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And that's why I'm still using Blender
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
And that's why I'm still using Blender // Roundtable
Post by rstralberg // Mar 22, 2008, 9:50am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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Hi. I know the title seems a little provocative.
trueSpace 7.51 is a wonderful, absolute amazing and a great tool.
So why do I use Blender then, though I have licensed trueSpace 7.51.
The reason is simple enough.
I can't export my work to something usable by either GameStudio A7
or Torque Advance which are among the most used game engines
for the indie game market.
Why are the game exporters removed? There used to be exporters
for both GameStudio and Torque. Using the old ones (tsx) in the model
does not work either... Why.. Because they are old and don't support
the formats (mdl is now mdl7 in gamestudio as an example)
I was around in early testing of ts7.0 and pointed out the need for
game exporters and they existed (at least GameStudio) during the
Beta. After have being away from trueSpace since, I updated to
latest ts7.51e and was very surprised to see that ts7.5 is still an
closed tool width lack of exporters.
It does not help me or anyone interested in game production that
trueSpace is a great tool when its not possible to export the work.
A good FBX exporter would solve the problem for most game engines,
but as you all know there is no such thing either.
Ok. I can export objects as OBJ or 3DS files and used other software to
get things together although that's a tedious work which also often
leads to errors because local differences in same file formats (even though
they should be the same, it seems that 3DS and others have dialects
that won't work together). OBJ seems to be the only reliable format.
But the worst thing of all ... trueSpace skeletons and animation tools
are soooo great, especially together with Mr Bones wonderful skeleton.
All this and there is no possibility to export any rigs or animations
( ... at least ...could we get a fbx exporter ).
So here I am.. building armatures and animations in Blender (which has
fbx, mdl7 and torque exporters) and the trueSpace desktop icon has since
long been move to 'unused desktop shortcuts' by Windows.
Is that not a shame? :(
I own one of the greatest tools and can't use it because my work
is not possible to get out of the system. :confused:
My hope is that anyone now gives a reply telling me that I am
a real looser which just don't know how to get the animated figures
from trueSpace to GameStudio A7 (which I'm currently using). That
would just be great to hear and I would not be offended at all ;)
Please tell me that a 600$ tool can do what the free Blender can.
Cheers
Roland
(which still has hope .. ) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 22, 2008, 10:02am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I agree, trueSpace would be one of the best modeler and animator packages for games if it had a good workspace side FBX exporter that supported animations. The more formats that we can import and export solidly the more the power of trueSpace can be leveraged with other tools. |
Post by transient // Mar 22, 2008, 3:34pm
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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I use a program called Fragmotion (http://www.fragmosoft.com/) to convert files for game engines. It does the A6 game engine and is very cheap.
tS 7.6 can export to bvh and obj which Fragmosoft can import. It's not an elegant solution, but it could work if your desperate to use tS for your games. |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 22, 2008, 4:02pm
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@transient:
Thank's for your tip. Have to test that one.
I guess that the downside is that one have to
skin the bhv-skeleton once again in Fragmotion.
But sure, that could work.
No. I'm not desperate to use tS as a game-making tool.
Blender does a good job. I just think its a petty to have
tS at my fingertips (at a cost of 600$) and cant use it for
game-making without having to consult various other software
just to get things out of the program. :(
Anyway. Thank's again for the tip. I'll try that. :D
Cheers
Roland |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 22, 2008, 6:19pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Ultimate Unwrap 3D can convert to pretty much every game format out there, so that's another option for getting the mesh into a particular game engine. Oh yeah and it's a good UV mapping program on the side too. :p |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 23, 2008, 3:53am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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Hi again
Tested your suggestions
Blender
Collada import
OBJ import
BHV import
GameStudio MDL7 export
FBX export
+ Exports both MDL7 and FBX
- Have to do the skinning here
- Collada importer don't accept tS dae files
Note:
So far the best and cheapest solution
fragMotion
OBJ import
BHV import
GameStudio MDL7 exp
ort
+ Exports MDL7
- Have to do the skinning here
Note:
This works but is no better than using Blender
which is free.
Ultimate Unwrapper
Collada Import
GameStudio A7 export
FBX export
- Collada importer don't accept tS dae files
Note:
The Ultimate Unwrapper would have been great
as it would need no extra work. But as the collada
import fails this fails.
Thank's for your effort to help
and hopefully Caligari someday will give us fbx export or
a Collada export (includng animations) that will
be accepted by third party tools as Ultimate Unwrapper.
Cheers
Roland |
Post by jamesmc // Mar 23, 2008, 4:04am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Collada in tS is still pretty much unusable as it is incomplete.
