Horde3D

Hi, didnt exactly find the editor user friendly but then again I'm a programmer ;|

Any helpful tutorials out there on it? The project page is a bit to the point, ( download only). And also found the wiki that showed me how to open a file... Ok I may be a programmer but I can figure that out Are there any more in depth tut's out there?


Would I be at all correct in assuming it creates XML's that can be parsed with the SDK?

Yes documentation is something that can be always improved. I started to move the content of the preliminary PDF to the wiki some time ago to allow others improving the documentation too ( wiki is open for all registered forum users ). The editor can be used to create .scene.xml files but also to develop shaders or to do fast prototyping using Lua. Shaders can not be written directly in the editor but will be reloaded automatically if one of the shader files loaded in the scene has been changed. Materials and textures will be reloaded as well, geometry files and .scene.xml files can not be reloaded automatically since this may result in crashes due to wrong vertex indices or something like that.

Concerning user friendliness, I'm always open for proposals to improve it.

Ok understood, but there is much that a person needs to know.. Going to post some confusion here then.

- If its important then how about some help knowing what any of this means?

How do you turn off wire frame mode? Why is there no button for that(saw it mentioned but cant find it) ? no menu item either?

- This would be a much needed option if it actually was there? Right clicking shows the following:

add terrain
add emitter
add light
add camera
add reference
add group

A few words on the "Would I be at all correct in assuming it creates XML's that can be parsed with the SDK?" question if you could? Or possibly how does a person get this scene in there game? Is that explained anywhere?

Not trying to be harsh just to the point. Please know your dedication to this project is understood form a fellow programmer. I just think some if this should be obtainable, concise and clear.

Well perhaps it should be mentioned again in the editor's documentation, but the meaning of those parameters is already described in the Horde3D documentation. The editor is used to be a tool for Horde3D, therefore I supposed the user to have knowledge about it's use.


You have to distinguish between wireframe and debug mode. For the debug mode there is a menu entry in the "View" menu and a corresponding toolbar button.
If you can't disable debug mode, it's most likely due to a misconfigured or not available pipeline configuration for the active camera (or no active camera is set). In this case Horde3D use the debug mode as fallback.
For the wireframe mode there is currently no button indeed. But since I couldn't find any good reason for this mode, I haven't added it yet. If you want to set it, you may use the Lua interface as a workaround.


In the current CB SVN there is only an "Add Reference" entry in the "Scene" menu, and that entry does exactly the same as the "Add reference" entry in the context menu. It add's a reference to another scene graph file to the currently selected scene graph node.

As already mentioned:

So yes, it is supposed to create XMLs that can be parsed by Horde3D. How you load those XMLs in your application is up to you. In the samples normally one .scene.xml file will be added as a scene graph resource, loaded using loadResourcesFromDisc and added to the RootNode.
Since the .scene.xml files are not intended to contain additional configuration data for Horde3D there is a proprietary file with ".scn" as extension that will be used by the editor to determine the resource directories and some other configuration settings. The GameEngine in the CB SVN is also using those files to load an entire scene. But note, that Horde3D is only a rendering library and not an application. So normally you always have to create an application that does the loading and managing of resources as well as the input handling for your content.

Would it be helpful if I wrote up a basic guide to go on the Wiki?

_________________

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A door opens and a homewife brings out a rather sophisticated-looking ground-to-air missile system, and dumps it on the cart.
Thank you.

More documentation would be always helpful. I already thought about creating some tutorial video and link it in the wiki. I just wanted to release the editor version 0.8.0 officially before. I just need to setup a linux machine to test the linux package and hadn't the time to do this yet.

Maybe I would also add the rest of the PDF documentation to the wiki, if you won't do something like that or add an even better documentation before.

Well perhaps it should be mentioned again in the editor's documentation, but the meaning of those parameters Ah, very good. Keep in mid most people that use editors are GA types and not programmers. So its good to keep them separate FYI.

The debug button does nothing more then just turning the button color dark to light. No content change that I can see. My cam is active and named.

I'm going to guess my problem is a misconfigured or not available pipeline configuration for the active camera. I dont know who to fix that nor where the lua scrip is but I'll look for it. UPDATE, I found the panel and see it has teli-sense but not sure how to figure out some of the code syntax. For example. I tought "Horde3D::setOption( EngineOptions::WireframeMode, 1.0f );" Would turn off wire frames. So I tried "Horde3D.setOption( EngineOptions::WireframeMode, 1.0f );" seem I have that wrong.


So "Add model" and "Add reference" are the same?

So the engine is capable of using a scene file, very good.

- Sounds great! Are then any simple examples on this? Like loading myScene.xml for beginners?

- PuG Very much so. I'm sure it would favor much of the community and community to come. Remember every engine has its own way of doing things. I have used my fair share of them, trust me I know. It is always a pleasure to see a few basic how to's or tuts to get started. Horde3d and the editor or very promising, and the community is definitely on the right track. It is like pulling teeth with some engines to get a forum reply.

- Volker. Not sure if I can help but I have an umbuntu server with a moderate 3d vid card in it. If you like I could test something for you.

That's true. But as already mentioned, documentation can always be improved.


No you're right (in principle), but the wireframe mode works only if you have a correct rendering pipeline set up, and this seems to be not the case in your scene. So enabling wireframe mode does not have an effect, since the only possible rendering is the debug mode when the pipeline is misconfigured. If you select your camera node is there a pipeline file shown in the node property grid? Are there any errors in the log window?

BTW.: Lua does not know "::" so you normally have to use ".". Unfortunatelly I didn't add the engine options to the lua stack yet so you have to use 10 instead of WireframeMode ( Horde3D.setOption( 10, 1 ) );


I guess there was some naming confusion in your editor version. Yes it is the same!


Have you looked at the Knight samples ( app.cpp line 83 ).


Of course this would be helpful. The most important thing currently would be to adjust the qmake files for the editor in the community branch. If you can check out the current version and try to make it work using qmake files it would be great. Although I'm thinking about using CMake for the editor as well, since then we could reuse the CMake files from Horde3D instead of creating additional qmake files for the Horde3D library used by the editor. But I never configured a CMake Qt project and CMakes documentation IMHO sucks.

- No it was not, I tried to import from registry and scene went black, I now can change back and forth in debug mode. My light is very dim, is there any settings I can get to that change the luminance. From what I see nothing really applies to brightness. I did find changing the pipeline helped but how do you make the pipeline? FYI. I now get periodic crashes when switching out of debug mode. As a matter of fact, I have to save every 5 seconds. LOL.


THX!!

I mainly was looking at Chicago, I'll try that If I ever make a scene XML.

I know what you meant. If I get thing scene stuff stream lined I'll move to Linux..

Concerning the brightness try to adjust the radius and FOV of the light. The periodic crashes are definetly a problem and should not happen. Would be helpful if you can try to compile the editor yourself in debug version and tell me the code line where it crashes. Is it somehow reproducable? Which pipeline are you using?

- I may have time to night for that. The radius did help something I over look. At first it didnt help but I changed my pipe line..


When importing my collada I get error warning error in xml file ..... line 17 column 18: tag mismatch
then invalid handle 0 in getNodeParent and TransformMatricies

Is that my model exporter, or something I missed?

EDIT
I think I have me importing troubles solved.. and I needed to use standard.shader. An explanation of the others would be nice, bit confusing?