@everyone

As a newbie in Pioneer i may not have the right to say much, but i can definitely conclude that it's full of passionate developers and (technical) artists. So much passion that sometimes they pass on personal side.

I believe that the focus should return now on how to proceed and move forward the project and in that direction (mutual) blocking do not solve the problem, it actually raises obstacles on (seeing) its solution.

As a proposal i believe in keeping both models active as long as there is at least something in the old, that cannot be done in the new (in logical and efficient way).

Dionisis

"What gets to me is when we can't get that information and instead just get a lot of negativity."

They will not be trying to put out the fire with gasoline?

"In fact I offered to pay one of them £500 for a single model."

 

This offer still stands? 🙂

Hah! Not anymore but nice try.

"Hah! Not anymore but nice try."

Looks like I may have to start deleting post from this thread.

If you change your mind let me know, I can learn LMR.

That's the whole point of this thread: Don't bother learning LMR.

wow, i have to read a lot of posts, somehow they didn't got refreshed for hours (and i thought no one is replys)

edit: erm,

fluffyfreak, yes i misunderstood maybe some and wasn't sure about if i can have more animations as the LG actually.

i don't know if the export scripts are for .x "buggy", but like always you have to respect certain conventions, sometimes neglected conventions i guess.

otherwise interesting, i have a lot of problems with collada... is that my fault? but i will take a closer look at it, because i guess it's because the material get's renamed, can be solved with the script btw (if there is one in blender2.6, it didn't appears under scripts/plugins, while this counts for the mac release of it) but i'm not against collada, well won't be my prefered, like i said to examine it is a bit "confusing".

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further NOTE: collada is able (ment to) to export a complete scene incl. lights and cameras, take care only to export meshes and placeholders.

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by all my reservations,

i welcome the new system

in general at least...

i would be really a idiot not to appreciate that i din't have to animate the stuff with expressions, even when... somehow it's sad.

i understand your fears or reservations vuzz, on the other hand i HOPE such will be only a matter of time,

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hey, i like this one

yeah, take care he's french and if he's really angry he will take "Lady Liberty" back... 🙂

besides you still can have multiple textured models, not "dynamically" selected, but you can specify two (or more) seperate models with the same NAME in the specifications e.g. "Viper Defense Craft", while it's only relevant how the model is named i.e. "viper_heavywear" or "viper_lizard". of course this will lead to the situation that a "Viper" is more often called in the shipyard, so it's maybe useful not to use more then two or three different skins for one model at all. also you can give a "x-heavywear" or "x-police" different specs in this way, which makes (a lot) sense to me.

erm, something at your adress walterar, i set the po...

... yes do that pinback, i can't write so fast...

... the police to a "static ship", it works so far as police vessel as well as a "ship", but of course it will be selected as "static ship" for i.e. the "bulk ships" script,

i tried once to change that last year (or longer ago), but i lost overview a little to that, but i guess you should be able to handle it.

the idea (method) is simple,

i simply disabled all ships below 100t hull mass to be selected by the script.

erm, brianetta, i guess i had a different intention...

while, ok a bit sad i can't use the new models as mods, but i guess it's also just a question of time for sure.

Sorry, Gernot, I had the wrong thread in mind. (-:

"while, ok a bit sad i can't use the new models as mods, but i guess it's also just a question of time for sure."

DSMiner-ship-PioneerNewModelSystem-Fish.zip  Alpha 30 (dev)

@Fish   Just put inside, a text with the credits.

"Sorry, Gernot, I had the wrong thread in mind. (-:" 

no one said, it hasn't worked for me with the mac release, that's all, so i assumed it won't be possible.

you was faster walterar 😉

i just wanted to show how easy a cheap, real cheap conversion can be done now.

i took the constrictor i made once for ffed3d from the scripted one i made once for pioneer... 😉 ,uh

it was done in the time between my last post and now, of course leaks of thrusters and lighting, but works,

also clarifies maybe some...

