How to decide which Fan age is first on Moulagain

[rivenwanderer]

I do hope you're correct ddb174. Myself and a few others have begun working on a new age from scratch. Due to MOULagain's recent startup and words of encouragement from Cyan about the plugin binaries coming out soon - I find myself in a predicament. I really want to begin modelling for the age, but I'm leary due to the uncertainties with the plugin.

On one hand, Blender is beginning to grow on me - but on the other hand, I have an opportunity to aquire a legal copy of Max V7. I'd really like to begin work on the geometry - but if the Max tools are really good, it may persuade me to jump the fence and start learning that instead.

In the meantime, I guess we'll keep working on ironing out the storyline and creating concept art.

This is just my opinion, but if you're just starting working on an Age, it's not going to be ready in time for this very first "proof of concept" round of putting fan ages into MOULa. And in the farther future, I have a hard time believing that there won't be a pathway to get your work from Blender into MOULa. And finally, jumping in to Age-creating is in itself a valuable thing--if you go by the GoW tutorials and make an Age for U:CC, you'll learn a lot about 3D no matter what, and also have something concrete to be proud of.

(My advice in general is to try to work on a smallish, approachable project at first to learn the basics (so that you have a good-looking Age to your name and more knowledge about the process for the next Age you design) rather than something huge you get bogged down on halfway through, but for some people a bigger challenge is more motivating than a small one.)

In short, go for it!

[ZURI]

Thank you rivenwanderer. I've already made several ages that export and run fine - but I've chocked them up to being "learning experiences." While I'm by no means any more than a rookie, I've become quite comfortable with Blender. For example, while a lot of others dislike the frequent use of shortcuts - I have become quite comfortable with it,...probably from using Linux for so long

I've been through a lot of the tutorials here on the wiki, as well as those from myriad sites elsewhere. They've been very helpful, and I've learned a lot. What keeps running through my mind, is - URU was designed on Max. This provokes me to think that the tools may be easier to use than with Blender (even after the programmers here get their hands on the source.) Of course, I maybe wrong - and certainly hope that I am. Either way, as you certainly will, I'll be watching and waiting to see what happens....

[Trylon]

It wouldn't take much work at all for Drizzle to convert Pots->Moul (aside from the cooked PhysX data, which I imagine will be changed if we get the source-code anyway.)

I don;t expect that physx stuff to change, except if fans do it. It'd be easier for Cyan to choose a license that allows direct physx linking, than to yank it out.

Btw, is there a loophole that would allow a GPL project to use a separate project to help in cooking the physx data? Like an extra executable that uses stdin and stdout to cook or uncook physx data?

[ddb174]

Yeah, I don't expect Cyan to do it either. That's why open-source would be good ;) We don't want that sort of thing in prp files. If the client wants to cook and cache on the fly that's fine.

It's legal to do that, yes. But like the kernel shims, it's goes against the spirit. (Not addressing the legality of kernel shims, by the way.)

[Branan]

Btw, is there a loophole that would allow a GPL project to use a separate project to help in cooking the physx data? Like an extra executable that uses stdin and stdout to cook or uncook physx data?

yeah, that's completely legal. the GPL only comes into play when you borrow code.

[ddb174]

It can apply even when linking to compiled code, Paladin.

[Branan]

Borrowing machine code is still borrowing code

Really though, my post originally had "link", but that's pretty ambiguous... two tools designed to communicate through pipes are in one sense of the word "linked", even if not linked in the CompSci sense of the word.

Traded one ambiguity for another, I guess.

[Trylon]

... but like the kernel shims, it's goes against the spirit.

Still, it would be a viable short-term solution to get moul compatibility closer

Plus, if it's open-sourced, it wouldn't be too much against the spirit, right
I'll see if I can whip something like it up sometime this week. No promises though...

[rivenwanderer]

Thank you rivenwanderer. I've already made several ages that export and run fine - but I've chocked them up to being "learning experiences." While I'm by no means any more than a rookie, I've become quite comfortable with Blender. For example, while a lot of others dislike the frequent use of shortcuts - I have become quite comfortable with it,...probably from using Linux for so long

I've been through a lot of the tutorials here on the wiki, as well as those from myriad sites elsewhere. They've been very helpful, and I've learned a lot. What keeps running through my mind, is - URU was designed on Max. This provokes me to think that the tools may be easier to use than with Blender (even after the programmers here get their hands on the source.) Of course, I maybe wrong - and certainly hope that I am. Either way, as you certainly will, I'll be watching and waiting to see what happens....

Oh, I'm sorry I assumed you were more of a newbie than you were (The "should I hold off on doing X due to [thing I have no control over]" train of thought is one I tend to apply to situations where I know I'll need to learn a lot and am (subconsciously) trying to wiggle out of doing so; I shouldn't have projected that quite so much! )

Hmm, it'd be neat if we could get Cyan to make a screencast or something of the advantages to using their Max plugin, so that we had an idea of how different the build process was for them vs. for us!

[ZURI]

You're not as far off as you may think.. So, yea, I'm hoping to save myself from getting too far down one path just to find out that with a little patience I could save myself a lot of trouble.

And I'll definately second your comment about more info on the plugin. Heck, we may find out that the GoW way of making ages is better than theirs.... although I'm a bit skeptical.