Tutorial and Information Requests

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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:56 pm

Here we go.

Along time ago in an age far far away I built my first ladder using blender and AlcScript.

Now I am using Korman and I am able to do ladders with the nifty script tool provided I have a journal set up and working now I need to do some clickable stuff and I am starting with a sit.

I never did this the old way so I do not have any old stuff I can import so I figure go look at the Wiki. Hey how hard can it be.

Now I like to look at our Wiki information coming at them from a noobs point of view.

So I went looking and realized there is stuff like "add a region".

Now I know I have done this in the past but I just can't remember how. :?

Is there any way we can add some more detail to the Wiki?
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby Deledrius » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:42 pm

Clickables (where it has a GUI popup of a note, etc.) aren't fully supported yet, but we hope to have the necessary camera support added in an upcoming version of Korman. If you mean clickable buttons, the wiki's information should cover it. :)

An upcoming planned feature is to provide more premade templates like the ladder one, for each of the different button and switch animations so that you don't have to line them all up manually.

J'Kla wrote:So I went looking and realized there is stuff like "add a region".

Now I know I have done this in the past but I just can't remember how. :?

Is there any way we can add some more detail to the Wiki?


Regions can basically just be any mesh. I usually tell Blender to display them as wireframe max (or bounds, if they're a cube). Depending on the type of region (the wiki should hopefully recommend this when appropriate) you may need to explicitly add collision to it.
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:09 am

Cool
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Mon Mar 05, 2018 8:37 am

Here we go again.

I am familiar with key frames and I am at the stage of animating the toilet door.

The door is a block that drops into the floor to open there is a touch pad on the door which is a child of the door there is also a image plane on the inside of the door which is also a child of the door. everything is [Ctrl][a] set for location rotation and scale.

The frame rate is set to 30fps

I have built the animation such that the door takes 30 frames to lower to the floor and a further 30 frames to return to its start position. As the door retracts to its lower state it caries the door marker and the clue posted on the inside with it.

Our clickable is to be the plane designated "Cell 1006 WCSymbol" This is a plane mesh with a texture.

The door is its parent object which is a subsurf modified slab of rock. designated "Cell 1006 Toilet Door"

In my node editor I have created a node tree designated "Cell 1006 Toilet Door"

There is a sitable associated with the toilet pedestal that works! activating this is supposed to close the door before you actually sit down.

To one side of the room you have a sink and spout arrangement designated "Cell 1006 WC Hand Dryer Faucet" clicking on this also opens a closed door.

Passing beyond the door outwards also closes the door.

I want to have it if someone tries to sneak through an open door to see the message I want them panic linking I will put in the book that this is to prevent them being sterilized an automatic feature of the toilet.

Whilst the Korman Logic nodes in the Wiki are quite detailed I am getting lost in the abundance.

There is an example that shows a Responder State Node, 2x Responder Commands and a One Shot command. Although as far as I can see that is for making an avatar do a particular move like entering the lift in Ghareseen.

I suspect I am making things a bit difficult by having 4 possible triggers for one animation but if I could just find out how to make the button open the door I believe I would be closer to some frame of reference.

Nodes are not new to me I have been using them for some time to get various rendering effects.

I think my problem lies in having too many of them thrown at me in one fell swoop.

I am looking for Noob level instructions like this is your open button this is your close button this is your animated object. This is how you stitch them together.

I am sure everything is in the Wiki page its just burried in a mess of jargon.

Just as an example the Wiki suggests that the start point for the tree is a Responder State and note this as an example of a door and that one of these should be the start state for a door.

But how do I assign that respoder state to a shut door?

I can see the logic of only having one as the default but if this is the node where I want to start how do I tell it that this is the object and it is this animation and it is this point in the animation you are looking at?
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby Doobes » Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:33 pm

I suppose the best way to approach this is to break it down into steps. As I understand it, you want to:

* Click a door, it opens, the avatar steps in and sits down, the door closes.