[attachment=1649:Bildschirmfoto 2013-01-03 um 18.50.54.png]

it's really made without touching blender, i just took the model and scaled it up with the matrix of the root frame

and named the materials for the meshes,

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besides i found something else not well explained.

animations get maybe played with 24frames/sec, but i found out that the landing gear anim (still) has a given duration (3sec's) and it matters a **** how many frames/sec you export, length is given and you don't have to care about nothing except to set the proper start and end frame.

this one "would" have a framerate of 3/sec, as it's specified also in the .x model, but only to make the animation proper working in the viewer.

for ffed3d it hasn't played a role (fixed duration) as it won't for pioneer (i assume, i haven't run a model without a specified framerate).

i have no problem with that, just to make this clear.

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@walterar

shit happens, what do you guess how often i found myself in a "wrong" thread?

often, at least

"it hasn't worked for me with the mac release,"

Test this, it's the latest:  Pioneer Alpha 30 dev  OSX  Win32 Linux32 Linux64

"i just wanted to show how easy a cheap, real cheap conversion can be done now.

i took the constrictor i made once for ffed3d from the scripted one i made once for pioneer..."

         Test this:  cheap_constrictor-PioneerA30-Mod-Format.zip

yep downloaded it already, but it works with any collada 1.4 export script, blender 2.49 would do the job as well.

erm oh you ment pioneer, i don't know latest i downloaded was a few days ago...

besides the export script didn't exports the name with "-material" this would be the material ID the name is simply the name you give, why the "material ID" is taken as name i don't know. but it's complicated as i said and from my pov not ment for games as it's ment rather for web publishing, though collada could be displayed in a browser.

it's i.e. supportet by apples preview and i guess a lot of other viewers/readers.

i still have no good results with it, simply because i don't know what i have to expect before i press "export".

it's a bit poor also that the patterns work only with the collada models, as i found out now.

and there seems to be another problem, colors are sometimes changing or flickering on the border to a different pattern.

i will report this later with a clip i guess.

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of course it looked exactly like yours, but hasn't worked with the release i used, not really a big problem from my pov.

anyway i use to "install" new models, means if i work on one it's not handy to have them zipped, especially not with OSX, with windoze i use 7zip to open it like a folder and edited files get updated after closing the editor.

i know something that works for sure only with collada, "transmission interrupted" resp. "signal lost" 😉

this would prob. belong elsewhere

it shows the "flickering" of the pattern and my "crippled" animation in .dae, i used absolutely the same blender model as for the .x mesh, so i don't understand why this happens.

and each time i export it something else is missing once a pad once a piston, besides of the wrong distance/duration.

??? (i couldn't write what i think, that would be mean)

i already wonder what would happen to the vipers landing gear...

besides i haven't planned to convert it to .dae it exists as a .x mesh and i see no reason to setup the animation of it new (i have already spent far to much time with the scripted animation for it. sad somehow to loose this piece of work), neither is the blender project i used suitable for a matrix animated model, it's something very different, basically it would work but i would need to rebuild the animation, but as long as i see things like the above i'm afraid of, might be duration/distance is wrong because of a wrong fps setting, but the missing or not animated parts are certainly not related to this.

only the "external" stuff will be collada because it's no getting around that.

"signal lost" tells all...

is a format that actively displays a thumbnail (and performs other nice tricks) really the right choice for a games model?

if you open one to examine it you feel like you look at a html script and not a model.

a lot of ballast imho, not that i think it would hinder the engine much, but makes it hard to examine it or to add a second animation channel i.e. if that is possible at all (besides of that the "ballast" blows up the filesize for "nothing" or nothing what is needed in a game, yes it's interchangeable fine, but that needs a whole lotta information only to maintain this).

it's "meiner bescheidenen meinung nach" not a very easy to handle format, but i thought you liked to make it easy?

if the collada export scripts won't export a second channel and we had a possible second or third channel to add with editing the model, well then collada is the worst choice, very hard find out where that shit belongs and if it will work at all, while in the oh so odd old overaged whatever .x you add it like a few lines of text on the bottom of the file, anyone can do that.

very easy to find the root frame transform matrix and rescale a .x model, or to reorient it.

i have no idea (yet) where to find that in a .dae between all the "ballast".

of course it's to think about to have separate meshes for various animations, but that's neither very comfortable.

i guess or thought the goal would be something that really allows to export all to one model.

well the rest you can checkout yourself...

