Sizing & Measuring

[Jman]

Hey Guys,

I've been wondering how people get the proper sizes of hills, mountains and other landscape features. I've got a sample 2 by 6 cylinder as a general guideline for the in-game avatar, but this isn't as helpful as I had hoped. It is also time consuming to constantly have to export an AGE file, load it into URU, start URU and finally load my level just to see if the terrain is scaled right. Is there a way that Blender's game engine can mimic the Plasma engine, at least in avatar size & movement?

Justin

[Aloys]

There's this thing called the Blender Game Engine that could supposedly be used for that, but I have never tried it.
What I do is use a fake avatar (you can get it here - much better than a simple cylinder) and then I copy it all over the Age. That's a pretty good way to check scale.
Also, I use fake 'viewpoint nodes' , I put those all through the Age at key points, much like you would do with cameras in a static pre-rendered game like Myst. To do that I create 'empties', at 5.5 units above the ground (that's the eight of the Uru 1st person camera) and then I lock my camera unto those (default key binding is 'suppr' on the numpad) to have a good approximation of what those areas of the Age looks like when seen in 1st person.

[Jman]

Thanks Aloys. I downloaded the sample avatar and will start using that as my "ruler". I'm also going to start looking into how to setup the Blender Game Engine to try to get it to mimic the Plasma engine in rendering & movement. I'll post back here if I come up with anything.

[Jojon]

While the question concerned more proportions and "feel", it may be worth pointing out that for making actual measurements, there is a toolbox in EDIT mode ( EditingButtons->MeshToolsMore ), that has buttons, that switches on in-view display of edge lengths and -angles and face areas. (You've probably been messing here already, in order to make normal vectors visible...)

I've found the angle measurements, in particular, useful at times, when I have rotated (and applied) something entirely out of sane-space and want it back in alignment with the global coordsys; just extrude a vertex orthogonally, measure it with its neighbour and there you have the angle you need to get back to square-space.. :P

[Goofy]

One other thing you can use for scale is the default grid in blender. It has 60 small boxes. each of the small boxes are grouped into 10 each and there's 6 large boxes. You have to look, but you can just make out the lines that separate each group of 10. Look for the Y and X axis which on mine Y is green and X is red. Z axis is up and down and mines blue color.


Basically 1 blender unit(one small square of the grid) is 1 foot in game. if the avatar that aloys showed you is the same as mine its 6 blender units or 6 feet.

One rule I use is if my age(over all) is bigger then that grid which is over 60 blender units or 60 feet. then I should be ok, just make sure you check in every direction and don't go crazy which I did once and it wasn't pretty.