* If you abort the sitting down and leave the vicinity of the door, it closes.

* To exit, you would either want a user prompt for the avatar to stand up, the door opens, and they come out of the door...or it's part of the original animation and, after a few seconds, the door opens again and the avatar comes out without a prompt from the user.

The easiest way would be the latter, in that the whole thing is done in one responder, with a timed callout in between when the door shuts then opens to let the avatar out. An SDL state plus some enable and disable commands for the clickable would make it online-ready (ie so nobody else can click the door mid-animation and it syncs up with other players).

So while it will be a complicated node tree, it's not impossible. It's just a question of how much user input is needed, building the tree step by step, then adjusting each node option as needed.
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:14 pm

Doh!

I have figured out what I am missing is the parts of section 4 under Korman clickables.

What I really need is the bits of this entry that have not been added yet.

I thought that Korman Logic Nodes would cover what I needed but It appears I am a bit too thick to understand. lol

I guess I will spend a couple of days beating my head against it. I will take my super simple age and start experimenting. ;)
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby Doobes » Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:51 pm

I would look into the Python script "xSimpleDoor". It's set up to handle opening and closing door responders as well as SDL states (IIRC). Again, I'm not entirely sure exactly what you want to happen, in what order, and with what input from the user, if any. Clarifying that will help plot out the node tree and the responders.
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Mon Mar 05, 2018 3:22 pm

Don't worry about the complexity its the simplicity I am having trouble with.

How do you make a simple clickable and attach it to an animation.

Making chains of nodes and experimenting with the logic is easy its that first bit. Making that first link.

When I work with graphics there is an input node a mixer node color nodes etc.

So I would be looking for a click detection node that would provide input for a responder node that would result in some sort of action an animation control node.

I am thinking like gate logic where the click is an event and I am using nodes to build an event chain of logic.

I would also probably be looking for things other than clicks like region detection, stomp detection, then there's stuff I probably want to explore with Python nodes like increment and decrement a variable and do some action based on the value of said variable when something is clicked but do something else if it is some other value.

To do any of that I need to know how to make a button clickable and how to attach that click action to an object and that objects animation.

I need that first logic brick.

Like I say beating your head against a wall only hurts if you stop. I have been to this sort of party before when I was learning how to build LAMP servers I rebuilt the same machine probably 30 times but I figured it out in the end. ;)
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby Deledrius » Mon Mar 05, 2018 5:27 pm

J'Kla wrote:How do you make a simple clickable and attach it to an animation.


Doobes wrote:I would look into the Python script "xSimpleDoor".


xStandardDoor is probably the right script. Make a PFM node, load that script, and then just hook up the empty slots.

There are a lot of really handy pre-made scripts that do most of the work for you, you just plug in the clickables, the regions, and the animation responders for the door. I would suggest looking through the available scripts (especially the ones starting with x, since those are the global convenience scripts) and finding the ones that apply to what you want to do.
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Re: Tutorial and Information Requests

Postby J'Kla » Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:34 am

Thanks Deledrius I will look into those today. ;)

[Edit]
Things are starting to clarify. ;)

Because the Wiki shows Python nodes as a subset of Logic nodes within the tree of tutorials.

I assumed (My fault :oops: ) that I should be starting with Logic nodes when in reality the thing you need to grasp first is the Python nodes.

Just changing the Wiki entry so that Python Nodes are the parent and Logic nodes are the child would have stopped me falling down that rabbit hole. I suspect this would also help others. Even a note at the start of Logic nodes section suggesting that age writers should familiarize themselves with Python nodes first. :|

I am going to start playing in my Abmiram test space. Scripts like the ladder tools would be useful but I believe a set of tutorials that show how to build things like ladders, simple animations and journals using nodes would make for better age builders even if that meant a slightly steeper learning curve.

I am probably biased here because of the way I had to fight my way into an understanding of the Blender GUI.
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