Which I find ironic as it is supposed to be one of those universal file formats that take care of everything (animation, bones, textures, etc.) |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 23, 2008, 4:06am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@jamesmc:
Yes it seems so. I downloaded the Fbx-converter tool by Autodesk
and they dont accept trueSpace dae files either. |
Post by transient // Mar 23, 2008, 4:06am
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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That's interesting.
Blender's really killing it at the moment. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 23, 2008, 5:41am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Hmm... do you have an example of TS Collada failing with UU3D? I've never had any problem with that...
BTW, the issue with TS's Collada exporter is that it *IS* a complete implementation (including bones and skinning) and many of the other programs don't support all the options that TS does. What export options are you using? |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 23, 2008, 6:03am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@Jack Edwards
I downloaded the Collada Conherency Test tool from collada.org
and guess what.... I found the error :)
It's all because my Swedish name :(
my name is Roland Strålberg... and that's nothing
etiher the Collada Test tool, UU3D or Blender like.
It's the Swedish letter 'å' that causes the Collada importer failures.
Guess I have to drop my Swedish name then and
change my last name to the more worldwide accepted Stralberg.
Anyway. After had edited the dae file by hand and removed the
Swedish letter 'å' in the </author> tag, UU3D imports my character
including rig and animation (Mr Bones... you libs are so cool) and
the even better up... It also plays the animation.
Could not export for the moment. Have to buy a UU3D license first
but I assume that the export part in UU3D will work also as it exports
to both GameStudio MDL7 and FBX format and both are accepted
in GameStudio.
Sometimes thing are just less complicated than you may believe.
So. This seems to be an acceptable workflow of getting tS things
into GameStudio, and still do all things in tS.
Absolutely great... and thank's all for your effort to help.
You are great :)
Hopefully just using trueSpace soon... ;)
Cheers
Roland |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 23, 2008, 6:10am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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No problem, always glad to help out! :D
I'll pass the info on about the swedish character problem to the dev team. Maybe they can put in an option to strip international characters? |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 23, 2008, 8:36am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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Just wanted to confirm that (after having got my UU3D license)
the GameStudio Exporter there did its job. So now I'm able
to work in trueSpace and get my things into GameStudio in
a quick and easy manner.
:jumpy:
Workflow:
Export as Collada (dae) in trueSpace
Import the dae file in UU3D
Export to GameStudio MDL
In GameStudio MED open the exported MDL and there you go with animations :banana:
Thank's again guys. :D
Now just using trueSpace ;)
Cheers
Roland |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 23, 2008, 11:06am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Great news Roland! That sounds like it's much better than the old .x format approach and it's very good news to hear that the animations transfered intact! :banana: |
Post by mrbones // Mar 23, 2008, 5:17pm
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mrbones
Total Posts: 1280
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Great News Roland,
Thanks for the solution! |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 23, 2008, 7:11pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Aw! Don't you just love happy endings?:D
Nice work gentlemen - it's always good to see folk working together to solve something.
And Roland, re: "Sometimes thing are just less complicated than you may believe." - That is so true (specially with trueSpace) that I'm considering getting it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids!! I've lost count of the number of ways I've been thrown by tS actually making a process far easier than I expected! |
Post by butterpaw // Mar 24, 2008, 3:27am
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butterpaw
Total Posts: 831
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Roland - thank you so very much for starting this thread here, and thank you all for contributing to the resolution, as it's exactly the problem we have been experiencing in my game project...
Ok .. so I'll have to spend some more money, and learn to use yet another application, but.. at least the possibility seems to be in sight! :D |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 24, 2008, 3:37am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@butterpaw
Got one little problem to solve though, but this is not
because of trueSpace I think, but I can mention it
before you spend more money.
My texture does not show up in MED. The figure is OK
and animates beatiful using one of Mr Bones animation,
so far soo god. But the figure is black without texture in MED.
Working on a solution on that, but havent mentioned it here
because I think thats more on the UU3D <---> MED side.
I will report in this thread when i found a solution for that also.
Next on my discussion list will be:
- L3DT (Large 3D Terrain Generator) -> trueSpace
- the GameStudio fx_terraintex3 shader in trueSpace
and many other things.
But for now its trueSpace animations to GameStudio A7
Cheers
Roland |
Post by DblQt // Mar 24, 2008, 4:17am
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DblQt
Total Posts: 9
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Hello,
Here is another tool that can convert between a wide variety of 3d formats
http://web.axelero.hu/karpo/
although no collada (yet). |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 24, 2008, 4:58am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@DblQt:
Yes that seems like a very competitive program.
