Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby D'Lanor » Thu Apr 01, 2010 5:40 am

diafero wrote:
Trylon wrote:Well, it's not that good of an age anyway. I should probably get around to remaking it. Might as well rename it and re-assign the prefix

That would make it a new age, and I would not really like to loose the old one. Recently had a lot of fun in there :D
Anyway, that's a different discussion. It'll be some years till ULM database reaches 16000.

Back to the PythonFileMods: Where does the plugin get the information about how the parameters are called? Does it automatically read the Python files and extract the ptAttrib* lines? That sounds greats and easy to use, especially when I think about how you set these parameters in PyPRP.

That sounds like the logical way to handle them. When I wire something for an age I always design the Python code first. During the design stage I define activators and responders etc. And by the time I start writing the Alcscripts for Blender I already know exactly what each responder should do.

For the current project I am involved in I do not even implement these Alcscripts myself but send them to the Blender modeler(s). It seems Cyan follows a similar workflow. Apparently you can simply send the complete Python files to the modeler and the plugin will find the references automatically. However, you will still need to explain what the responders should do.
"It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself." - Goethe
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby TheMagician » Thu Apr 01, 2010 7:06 am

Can anybody point me to the correct offset (in feet unit) for ladder rungs?
I've been fiddling for an hour now and can't get it to line up properly.
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby Agenotfound » Thu Apr 01, 2010 12:47 pm

TheMagician wrote:@agenotfound:
On the first page of this thread you asked about setting up sounds like "NonSpatial Sound", "Random Sound" and "3d Sound".
Have you got them working yet? If not I'd write a short description of how to set them up.


No and It would be fantastic if you could write about it !

TheMagician wrote:Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on the creation of water? All the commponents you need confuse me.


I still have some problem with it but here what I got so far.

First you'll need a plane.

attach to it a Render>Representation

    there is only one setting and if I'm not mistaken this set the minimum quality at witch the waveset is rendered (if you are far from the water the engine make a simpler render of it)
attach then a Render>Representation Group

    click "add" and select your representation component

attach a Water>Environment Map

    no idea on how to set this one properly

Attach a Water>Large Water

    the setting of this one determines the form and speed of the waves.
    Getting it wright is probably the hardest part but we've got help ! and not from anyone ! from Cyan !
    in the GOW Wiki article on wavesets there is a link to an article from a Cyan employee who developed the system and to illustrate his article he shows a screencap of the Max plugin !
    The article
    go to chapter 1.3 for the screencap.
    Using the setting in this picts will get you a slow moving wave with high amplitude - which is suited to the sea shore depicted in screencap
    so how to get that right will require a lot of testing.

Create a new texture

    (this is a step I'm pretty sure I'm getting wrong)
    make it a Plasma Standard
    an make the layer an environment map
    attribute the texture to your plane
    I tried various combinaisons of layers but got export errors
.

and here is what you'll got with all this

Image

you can't see it in the picture but the water is moving with a large wave

so that's all I got for now please post any improvement you'll make !



TheMagician wrote:And did you make any progress with splitting animations into parts? As you said - time tags don't work. Until now all my animation drop-down lists say: (entire animation) - what if I wanted to have an object move up when I enter a region and back down when I exit the region? I guess I'd have to use dummy objects with separate animations.



if your animation is only two way ( going up and going down following the same path) then you don't need a second animation, the responders offer you the option to play the anims forward and backward.
Last edited by Agenotfound on Thu Apr 01, 2010 3:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby Jojon » Thu Apr 01, 2010 2:08 pm

TheMagician wrote:Can anybody point me to the correct offset (in feet unit) for ladder rungs?

1 :)
(bottom rung 0.42' from the floor, top rung 0.58' down)

Zrax wrote:As Hoikas says, "Check libHSPlasma's plLocation implementation for specifics."... If you're brave enough, that is ^_^

*sigh* I guess I'm just going to have to give up my barbaric ways and learn to speak Greek, like you civilised folk. :)
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby TheMagician » Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:12 am

@ Jojon:
Thanks, I'll try it out later - 1 foot seems much though - we'll see :)

@Agenotfound:
Wow, thanks for the water tutorial - how did you figure that out? So many steps to think about. I hope I can come up with similar results. I'll report back to you.

About the Music and 3D-SoundFX - I'm not sure whether this really is what you're looking for, because it seems so simple when compared to your water setup, so perhaps you've already figured out what I'm going to show you now and are looking for something else. Again, we'll see :D

CLICK HERE to download a small tutorial age about music and sound.
When you import it into Uru it should do the following:

-Automatically start (with fade-in) an ambient music when you enter the age. This is non-3D stereo music.
-Step on the green floor plate or click on the green pillar to trigger a 3D positional sound effect (some stones rolling along the ground)
-Finally step onto the orange floor plate to fade out the old ambient music and start a new one.

You can have a look at the setup in the 3D Max file - I guess that's easier than me trying to expain it here. The only thing I have to point out is that the ambient music wouldn't play unless I checked the box "stream from compressed file" at the very bottom of the Component Utility.
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby Agenotfound » Fri Apr 02, 2010 7:52 am

Ah ! thanks !

now I get why it wasn't working:

my ogg sounds are not properly encoded.

stupid isn't it ? :D

TheMagician wrote: Wow, thanks for the water tutorial - how did you figure that out? So many steps to think about.


1/4 being familiar with prp structures 1/4 reading the article I mentioned 1/4 not understanding how to apply the PyPrp tutorial on waveset to Max 1/4 random clicking.

and the result is a 1/3 -1/2 working thing :?

TheMagician wrote:I hope I can come up with similar results. I'll report back to you.

Please do ! there are so few of us working on the plugin that we have to stick together !
And once we write tutorials on everything maybe people will start using it ? :D

In order to finish my age with the strict minimum I still need to figure out Subworlds and waveset please let me now if you make any progress in those domains. I'll try to figure light maps also, that could be useful but I'm afraid I won't be able to do any effective work before a month. Too much things to do right now.

PS: I see that you make your regions transparent, I don't know if it is a choice but I prefer to display them as box (right click > properties) this way there is no visual overlapping when you have lots of regions. - just saying, everyone has his habits :D
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby TheMagician » Fri Apr 02, 2010 8:41 am

Yeah, it's always the things you don't think about :)

I must admit I'm also wondering why only few people seem to work with the plugin. I guess they don't have Max in the first place.
And I definitely agree: when we start to write nice and clear tutorials on how to do things with the plugin (like on Alcugs) then
the user base sould definitely grow.

And time is my main problem as well...

Thanks for the tip with the boxes. I'll start using that.
I'm having another problem in 3D Max right now - concerning dummies:
Image
They disappear behind objects although they are actually in front of them - does your version of Max show the same behavior?
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby rustee » Fri Apr 02, 2010 8:51 am

Yes. Seems to be normal.
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby Agenotfound » Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:03 am

same here

but I almost always select objects by name when things start to be complicated so I don't mind
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Re: Couple of 3ds Plasma plugin questions

Postby Agenotfound » Sat Apr 03, 2010 12:23 am

Jackpot !

Chogon posted some documentation for the Plasma plugin.

it quite crude and incomplete but still !

and TheMagician you're gonna be happy there's a whole chapter on Avatar standards and on how to make Ladders !

PS:and markers in animations !
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