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Old 17th January 2009, 12:19 AM   #1
Pacmanvice
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Default Animation.

Ok, basically my idea is to make a 3d billboard. But, im having problems animating it. So, if there is a way to put a GIF, or any other animated picture format on a 3d project, please let me know.

PS: im new to the forum. This is my first post. I have no idea where i should have posted this question. Sorry if i posted it in the wrong area.
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Old 18th January 2009, 06:31 PM   #2
lisa
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Default Re: Animation.

I don't know of any way to display a texture animation inside AC3D itself. Normally to do something like what you describe you'll need an external renderer to generate the image. (i.e. AC3D is used to generate the 3D shapes, and then a different program is used to take those 3D shapes and make the final image or movie.)

I believe AC3D comes configured out of the box to use POVRay as it's renderer. You can download POVRay for free from here: www.povray.org. The command you'll need to make an animation is "clock". You can read the documentation for it here: http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/109/

There are also other stand-alone renderers that will work with AC3D. You can find a list of them here: http://www.independentdeveloper.com/...rendering_soft
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Old 19th January 2009, 04:18 AM   #3
Pacmanvice
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Default Re: Animation.

Cool, thanks. Ill check them out.

I learned something today, lol.
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Old 19th January 2009, 11:59 AM   #4
Ham
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Default Re: Animation.

If that doesn't work you can try doing it in a game engine.
Post back here and let me know if you 'd want to try that.

Not sure what you want with your final results.
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Old 19th January 2009, 02:06 PM   #5
Pacmanvice
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Default Re: Animation.

Basically, what i want to do is make a billboard that would change in-game. I'm trying to make my own game for PC and was put in charge of making billboards that can hang, or float anywhere and be able to change with different advertisements.

I haven't tried anything yet, it was to late yesterday when i read it. But i did download POVRay, and opend it. It looked a bit confusing at first glance, but if i read through it, i would probably understand it.

Go ahead and tell me the other way. I'll check back later when i try the other way, to tell you guys my results.
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Old 19th January 2009, 05:54 PM   #6
Ham
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Default Re: Animation.

Ok well if you are making it for a game, its going to be up to how to how the engine
supports animated textures. Most likely you are going to be switching textures
or texture coordinates, and won't require pre-rendering the signs.

So for example if it was a GIF, you would make a multi frame GIF,
place it on your 3D model and the game engine would be told
to play the frames of the GIF in order in a loop and it would
appear that the sign is changing.

Same for a movie media file like quicktime or the like.

My game engine doesn't do this, we use a pattern of images.
So for instance a throbbing neon OPEN sign would be
a single image, divided by say 2x2 repetitions of the word OPEN,
and each repetition would have a slight change in some
color value, let say each letter goes from dark to light.

The initial texture coordinate is set to the first state of the image,
then the game engine is told to cycle the texture coordinates by
a preset value, say the image is 4 images on a single 64x64 pixel area, then it would shift over 32 pixels to reveal image 2, shift back 32 pixels and down 32 pixels for image 3, etc
This creates the illusion of animation.

Thats all kind of technical, but you'll need to know how your game engine
can handle animation and then develop your signs accordingly.

If it is a 2D game, then you'll be pre-rendering and if the rendering program doesn't support creating animation, you can recombine all the frames into an animation file format, or have the engine display individual images as animation frames to create the same effect.

I hope that helps.
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Old 19th January 2009, 08:09 PM   #7
Pacmanvice
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Default Re: Animation.

Whats a good game engine? Like, for a beginner game creator. I wanna get very good at making games and stuff, and i dont' know what we have right now. Anything would do. Most likely something free, so that i can test it out, and not spend a lot of money on a program that i don't know how to use, and stuff like that.
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Old 19th January 2009, 11:37 PM   #8
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Default Re: Animation.

Hmm.
I just discovered Sandbox
It seems pretty amazing. Certainly you can get up and running quickly with that.
Its free and easy.
Its based on the Cube engine

Hmm they take MD3 files from Blender.

Thats always an issue, "can I use my 3D modeler with the engine?"

I make a free game engine too, but I can't describe it as 'easy' as its very undocumented
and an eternal work in progress. Here's a recent download I posted.
It has everything to basically use the engine minus hundreds of content files.
Mac version of iGame3D

Windows version of iGame3D

Here's the WTF Import/Export Plug-in for AC3D

Ok this demo of the engine is simply displaying 256 old school 8 bit characters and cycling colors.
You can fly around using the WASDR and F keys along with the mouse.

Use Control L or Command L to exit the little demo program and go into editing mode.
From the Levels Menu choose New Level and name your level.

Export your 3D models from AC3D to WTF format.
The new file with .wtf extension should go into the folder:
Data/WTF/

We kind of keep things organized like Data/WTF/Buildings/ etc.
Likewise we keep our images in Data/Images/Buildings/ etc
And we stick to .png files to keep things sane.

Putting images in the right place is something that you want to
do before creating your models that use them in AC3D, or
your paths will get lost later.

As long as things save to the Data folder you should be ok.

In the editor choose the Icon with the cube and arrow.
It will list files and/or folders in the WTF directory, find your file and choose "Add Object", to insert the model as an object, or load mesh to muck about in the mesh editor (not advised!).

Beware of "create preview" in the model loading window.
Open a new empty level before making previews.
If you click "create preview" while a folder is selected it will make previews for every file in the folder, else it will do one file at a time.
Either way it wipes out anything in the level before doing its preview magic, so beware.

Ok so once you add objects, choose Levels>Save.
You should have a new folder Data/Levels/YourLevel
with a new file "load script.lua"

It has an 'auto-script" that the engine writes over area and after that
you put your own scripting in.

The AC3D WTF Export willl produce one material for every 'object' in AC3D.
Generally for one object we end up with two materials, for whatever reason.
But anyway, so your material has the texture lets say of the 2x2 open sign.
In the load script you could animate that (after the auto script section) with
some script like:

obj = get(ig3d_object,"yourObjectNameHere")
MatToChange = get(ig3d_material, 2) -- material one is usually empty from the exporter
animate = true
delay = 0
frameTime = 1
num_columns = 2
num_rows = 2

setMaterialInfo (MatToChange, IG3D_ANIMATION, animate, delay, frameTime, num_columns, num_rows)

And it should animate!
Ah game coding what fun.
Help HTML files are found in Data/Help/


Anyway explore your options, there are other game engines out there, ones with UNDO.
Take it one step at a time, find out what ever engine you choose requires and can
deal with before creating anything more than sketches.
You could end up throwing away alot of 3D work simply because one
model uses up your entire polygon limit.

Good luck.

Last edited by Ham; 19th January 2009 at 11:40 PM.
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