But unfortunately it cant handle animations and bones
and lacks import of collada (as you told), but worse
it has no export of GameStudio (only load) or Torque formats,
neither export for fbx. So as a tool for quickly getting
from tS to GameStudio or Torque its not doing the job.
But as a general converter program it seems to handle
an impressive number of formats.
Thank's for the info :)
Cheers
Roland |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 24, 2008, 8:06am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Roland,
What kind of Materials are you using? I'm pretty sure that only the most basic of DX materials would export. Certainly any HLSL scripting isn't going to make it. Likely you're going to need to setup your materials in the game engine manually anyway if they use solutions specific to the game engine or your game code.
I guess the quick question would be are your textures showing up in UU3D? Of that's the case you may want to contact the guy who maintains UU3D or the A7 plugin author...
Having a working pipeline all the way to the end product is important, because if any part of it doesn't work then it becomes a "what's the point?" kind of thing like in your first post in this thread. Though I have to admit, getting the animation out intact is definitely a HUGE thing since animation is notoriously hard to successfully transfer between apps. ;) |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 24, 2008, 9:31am
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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@Jack Edwards
As I just started using trueSpace instead of Blender I have no complete
solution yet and there are many things to solve. But I'm willing to do
my very best to solve them.
My first step on the way was to deal what I supposed would
be the hardest one - The animations.
For that purpose I used a simple figure with one on Mr Bones
animations attached and a very simple diffuse textures only.
As you know the animations comes out great in GameStudio,
but black so far. So there we have one thing to solve. I'm working
on that.
My goal is of course to have everything done in tS including materials
using shaders as GameStudio also support shaders.
I will start a new thread 'Using trueSpace as a tool for GameStudio'
when at least the texture problem is solved. I hope to deal with all other
problems regarding tS <-> 3DGS there.
animations:
Partly solved (textures remain)
materials:
Shaders. Either implement tS shaders in 3DGS or 3DGS shaders in tS.
Have no idea of which is most painless.
terrains:
Implementaion of L3DT generated terrains in tS, refining it and saved as
something suitable for 3DGS (heighmap+attributes map+tiled textures)
skyboxes:
Compatible between tS and 3DGS (should'nt be to hard)
Buildings etc:
This may be a hard one because of the fact that no surfaces may be concave (due to collsion problems).
May need some scripting tools to help avoiding concave surfaces
(maybe something that simply colors edges red where connected
ace normals cross eachother)
And surely a lot more that I forgot to mention here
This is a big list of things that have to be done and it surely will
take some time and a great deal of work to get there. But I'm willing
to give it a try as I am primary a C++ programmer (my occupation) intrested
in technical stuff and secondly quite poor artist.
Kindly
Roland |
Post by andras // Mar 24, 2008, 10:51am
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andras
Total Posts: 111
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OK, I go on with list. (I hope write right)
I realised more problem what I have already said:
Material link (just a litle bit complicated material adding for an object spend 5-10min ! waiting for material adding?!...horryble)
and idiot Material system (the other app more easier)
No caustics in Vray
No transparent shadow in Vray
frostbite after importing an complicated 3ds object (this spend 2min in Blender)
A lot of bugreport when I give commnand after another one fast (or I dont know why)..unstable system.
So when I decide to buy this software I would like to use this for architectural visualisations but I have to realize to this is useless.
about one week ago I would like to sell my license but unfortunately this is an untransferable one. OK, right. just I am very angry that Caligari offer wonderful application on the website for CG artist and we get an useless something...to sticky speaking (or it for architectural visualisation is useless for other work I dont know how is it.) . I feel myself misleading (put out my money throught the window? and more pay for 7.6?). I'd prefer to sue because of misleading...sorry I still use blender, me too. |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 24, 2008, 2:23pm
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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For those interested in using trueSpace and GameStudio A7 together,
I will make notes on that in my blog. Or is it better to make ny notes
in a new Topic instead... If you think a new Topic is better I can move
my comments .
Cheers
Roland |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 24, 2008, 5:39pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Roland, can you start a new thread for this? I think it will help a lot of users.
I'm almost certain that TS shaders do not export at all. So you're likely going to have to do them in GameStudio. But you can try out the ideas and get all the maps working in TS, which will still save you work later since you'll have everything ready to go when setting up the shaders in GameStudio.
If the skybox is a built in object for GameStudio, then it's not something you'd export but an object that you'd want to imitate in TS to help with visualization and texture creation.