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yet another clip,

it seems it's not my fault neither the fault of the export script or blender, something gets handled wrong by pioneer i suspect.

but examine/test it yourself, the model is ok i guess, only it won't work proper in pioneer.

[attachment=1650:lancet_29-2.zip]

hey please reply, with this system i really can't work, even if i'm willing.

it's not very convincing to see such, especially if one looks already critical at it.

but sorry i need a little more to animate a landing gear as only to move a "stamp" in y direction...

not that this would be a "advanced" animation it's a simple one and allready fails in the game using .dae.

the same model works in the OSX preview without error, it's obvious the model is ok.

no "sorry" needed, only a fix...

---

and "gell" (you will say yes) collada is a complicated shit, that's why it fails, the odd .x mesh works "out of the box", no problems, animation is executed exactly as it should, of course there is no doubt possible, a neat format without any confusing ballast.

but it seems not only i get confused looking into a collada model...

anyway,

i hope this wil be fixed, because like i said with this i can't work.

None of them would come NEAR Pioneer because of LMR, not even for £500.

hmm, that let's me think...

that would mean otherwise i have hoarded a lot of "money" with my models 😉

talking 'bout money for models...

hmm... i was once accused for plagiarism, can you imagine? seriously

thinking of

a)

usually such accusations come only from people who does that themself

B)

i have a problem to imagine that one who is able to make nice looking models like the new "ASP" or "Cobra" isn't able to create a nice landing gear.

looks a bit suspicious to me.

but i'm far from pointing with the finger on someone to accuse him.

---

c)

makes me a bit angry no one has offered me even a red cent...

not that i have asked for it, i just think it's funny.

d)

fluffyfreak,

at least what i animated with the LMR has worked and i would have bitten my ass off if not (and i have often enough), no matter if a "100" parts to animate or one.

i never thought it would be worth a red cent,

neither that i thought it's a big problem to understand, only a long way to go.

and yes it has limitations.

but matrix animations have disadvantages to.

let's take a closer look a the rather simple undercarriage flaps of my new cobra,

to animate this scripted is rather simple, you create a model and rotate it along the desired axis in desired amount of degrees,

later you position the model and tilt the axis to fit the flap to the body, that's it and it fits 100% and works 100% proper no "tattering" or displacement of it while it's moving.

now we like to do the same simple animation for a matrix animation.

because the z-axis of the flap is tilted problem starts, it's not possible to rotate a tilted object proper along it's own axis, so you need to "clamp" it and set many keys so the differences or failure is not to see, but only not to see, it can never work 100% accurate (prob. i have to try a similar method rotate first then position the object, but i'm not sure if that will work. i didn't think so, because i assume the "tilting" get's lost as soon as the first key gets handled, but i can't set the tilting to the key, then i have again the above problem. it would need a seperate model like for the scripted one which is called by the model and get tilted then. neither what is wanted and seems to me as useless as to use more then one model per lod at all, actually and that's certainly not the goal, animations work best (actually one could say only except you are satisfied with "a something" is simply raking out of the body) with with .x but i need .dae for the "extras" and pattern material, i have to assemble it, that's fine so far, and what did i need else?

it's a bit "crippled" if i'm alllowed to say that, or at least it didn't comes very close to the goal. erm like i said .dae is prob. not the right choice for games, i don't know exactly, but if it's problematic to implement it why use it? only because it's "recent"? at least it's a bit "exotic" no?

huh, and yours chose it as standard for pioneer?

should be thought about a second time i guess.

i don't know where the failure is, pioneer or the used library, but make it proof yourself, it didn't works and it's not my fault.

while the .x animations work proper, what let's me guess if something leaks already in the used library.

anyway whatever is faulty, it's from my pov because it's a complicated shit and made for web publishing and not to drive models in a game.

i mean the misinterpretation of "material ID" and "material name", even if it's a deniable small error, shows already where the problem is.

it's anything else as neat and clean and expect changes, it's under developement (i guess).

