LightWave 2 ShockWave Tutorials

[MentalFish]

I have stared a thread over at CGTalk, but I guess I should post the info in this forum too:

1 - Scripting (basic Lingo scripting) (http://petter.ms/lw2sw/basics/)
2 - Modeling and setup for bones animation (http://petter.ms/lw2sw/basic_bones/)
2.2 - Character bone setup for ShockWave3D (http://petter.ms/lw2sw/character_anim/)
3 - Animating by code (rotate, move and scale things by keyboard input)
4 - Architectural walkthrough / collision script
5 - How to avoid Z-buffer fighting (geometry fighting for who is on top)
6 - Creating transparent textures in Photoshop for use in ShockWave3D
7 - Using transparent textures to create trees and effects
8 - Shader scripting (How to apply toon shader++)
9 - Multitexturing and lightmapping
10 - Communication between Flash and Director
11 - Realtime Havok physics
12 - Realtime particle effects

Topic suggestions are most welcome!

The server I am hosting these on is a bit unstable. If it does not work, just try again in a few minutes.

[wowens]

petterms -- These tutorials are excellent! A very clear explanation on how to create bone animation using Shockwave 3d. Could you provide a link to the source files?

[MentalFish]

Here is an update (xvid files) and a new tutorial:

8.3 MB XviD
http://petter.ms/lw2sw/basic-bones.avi

16.6 MB XviD
http://petter.ms/lw2sw/biped-bones.avi
LightWave files: http://petter.ms/lw2sw/biped-bones.zip

7.4 MB XviD
http://petter.ms/lw2sw/animate-by-script.avi
Director file: http://petter.ms/lw2sw/animate-by-script.zip

[wowens]

petterms -- Thank you!

[Kaiten]

Thanks for the tuts patterms. :)

[rexkramer]

Glad to see SW3D alive...

i would really appreciate some info about these topics (cause in the past Macromedia itself should have done this with Examples or Pre-Defined Scripts...)

Tutorial Suggestions:
- Character Control "Mario Cam Style"
- "Architectural" Walkthroughs | Collisions
-> all the above with Havoc and/or LingoScripted collisions

- Level/Environment building (organizing, loading external files etc.
- special FX to add "life" to the scene
- adding/blending sound events to specific models/areas of a scene

many thanx in advance!!!
cu

[MentalFish]

Hi rexkramer

Yes SW3D is still alive :) I believe there isnt any real alternatives to SW3D at the moment (apart from the extremely expencive Virtools and its liscence fees), but there are lots of good offline alternatives, such as Torque Game Engine, Blitz3D and 3D Game Studio (I have purchased those engines too and doodle a bit in them some times).

ShockWave3D is old and might never be updated, but that doesnt stop it from working as it is, thats why I keep using it and will keep using it for a very long time still. It helps me create interactive 3D and does so fast, compared to a lot of other formats.

I hope to get another tutorial done as soon as possible. I have quite a few projects running so I have to set aside a whole evening for it.

On the issue of architectural walkthrough, the latest one I did, I skipped the collision detection alltogether as it complicates the navigation for those "unexperienced" users.

Stay tuned

[mdoyle]

Hi patternm,

As I am working away I am coming up with a few questions and thought if anyone might know the answers b efore I start.

The main thing I am looking at is what is more processor intensive? The poly count or image maps. And on top of that is small added geometry maybe better than using an alpha map or is alpha still the way to go. I am setting up a test pc to try and give it a go but because of deadlines etc I don't have enough time to thoroughly test each way and to the extents so if anyone knows that would cool.

Patterns I saw your architecural walk through you post and was just wondering if you just baked the textures on each wall and used that as a map or did u till the textires and use and overlay of a shadow with multiply. In my head I would be better using a shadowmapped uv from another object so I can keep the file size and image size down for textures that are tiled but just have slightly larger shadow maps.

Almost forgot to ask, but in alpha maps I have noticed that sometimes shockwave will "choose" to render them differently. For example in a scene where you have an alpha mapped tree and an alpha mapped fence shockwave will sometimes render the object that is behind infront. But it changes and I can't work out how to fix it or if there is a work around.

I have found a few forums with people talking about it but no real answers on whether anyone has actually worked out why and if it can be fixed

[MentalFish]

First of all, check my username one more time... :) hint, check my personal webpage: www.petter.ms

:)

Both polycount and maps are graphics card dependant. If you exceed the capabilities of the graphics card (say you use 40 MB of textures on a 32 MB graphics card), it will render the graphics in software mode using the CPU resulting in dog slow performance. Also, some graphics cards such as the old Voodoo2 does not support more than 16bit textures and max 256 x 256 pixels. As long as you stay within the card's limitations, neither polycount or texturemaps will be more processor intesive than the other.

