Anyone Remember The Ames Room Illusion

[Karkadann]

I saw this on a TV show called Brain Games and thought it would be fun to try

http://www.mediafire.com/download/zdh4sdtk2e0yux9/TestExAmesRoom.rar

Its my usual TestExperiments age Prefix 2010 where I test all the weird stuff

[matthornb]

Yes, I'm familiar with that illusion, it is one of several perspective illusions that were included in the designs for D'ni Temple: Area Two, along with some trompe d'loeil and forced perspective illusions.

I wanted to mess with players' heads a bit, such that they walk into a space and from the entrance it appears to be one thing, but in reality it is something much stranger. But there were many other elements in that design, including journals and puzzle content, and since I'm now wrapping up my work on Sevkor (it's been a long, tricky, time-consuming process but the art/modelling/texturing side of it is basically done now.)... I might be able to start work on D'ni Temple: Area Two before long, among other things.

I will point out that I have really made an effort on Sevkor - not just the added detailing like cracks, etc, but the small enclosure at the end, on the other side of the rope bridge, which contains an aged wooden crate filled with blank books, and a book set in front of the crate on the removed crate top, which I would like to see turned into a concise journal, briefly outlining the backstory of Sevkor IC, from an anonymous explorer's observations. There are also some ink jars along the side of the crate, so whoever requested all those additional details pretty much got what they were hoping for. I've cleaned up most of the collision mesh, still some minor flaws in it but almost totally fixed at this point.

Early next week I expect to post a bunch of new video preview material online, related to Sevkor, and late next week I will be packing all the files and sending them to you, Karkadann. I am trying to figure out the best way to take a (complex!) Blender scene and somehow port it all to a form that you can open in 3ds max. I would love it if there were some way for you to open it as is, more or less, without having to reapply each of 250+ texture images one at a time to the corresponding surfaces. But I fear there may be no way to avoid that process. This is a big age, it is currently approx. 100,000 polys including the separate collision model, and the texture maps are about 90-95 MB total, though I do also have an alternate version working on my PC, which I am referring to as Sevkor HD - that one has over 250 MB in texture assets, same textures but larger, the ones in the 95 MB version were all either resized to half or one fourth the pixel resolution of the original texture maps.

I realize 90 MB is a lot, and we can discuss reducing some of the assets further but... I think it is as close to optimal as I have been able to get. Right now it looks pretty good, the text on the easel, etc, is legible, the surfaces look adequately detailed.
If we try to reduce much more I doubt that will still be the case. If the concern is performance on older PCs, I think implementing visregions could help, as an addition to the obvious easy stuff (mipmapping and the like)

[Deledrius]

Early next week I expect to post a bunch of new video preview material online, related to Sevkor, and late next week I will be packing all the files and sending them to you, Karkadann. I am trying to figure out the best way to take a (complex!) Blender scene and somehow port it all to a form that you can open in 3ds max. I would love it if there were some way for you to open it as is, more or less, without having to reapply each of 250+ texture images one at a time to the corresponding surfaces. But I fear there may be no way to avoid that process. This is a big age, it is currently approx. 100,000 polys including the separate collision model, and the texture maps are about 90-95 MB total, though I do also have an alternate version working on my PC, which I am referring to as Sevkor HD - that one has over 250 MB in texture assets, same textures but larger, the ones in the 95 MB version were all either resized to half or one fourth the pixel resolution of the original texture maps.

If you don't mind my asking, what is it that you'll be doing in Max that justifies so much extra work?

[Karkadann]

If you don't mind my asking, what is it that you'll be doing in Max that justifies so much extra work?

Perhaps the same thing that justifies climbing a mountain, its a challenge.

@Matt: I have been messing around with DAE files and they seem to work rather well, as elaborate as the structure I was experimenting with is the textures seemed to go on flawlessly.
Does blender has a COLLADA (DAE) export option?

[Deledrius]

If you don't mind my asking, what is it that you'll be doing in Max that justifies so much extra work?

Perhaps the same thing that justifies climbing a mountain, its a challenge.

Well, okay. Just curious if there's something specific the tools aren't doing for you, but if you want to do it just to have done it, knock yourself out.

@Matt: I have been messing around with DAE files and they seem to work rather well, as elaborate as the structure I was experimenting with is the textures seemed to go on flawlessly.
Does blender has a COLLADA (DAE) export option?

It does.

[Ainia]

If you don't mind my asking, what is it that you'll be doing in Max that justifies so much extra work?

I was under the impression that this Age was hoped to be a fan-made contribution to MOULa, intended as a repository and Nexus-like Age for fan-made content some day. The concept, and later Sevkor itself, was discussed and developed here exhaustively over the course of a year. The thread is a very long read but also very interesting (for those of you who haven't seen it before).