while if you take a "old" widely spread format you can be sure it's stable, besides like i said wavefront or .x can't fail, it's to simple to fail, if a .x mesh fails it was for sure the fault of the modeler. i remember many things have been posted on elite-games, what is possible and what not, which software can proper export .x meshes. all of that i have denied and showed off what has been made wrong. any software exports a clean .x mesh if you keep a few things in mind, especially that a software can't think and especially not predict, apart from that i really hate "intelligent" softs that predict, because they never predict what i want).

if i would compare it to cars, "i don't buy a truck if i like to win a race and vice versa no one buys a sports car if he likes to transport hardware". but well, more a general thought, "rich" (and that means eager as well) people often don't care about such...

to explain my thoughts, collada is good, no it's made for web publishing but it's not the choice for a game from my pov, likewise you need a lot of software to display a wavefront model dynamic in a browsers window, it's not ment for this. a Corvette is a sports car, a "DAF" a truck, both have their own purpose strengths and drawbacks. the right "tool" preserves from many problems).

so far for the advantage of a animation with expressions.

the disadvantage of a scripted animation is exactly what is the "(dis)advantage" of the matrix animation, i can't set keys, there is no correctinal data, constriants have to be programmed and from on a certain limit it get's impossible.

but still,

£500 or 50cents, (and i like 50cents, not the guy, i like the idea... prob. one would murder for 50cents 😉 )

one that has ever scripted a (complex) animation won't have a lot problems to manage that proper with a CAD soft.

but you can have experience with however/many software, you won't be able to script a animation so easy.

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finally well, should i tell you something?

they must be really "fat" not to take £500, really fat like a rubber.

i think they simpy don't need it.

because i would prob. murder for £500!

well actually i haven't £500 to live from...

(and debts around SFr 50'000 or more, i'm not sure, if you got married and get divorced later, you can take a rope as well as a man,

or become a headhunter...)

in fact i'm a "Womble" right now,

i pick up the dirt of others for peanuts...

Gernot, too many long posts to read and reply to at work! Will reply to the bits I can shortly/today.

Actually the reason was because I wanted to show you what could be done with traditional animation, how "complete" it can be and how much more you could be doing with the animations, detailed models, LODs, texturing and everything else that LMR has stopped us doing.

It might be technically possible to do great animations in LMR but it's easy to do them in traditional animation packages and then just play them. I can't decipher what you've written about the simple animation example, sorry, language barrier! It honestly reads like you just need to learn how to animate things traditionally though. Select a pivot point or edge and rotate relative to it's normal or another axis and then just tweak it. Still a lot easier than typing it all out and guessing at the maths. Which by the way, is what puts artists off.

There might be a bug in the playback you've found, or it might be in your setup file, that's good though it gets us nearer to getting things working.

DAE (Collada) is an intermeditary format but Pioneer has several constraints that really stop us from having a traditional "export (DAE) -> convert (Custom format) -> load (Pioneer)" pipeline. With Pioneer we have to have the convert happen at the same time as the loading into the game itself.

yeah, i know, seems i have as much time as much as i leak of funds...

ok, i will make a "derivate".

i have a serious problem,

collada models animations doesn't work as expected in pioneer.

here's a example model

http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=1650

here are the clips

the model how it appears and works in pioneer alpha30(dev) release

now the same model how it appears using the OSX preview app

the rest isn't really important to know.

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nope, i didn't think it's the model or a wrong setting, simply because it should work the same exported from the same software.

i once assumed it's probably because old blender starts anims at frame 1, now they start properly at frame 0.

but no matter which version of blender i use, the result in the game leaks in the same way.

the rest i'm aware of and i didn't think i need more experience with rigged animations, in fact i guess i have made a better ones as many others with my first models i made for ffed3d, at least compared to most other models in the game.

but let's say i have my own way of thinking and i see no use for 2400 fps i.e. 😉 (except that the file gets enormously big, if a linear animation like for FE2 only needs a start and stop key.

