Guild of Writers

Jennifer, keeping in mind that in Uru or any similar 3D real time game the rendering speed is first and foremost, can it be tell that roughly how many vertices/faces should be used at most? I know of course, that it depends on many factors, but a guess only? For example, when I create a cube with a broken side (by applying the mesh tools/fractals several times) the more divisions are used the better looking the result. Where is a feasible limit?

Like you said, it really does depend on many factors...there are all sorts of coding methods and tricks that you can play to keep your graphical quality while still staying lag-free that all depend on just what your needs are in a particular situation, plus the game's performance is dependent upon individual computer speed, so it's hard to give one single rule.
But in terms of designing your models to be graphically efficient, the following excerpt from this website (http://www.digitalproducer.com/pages/soft_3d_p1.htm) might be helpful (emphasis mine):

In game development, the programmers who build the code engine typically perform tests to determine exactly how many polygons the engine can draw per second, on a reference machine that the game players are likely to have. Then the game designer sets the frame rate at which the game must refresh for smooth action, and the total engine performance number is divided by that frame rate to deliver the polygon budget. The Polygon budget is how many polygons can be on screen in each frame, before the game engine begins to choke and can’t draw them all in time. After the polygon budget has been determined, the game designers list all the elements that need to be onscreen at one time, and divide the polygon budget up into a budget for each element.

For example, if my game engine can draw 90,000 lit, textured triangles per second, and I want the game to play at 30 frames per second, the polygon budget is 3000 triangles per each frame. If I assign 1000 triangles to the terrain, 200 to the backdrop, and decide that five enemies can be onscreen at once, each with 200 triangles for the enemy and 100 triangles for weapons, shots, and so on, that leaves me with 300 triangles for the main character.

Modeling an attractive, convincing main character in less than 300 triangles isn't easy...

...For those of you interested in video game technology, there is usually a texture budget as well. A typical game engine can draw a polygon without a texture in about 10% of the processor cycles required for the same polygon with a texture, so reducing texture usage can help performance. Also, as the textures get larger, the time required to map them onto polygons and the memory used to store them increases.

I guess now what we need to know to calculate our polygon budget per frame is:
1. How many frames a second does Uru's engine, Plasma, run?
2. How many lit, textured triangles per second can Plasma draw?
I will query our programmers to seek the answer to these questions.

And of course, the simple solution is to test your scenes out in Uru for lag. Except of course if you have a fast computer, and then the lovely graphics that don't give your computer lag might still give slower computers lag. /shrug It's a balance!

Then on the subject of the colors...can you start up a fresh new Blender file with the usual cube and then,
recording your keystrokes and mouseclicks for testing purposes:

1. Change the color of the material of the cube to green.

[1a] I hope you are not too concerned about 'keystrokes and mouseclicks' -- is there some way to keep track of them, like the number of lines in a text?

That aside for the moment, I popped up a brand new cube by opening Blender:

NOTE: It is in Object Mode and the gray globe is available;

[1b] Then clicking on the graya globle does extend Panels; but clicking on the resulting red globe produces MA Materials window, with no ADD NEW until you click on the left side arrow; that then produces:

with its colorles ADD NEW window;

Remember, this was a brand newly opened Blender cube.
[1c] To test it, i then did File > New > Erase all, got a new cube and switched to Edit Mode; then clicking on the Panels gray globe i got the red globe, but no ADD NEW box; just the MA Materials buttone, which produced the same colorless ADD NEW box:


Up to now i have gotten now color chooser.

[1d] This time i did File > New > Erase all (top left) and also did an Object > delete from the 3D Menu line. With a blank (no objects) screen i did Add > Mesh > cube and (being necessarily in Edit Mode) i to Panesl and the gray globe; i punched it and got Link to Object with the Add New box below; this box then brings up the color palette and here is the resulting green cube:

[GO TO NEXT REPLY; we have a new rule of 3 only graphics]

Hooray! I got a very nice little green cube.

On to:

2. Add a new material and change the color of the new material to red.

However, not being versed in Materials Selections, i was able to get a good red box under the green, but could not color anything with it.

So, how do i make this new material selection?

**********************************************************
Lesson 6 #2 Add a new material and change the color of the new material to red

I cannot use the Material from the cube to put on the icosphere;
I can make a green cube and then a red icosphere:

But somehow, i get the feeling this is not what you are after.