It has one UV only, just scale the tiling surface texture until it fits your needs. Scale the texture in layer 1 down to 10%:
member("scene").shader("floor").textureTransformList[1].scale = vector(0.1,0.1,0.1)

Put the shadowmap in textureList[2] with multiply and no scaling.

Viola

[mdoyle]

Thanks for the quick reply and sorry for the spelling on your user name, I was typing quickly and just had it in my head wrong. I take it there is no documentation anywhere (well I haven't found it) one how many vertices or poly's will create a meg worth of memory?

Thankfully our minumum spec pc's for this stuff is not as old as vodoo 2 so generally my minimum is 32 megs with 128 meg of ram which allows a little bit more to play with.

Will get on to the texture thing and see hwo i get on

Thanks again

M

[MentalFish]

Cool. Any chance you will do some performance testing on the target computer specification? If so, I am interested to hear about the results.

I have been testing SW3D on my old laptop with 933 MHz PIII, 32 MB Geforce 2 MX graphics card and 256 MB of regular RAM. It seems to handle scenes with much more than 10.000 polygons with no problem, as well as lots of transparent textures (32 bit).

Vertecies/polygons does not take up any mentionable space, but GPU (graphics processor) time for calculation. If a GPU can render 1.000.000 polygons pr second, then it can render around 30.000 polygons pr second at a framerate of 30 FPS (theoretically). If you chuck 60.000 polygons at it, it will do what it can to push them through, but the framerate will ofcourse go down to around 15 FPS.

The ShockWave 3D engine is not very optimized and can not handle large scenes up to the theoretical speed of the graphics card, so even if you have a 30.000.000 polygons pr second capable card, it will not be able to render 1.000.000 polys at 30 FPS.

[mdoyle]

Yeah I will do some performance tests. I think I have a 800 Mhz 32 meg (integrated card) and 64 meg of ram machine. THis is the one I want to get the drvin game workin in at at least 12 to 15 fps because I think I am being quite ambitious in the amount of detail in the world. Its no where near that just now but I haven't optimised all the polys and texture maps yet to its smallest. I am also looking to see if loading in objects that are not viewable will help. I know the card won't render them but I would just like to see if it works. I am also not sure if the raycast can be optimised anymore because I feel as though it is too slow for the amount of detail. I know shockwave isn't the best engine but the work we do with integrating it with flash, scorm compliant databases, and educational servers and appz makes it the better programme justnow. So will let u know over the next few weeks as I am workin on about 5 projects right now in the one go lol!!

I was thinkin of taking a look at anark, but the character animation I have seen done it and the way the cursor works and disappears I am not hapyp with. I don't know if its because people haven't created things in the best way for anark yet or if its just some of its bad points. What I do like about anark is the way it can deal with textures, overlays and lighting which you just can't do with shockwave. Have you had much experience with it?? I am looking into it and a few other engines after I get these projects done because the next set I will be workin on will be over the next year or so and I would like something that will look good in that time plus still be supported.

Did you by any chance check your private messages?

Thanks

M

[MentalFish]

On the issue of Anark, I dont think its worth it, as it is not as tried and flexible as ShockWave3D. Anything you can do with Anark you can also do with SW3D, and with SW3D you got a physics engine and several multiuser server options (even if it isnt updated or developed anymore, it doesnt stop working because of it).

The only problem with Director is it seems to be of low priority to Macromedia, and the future of it is gray. One thing though is the fact that Director works every time I open it, and within minutes it adds all sorts of interactivity to any element I want it to modify. You can create interactive 3D, export it to web, Windows and MacOS program files in one go. If the 3D model looks good inside LightWave's OpenGL view, it will look good inside Director. Special effects such as bump and specular mapping does not necessarily add quality to a scene, but complexity and narrows the user base.

Here at work we combine Director/SW3D with Flash and create all sorts of visualization tools for the offshore oil industry, and it is crazy how fast things can be finished with the combination of those two applications. File opening and saving with the FileXtra4 for Director, parsing XML files inside Flash, displaying the data in a 2D manner with buttons and input fields, with 3D visualization of some other data inside a W3D viewport. We use days and weeks to create the same functionality others use months and years to produce. With project prices in the 10.000 - 100.000 USD range and a high production speed... who cares if ShockWave3D doesnt have bump mapping?

I think the main problem with SW3D projects in general, is the lack of good artists contribution to the projects. There are a few good Director/SW3D games made though:

http://www.cowboysandengines.com
http://www.shockwaving.com/Sabeltann/startSabeltann.php

[walfridson]

Very usefull tutorials!

Shockwave is extremly funny, hope it will continue to live :)

Please write more! :D