Y is vertical, so when importing to Blender your scene is pointing the wrong way :)

PostPosted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 6:27 am
by Robert The Rebuilder
Thanks, Besharen - and have fun on your vacation!

PostPosted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 8:29 am
by Aloys
Thanks Besharen! See you again in three weeks. :)
After a quick work this is how it looks in the Age.

I find that it is a little small, the book I put on it has been modled after the Uru Nexus book but had to be scalled down to half its original size. So we might have to enlarge it a bit if we don't want to use really small books.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 8:53 am
by The Enlightened
This age is beginning to look quite professionsal.