The only time i get color choices is from a thoroughly scrubbed deck. Both top erase and middle delete are necessary to cleanse the operating table.
Now what about these Materials? Did i miss that from an earlier lesson?

NOTE: It is in Object Mode and the gray globe is available;

[1b] Then clicking on the graya globle does extend Panels; but clicking on the resulting red globe produces MA Materials window, with no ADD NEW until you click on the left side arrow; that then produces:

Correct. When you click on this ADD NEW it should add 'Material.001' to the textbox. The box below this one shows you to what object this material will be applied. Then go to the Material subpanel/tab and left-click on the gray rectangle that has "Col" to the right of it. This gives you the color chooser.

The white rectangle below this with the "Spe" next to it(the one you turned red); is the specular color and sets the color of your lamp. That's why your icosphere, which is medium gray, looks red. This is clearer if you look at the preview sphere to the left of the panels.

Hi, Jennifer! I would like to join your class, if you don't mind. I read through your lessons and thought: Why not give it a try. Sometimes even an old dog can learn new tricks. So I worked through the lessons and made this:



I like the style of your teaching.

/clap That's a very good key and lock! It's amazing how far you can get with just a simple tool like boolean, isn't it? Well, welcome to the class.

And Norfren, I still don't have the info I need to calculate the polygon budget--and it looks like it might take awhile to figure out. But you can follow the discussion here: http://forum.guildofwriters.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1398&start=10

Pappou, I'm just trying to duplicate the exact sequence of operations that leads up to the problem you're having so that I can figure out what's going wrong.

[1a] I hope you are not too concerned about 'keystrokes and mouseclicks' -- is there some way to keep track of them, like the number of lines in a text?

I was just thinking you could write them down; you kept track of them pretty well.

For the new Blender cube that you automatically get...

[1b] Then clicking on the graya globle does extend Panels; but clicking on the resulting red globe produces MA Materials window, with no ADD NEW until you click on the left side arrow; that then produces:

Okay then, to explain what's happening at this point: the Blender cube you automatically get already has a material. Thus there is no need to prompt you to add a new one. The material happens to be colored gray, which is why "Material" over "ADD NEW" has a little grey globe to the left of it. So in this case, the little gray globe is a color picture of black and white.

However, not being versed in Materials Selections, i was able to get a good red box under the green, but could not color anything with it.
So, how do i make this new material selection?

Whoops, that's the specularity you're playing with there. It defines what color the "shiny spot" of the object is, for instance in this picture the green bulb has a light green shiny spot, the red bulb a light pink shiny spot, and the metal on the bulbs has a white shiny spot(s). http://toolfarm.com/uploaded_images/C4D_ornaments-776051.jpg But anyway, to add a new material, you just use "ADD NEW" in the MA:Material window.

The only time i get color choices is from a thoroughly scrubbed deck. Both top erase and middle delete are necessary to cleanse the operating table.

Well that must have been inconvenient. So all this time you've only been able to give an object color right when you create it?

I cannot use the Material from the cube to put on the icosphere;

The way you would normally do this would be (with the icosphere selected) to go into the MA:Materials menu and choose the cube's color.

I will tell you the sequence of commands that I follow to get a green cube and a red icosphere, and the results I have at the end in terms of the little globes.

1. Start off fresh with automatic Blender cube.
2. Open the Material subwindow, change the little gray rectangle to green.
3. Create an icosphere.
4. In the Links and Pipelines subwindow, click "Add New" to give the icosphere a material (unlike the cube, the icosphere does not get an automatically provided material).
5. In the Material subwindow, change the little gray rectangle to red.
Now, when I open up the MA:Material menu, I have three little globes. The top one is red and is called "Material.001", and the second one is green and is called "Material". This holds whether I'm in Object or Edit mode. So doing it this way, do you still get the problem in which both little globes show up as being grey in the MA:Material menu?

Now what about these Materials? Did I miss that from an earlier lesson?

/me scratches head Hm, not as far as I know...

And in other news, don't expect the next lesson before Wednesday; I've got a test I need to study for so I won't have time to work on another lesson until that's over with.