[Christopher]

@Deledrius: If I remember the thread Ainia linked correctly, the main problem is that they didn't find a way to transfer the blend file over to 3ds Max without loosing every texture on the mesh. I am not familiar with porting files from Blender to Max, so I don't know if there are tools or something to do it...

Christopher

[Deledrius]

If you don't mind my asking, what is it that you'll be doing in Max that justifies so much extra work?

I was under the impression that this Age was hoped to be a fan-made contribution to MOULa, intended as a repository and Nexus-like Age for fan-made content some day. The concept, and later Sevkor itself, was discussed and developed here exhaustively over the course of a year. The thread is a very long read but also very interesting (for those of you who haven't seen it before).

I think someone around here linked me to it sometime last year; before that I wasn't aware of it. I'm not sure why this would require porting all that work to Max with the loss that entails. Is this some arbitrary limitation on the part of Cyan?

@Deledrius: If I remember the thread Ainia linked correctly, the main problem is that they didn't find a way to transfer the blend file over to 3ds Max without losing every texture on the mesh. I am not familiar with porting files from Blender to Max, so I don't know if there are tools or something to do it...

That sounds like a good reason to export it directly from Blender. I'm assuming there's some necessary work being done in Max that matthorn can't do in Blender? There aren't any tools to convert to Max because 3DS Max uses proprietary formats natively that Blender has no knowledge of. However, since Ages exported from Blender can be directly converted to work on MOULa-version shards, such a conversion is usually unnecessary. Hence my question about what's going on here that's unusual and necessitates the extra work.

Or is this all being done just for the fun of redoing work that's already been completed, as Karkadann suggests? Just trying to understand what's going on here because it looks very confusing from the outside.

[Karkadann]

That sounds like a good reason to export it directly from Blender. I'm assuming there's some necessary work being done in Max that matthorn can't do in Blender? There aren't any tools to convert to Max because 3DS Max uses proprietary formats natively that Blender has no knowledge of. However, since Ages exported from Blender can be directly converted to work on MOULa-version shards, such a conversion is usually unnecessary.

Not knowing much about blender I was unaware of the export option for MOULa-version shards, is their any chance in getting Relativity exported for one of the MOULa shards?
Also If Sevcor can be exported from Blender for a MOULa shard, is their someone with such a shard that help test Sevcor? Cuz I can add the physics as far as walls, floors, sitting regions, kickables ext, ext, to the mesh and texture
but I have no idea how to add the linking books, in addition I am wondering is their any additional Fan Ages in the works. It would be a shame to have a fan age library with no fan ages to add to it.

It looks very confusing from the outside.

Its just as confusing from the inside

[Deledrius]

Not knowing much about blender I was unaware of the export option for MOULa-version shards

Not directly, but Luna has made a UI for my Transfusion script that allows conversion. Every Age is unique and might require some minor tweaks, but two out of the three Fan Ages on Gehn are exported directly from Blender using PyPRP, and then simply converted using Plasma Transfusion to be MOULa-compatible. (The third Age was made in Max and hasn't been modified since).

is their any chance in getting Relativity exported for one of the MOULa shards?

There is definitely a chance. I've been too busy elsewhere to look into it deeply, but aside from all the crazy magic going on it should (theoretically) be fine. The real concern is how easily (or not) all the really clever stuff will convert over. Personally this is something I'd love to see on Gehn if it can be made to work with MOULa shards.

Also If Sevkor can be exported from Blender for a MOULa shard, is their someone with such a shard that help test Sevkor?

That's the entire purpose of the Destiny Shard. Allows iterative local testing of Ages on a MOULa-type server. I have something very similar set up on my personal server for doing Age building.

Cuz I can add the physics as far as walls, floors, sitting regions, kickables ext, ext, to the mesh and texture but I have no idea how to add the linking books

Linking books are a bit messy still, and it requires cooperation with the shard owner to wire up correctly on both ends. I'd like to fix that and make it properly data-driven like I did with the journals, but alas have not had the time. It's doable, but just needs some cooperation.

in addition I am wondering is their any additional Fan Ages in the works. It would be a shame to have a fan age library with no fan ages to add to it.

I wish there was a better way to track what Fan Ages are in progress. I've got a couple of things I'm working on, and I know there are a few posts from time to time around here about new Ages being worked on, but it's hard to get any definitive information, mostly because it's all hobbiest work. No schedules, no deadlines, and a lot of learning processes.

It looks very confusing from the outside.

Its just as confusing from the inside

Well, as long as we're all on the same confusing page! I wasn't sure if I was missing something, or if you were all unaware of potential options to make your work easier. It's hard to commit time to Uru stuff these days, but if something's not working correctly with the tools where it should be (obviously, a lot of things just aren't implemented ) it helps to know about it so it can perhaps be looked into.