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to the rotation, yes and no, try it

right so far, ok

but the flap is a product of a boolean operation, thus to keep the proper shape, a "simple" quad won't fit in this case.

though normals will be the same as for the model i created the flap from (it's tilted but aligned to "world").

ok what could be done is to rotate the mesh in edit mode back to world alignment and then rotate the object back to it's original tilting.

but that leaks as well and some difference is to expect, since you can't align it 100% to "world".

further i'm not sure if that really helps, i mean yes you rotate then along the normal axis, but the keys get stored aligned to "world", the correctional data or small repositioning from key to key will be the same.

it's common fluffyfreak, even steves viper "leaks" of tiny differences, not his fault, only a inadequacy of the matrix animations.

besides the same problem like he must have had, had appeared to me as well, only 10 times harder to solve, or to say it right i didn't solved it after i recognized that neither he has solved it using a keyed anim.

for the cobra's flaps, it's not a big problem, i guess you won't notice this little difference by the eye.

further it was only to show off that both systems have drawbacks and that there is a reason for it if one utters "matrix animations are cheap".

they don't "work" really they "pretend to act like it would work", but a scripted animation works or has to work in most cases exactly like a hardware model would work, there is no cheating possible with axes, bolts, wheels and gears.

no i really don't think so,

if you like i recreate the "Lamp" rigged anim tutorial from rememberance

or a steamwheel, no problem.

following short clip shows what's wrong with guessing rotating along normals would help... keys will be set aligned to "world", no matter if i rotate along global axis or normal.

i didn't had to make it proof, i know it won't work so easy, but just to show.

maybe not what one would expect, but that's how it works.

the problem seems to be that your animation is on a time line of 100 frames and i think you have scaled the whole model back a bit without grouping the landing cups to the legs

i got to go out and walk my dog but i will try to fix this for you in a bit

ok just got back and had a good look at it for you.

the problem isnt in pioneer as your .dae file has the same problem in 3ds max it is a problem that i had in the past when trying to scale back my deep space miner because the animation shows that the foot cups should end so far down and after you scaled the model back they no longer remain as close to the legs as you want (because the legs are now smaller)

hope this makes sence

this would be easiest to fix using a pre scaled version of your model. do you have a copy from before you scaled it back?

nope, it's not scaled and that the animntion runs proper in the preview app should show this no?

but i'm curious...

timeline does count a nothing i guess, actually it's "open" but even if the timeline is exactly as long as the last key, the result is the same.

things like timeline and animation speed count in blender usually only for blender.

matrix animations don't need and support such (except a framerate, but mostly it's not used or overridden by the engine in which you use the model).

the keys exported contain usually only the transform matrix that's all, there is no "timeline" except from key0 to the last key.

that could, no it will be different for collada since it must be portable, but again a point to dislike it.

i can't like a format which animations get played back once proper once not depending on the softs i use, there MUST be something wrong.

but i will see, probably i made a error, but i assumed this for long, but can't find one, like i said the model is not scaled, or i'm not certain about what you mean with scaling.

that it won't run proper in max contradicts a bit to what i experienced with the preview.

can't make that proof right now, even if poor me would have a hacked max on my pc (besides i hate it, even when it has cost me not one red cent. i trust max roundabout as much as i would trust in hitler. but that's only a personal dislike not more).

i'm not sure but i guess i can't scale a model including ipo data in blender, somehow i remember max allows such.

but exactly these are the "traps" you run in with max, things only max performs to a mesh or a object which never will be written to a exported model.

the one and only reason why so many models in ffed3d are animnated "wrong", expecting correctional data would be written to the matrix, that won't work the exampla with the flap is also a nice one. i remember to that in max i can rotate along the normals and the keys can be stored relative to the objects normals, but again a exported model has a unified alignment and the result won't be as it runs in max.

to "work" on that didn't makes it easier i guess, it makes all only more complicated, easy to setup in max -> results in a wrong animated model.

if i have to manage the hurdles myself and think about why something didn't works as expected, then you can evade such errors.

how long in seconds and frames is your animation supposed to run at the moment it runs for 100 freames

at frame 0 the gear is up

at frame 50 < just over 2 seconds> half way through the animation

at at frame 100 <over 4 seconds> at the end of the animation