It strikes me that a few concepts may not be obvious and should perhaps be pointed out to new users, like:

- That "Add new" button, with the attached double-arrow button to the left, is actually a selection box, which displays the currently selected material and pops up a list of all available materials, when you click the pop-up (double-arrow) part of it. The last option in the list is not an actual material but the function "Add New" (material), which is displayed initially, because that is the only entry in the material list end hence the current selection. The thing doubles as a string frame and a button in other words -- Blender has lots of these custom GUI widgets, like the numerical boxes, which can not only be clicked to enter values using the keyboard, but you can also increase and decrease their contents by clicking the little arrows to their (in)sides and click on them without releasing the button, to alter the value by dragging left and right.

- When you do select a material, every panel in the material- (red sphere) and texture- (leopard pattern) sub-panes will pertain to that material. Values do not change as you add a new material, because the new one inherits the properties of the one you had up at time of adding.

- As people pointed out, the three colour boxes displays the material's "diffuse COLour", "SPEcular colour" and "MIRrored colour" respectively. You can choose which of these you currently control with the RGB or HSV sliders, by clicking one of the mutually exclusive "col", "spe" and "mir" buttons. The specular colour doesn't determine how shiny the material is (this is done in the "shaders" tab) - just what colour the hotspot will be.
Let's focus on the "col" one for now.

- The colours are not independant from the material (err... right?), so if you have a red christmas tree bulb and a blue one, that's two separate materials, even though the colour is the only property they do not share.

(It is also possible to use more than one material on a single mesh, assigning them on a per-face basis, but that is out of scope here and I don't believe we use that feature...or? :7 )


If you haven't got it on already, I suggest you activate the "tool tips", which pops a terse description, when you hover the pointer over a GUI element. (prefs pane -> View_&_controls -> "Tool tips" [Top left])

Optional Assignment
Just a little something to tide you guys over while I'm off studying for my test. This article isn't about 3D modeling, so it won't help you with Blender. It will, however, make you a better game designer! I'd say that it improved my skills in the area of puzzle design by ten times, easily. So I encourage you to check it out.
http://www.scottkim.com/thinkinggames/GDC00/bates.html

Questions (please put answers under a spoiler tag):
1. Have you ever experienced "player paranoia"? What brought it on?
2. What is the danger of a binary puzzle?
3. Were you ever lost in "the maze of twisty passages, all alike"?

Yay, my class was cancelled today so I had some extra time to devote to this and make things perfect. (Like adding a cylinder to the torus on the padlock ) The gears are not very nice. When I did the first one I got bored with adding all those cubes so I just attached them and they are a bit scewed. So I made another one but I didn't really put my heart into that one either (and I totally forgot to use ctrl when I rotated the cubes... )
I made some trees a few days ago but I managed to save over them. On the other hand that gave me the opportunity to "try" what Owehn made.

That was a really interesting article. I haven't even thought about puzzles, eeep you probably need to know coding and stuff for that...

Ahh how nice. Junee's locks, gears and trees are very professional. I envy.

But to the questions at hand:
Optional Assignment

1. Have you ever experienced "player paranoia"? What brought it on?

Show Spoiler

I suppose there was a bit of paranoia in solving Achanar's monkey puzzle, where the little critters kept climbing and jumping endlessly, obscuring that bit of the solution; (isn't that in Myst III Exile?)

but surely it is paranoia that i still feel in trying to solve the colored cotton balls puzzle, where one lies, appropriately enough, on the psychiatric couch in the latter part of Myst IV Revelation. I still have not finished that game because of it.

I know Bates thinks of the 'paranoia' problem in dialog terms, but that seems too restrictive. To me it really fits the cotton ball puzzle.

2. What is the danger of a binary puzzle?
I suppose this is the simplistic puzzle. Its not complex enough to be engaging and interesting. I cannot recall it happening in the Myst games.

3. Were you ever lost in "the maze of twisty passages, all alike"?

Show Spoiler

Ah yes. And they were delightful things to solve.

The subway in the Scientific Age of Myst I was super:

Scientific Age Subway small.png (232.42 KiB) Viewed 3811 times

Then the second story traffic in the trees of ChannelWood were great:

Channelwood plan small.png (199.56 KiB) Viewed 3808 times

But i think also the house in the Mechanical Age belongs there:

Mechanical Age small.png (174.57 KiB) Viewed 3803 times

Actually, after plotting it, i believe i found that the presentation of it in the game did not fit the plan – but i'm not sure where that was now.

Still, these are super maze problems.