3D Models

Discuss map ideas, techniques, and give help.

3D Models

Post May 17th '19, 08:54

It's obvious someone tried this. Tried to make a moving, directional entity like an alien into full 3D must have been done before. I know very little about Aleph One 3D but I can imagine how it would be like. An .obj file for each frame like it was a Quake 1 model with each frame a shape key.

I tried to make this. But I am not a 3D artist so it'll be hard to make one frame. But I want to know if someone did this and if it works. I assume so cause Project DX seemed to handle some of it with ease.

Post May 20th '19, 18:07

It does work.

Your obj file (mesh) and skins replace a single sequence. You can't animate the sequence by assigning meshes to frames. There is documentation for using a different format with animations, but the tools used for that seem to be defunct. So, 3D monsters at the moment are basically fixed in any sequence.

However, the monsters still rotate and translate, although because of the way monsters move the rotation is jerky, with no interpolation. Still acceptable for something like a turret, which I did a few of. Those use the same mesh for all the non-dead sequences, and different skins with lighting and what not for indicators and weapons flash. So we're really talking about two meshes, if you include a dead monster.

The turrets work out nicely, I like them. They're still turrets, so kind of 'eh', but hey, 3D!

After that I tried to do something with a more mobile monster. Another street sweeper robot. The gimmick with this one is that it has two rotating brushes (3D scenery objects) that are handled via Lua scripting. The brushes are also static 3D objects, but you can change their facing and position in Lua, so that they spin up and look very menacing as the thing chases you down. Because of the problem with monsters instantaneously rotating, it still looks kinda bunk, sadly.

So, I did it, it works, but there are serious challenges in how you use what you can here. Here's an example from a previous MPDX iteration, an annoying robotic vacuum that kills you by exploding:

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Post May 20th '19, 18:20

Why is sequences the only thing that can be 3D? Where's the documentations of this?

Post May 20th '19, 18:30

Screamernail wrote:Why is sequences the only thing that can be 3D? Where's the documentations of this?

As for documentation, you're going to want to look at the OpenGL section of the MML doc. That goes over how this stuff gets hooked up.

As for why, I dunno? But here's a thread in which I discussed this very topic (somewhat in depth, too): viewtopic.php?f=24&t=53682
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Post May 21st '19, 07:37

Well even if I could get a Dim3 file, I could just do sequences with multiple meshes anyway and animate them with Lua scripting. (If I can learn it) It wouldn't be a-lot of sequences but it would work anyway?

Example (Or for fun if this doesn't work)
0: Idle1 (Character is in it's default pose)
1: Idle2 (Character is in a secondary idle pose that's triggered randomly)
More OPTIONAL Idle poses perhaps?
2: Move1 (Character has it's feet in separate directions(Forward, backwards))
3: Move2 (Similar to Move1 but the feet are in the reversed directions(Backwards, forward))
4: Swing (The character prepares an attack)
5: Damage (The character launches it's attack from the swing)
6: Hurt (The character get's damaged and are in a flinch pose)
7: Falling (The character falls down to the ground)
8: Corpse (The character is dead)

This might work better on low-poly models cause it would be a-lot of memory if there's high poly meshes for just 1 character. This is just an idea so you might prove me wrong. It's just for fun.

Post May 21st '19, 17:32

Hmm, if you can figure out a way to do that I'd give you a medal. It sounds fun to me too.

However!.. I am not sure how you can with the way Lua is set up right now. Mind you, there are things you can do with monsters in Lua, but it does not give you direct control over the sequence displayed for a monster in the same way it would for say, a wall.

You can override the AI (sounds cooler than it is) by spamming positioning and such in the idle() and postidle(). You can make a monster attack, you can change the 'mode', and so on. You can kill the monster and respawn it, you can do a lot of stuff like that.

One hacky thought I had was to make a more 'interactive'(?) scenery object in 3D by way of using a monster with all of its sequences and hijack it with Lua. This would probably be a more interesting version of my vending machine (http://simplici7y.com/items/vending-demo) I think I also have some exploding gas cylinders that worked in a similar fashion to this somewhere. The main reason to do this is that you don't have to attend to so much house-keeping in Lua for swapping scenery objects and what-not.

I'd suggest you just start playing around with MML and Lua, there's lots of scripts out there with examples you can copy/modify to get a feel for how everything works. In fact, I've got all my newest MPDX stuff on github if you check the link in my sig. Feel free to ask questions in the MPDX thread about how any of that stuff works.

Edit: You're of course quite correct that high-poly meshes are no bueno for that precise reason. Generally speaking the idea is to model your high-poly mesh, then use that to bake a bump map that you can apply to a low-poly version of the mesh (which you actually use in-game) such that it looks closer to the high-poly mesh.

This involves studying Blender (or whichever 3D modeling program you prefer.) Google up some tutorials for that, and don't be discouraged if you aren't a 'pro' in a day, there is a lot to chew on where Blender is concerned!
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Post May 22nd '19, 07:49

Didn't know you can put bump-mapping on a 3D model. But I doubt that's required for what I had in plan. The test character I planed on doing has plain colors, but it might be more different than I think it is?
Xitia Ref.png
The test character named Xitia

Post May 22nd '19, 15:08


Well, try modeling that character to a 3D mesh and see how it goes. There's a lot that goes into the whole thing, so I might waste your time by speaking too far in-depth at this point.
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