A simple way to make all your mesh's polygons convex is to triangulate them. ;) A script could be made to check for concavity and select the concave faces. All the script would have to do is check each polygon for an internal angle greater than 180 degrees. So that is a possibility. Alternately you could try to avoid concave polygons while modeling. :p
It would be good to write a script or plugin that exports terrain files. If you need help with using scripting to access mesh data, you should post a thread for that. There are several scripters here that could help you out or at least point you in the right direction. It might even be something that you could sell.
@Andras
I'm sorry things aren't working for you, but it already sounds like you've made up your mind. TrueSpace is a very powerful application for game modeling and organics work. But there are several users here in these forums that use trueSpace for Architectural Viz work as well: Prodigy, Emmanuel, Changa to name a few off the top of my head. Maybe if you asked for help with specific problems, they can give you workarounds for problems and ideas on how to solve things you are stuck on. If you don't want to spend any more time with TrueSpace maybe you can leverage your investment into a "competitive upgrade" pricing for another 3D application. |
Post by transient // Mar 24, 2008, 6:06pm
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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I'm almost certain that TS shaders do not export at all.
I think this why texture and lighting baking is such an important feature for games work, and it can really help when exporting to other renderers. It's a glaring omission from 6.6 and 7.5 (I don't count the dodgy one that's already there). I'm surprised no one ever made a plug-in for it. Blender can do this....a phrase which is becoming monotonous.
While I'm not as upset as Andras about vray, everything he said is true from my (beta?) testing, and you can add memory leaks on top. It can do nice renders if your not too picky about it's flaws, but I'm disappointed with it so far. Hopefully 7.6 will fix the bugs and we can all forget the past year.
You could have a look at dribble if your serious about quality gi rendering in tS.
I'm having a lot more fun in 6.6 at the moment, especially with all the great free plug-ins you can get for it, and it's excellent multi-layer rendering. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 24, 2008, 7:41pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Transient, are you sure that Blender exports HLSL shaders? TrueSpace's D3D materials are HLSL script run directly on the video card. I'm not aware of any 3D formats that support that...? :confused:
For that matter do any game engines have any formats for importing realtime materials with shader scripts? Not only is that kind of stuff very game engine specific, I thought you had to code that stuff into your game manually anyway?
Edit:
@ Roland, I did some tests and it does looks like TS Collada exports the color and normal texture maps. So the TextureBump D3D Material works fine for Collada export. There is one caveat though: it assumes phong shader model and also exports the values for Specular and Shininess.
The version of UU3D that I have (2.39) isn't loading in the textures (and doesn't appear to support Normal maps). I downloaded the 3.0 Demo, which does support Normal maps but also doesn't appear to load the maps automatically either. Regardless, UU3D only supports Diffuse, Specular, Bump (or Normal), and Opacity maps, so you'd be limited to those on export anyway -- again depending additionally on what A7 format supports as well being a further limit.
So it looks like best workflow would be to use a D3D material in TS that most closely resembles the material you are going to use in Game Studio to preview your maps, then after you get your model into GameStudio, add your textures and materials there.
Edit2:
@Transient, I agree about texture baking. That would be a great feature and would allow us to leverage some of the coolness of the TS's realtime shader environment for both rendering in game engines and for use with VRay. |
Post by transient // Mar 24, 2008, 8:34pm
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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I thought he meant the normal ones.
I have no idea if you can use hlsl shaders in a6. I always thought they were universal to some degree. I know people have had success getting them into other engines, but then I guess it depends on whether truespace actually creates vanilla shaders, or some in-house variation.
I guess this question is better left for the workspace experts. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Mar 24, 2008, 10:33pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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It looks like Collada does now support HLSL, but from what I'm reading about creating your own shaders for using in game engines, from what I was able to dig up it looks like you need to create compiled .FX files using:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fx_composer_home.html
or
http://ati.amd.com/developer/rendermonkey/
I downloaded fx_composer and I noticed that it will only load TS produced Collada files if the file is of the TS scene. Objects saved in Collada format wouldn't load. I suspect that is because FX_Composer is using Collada as a Scene format. I notice that Collada is not listed as a supported format in FX_Composer for importing geometry.
I also noticed that the texture map and normal map did load, but the normal map effect didn't show on the preview. Could be user error on my part, but there also may be something here for the developers to look at. So I'll forward this on to them.
Since Collada format DOES support HLSL via Collada FX, it would be really cool if the Collada format would be a way to get TS custom D3D shaders into other apps. :) Currently that is not support though as TS Collada only supports Phong shader values, Colormap, and NormalMap.
Of course that still doesn't give us an HLSL pipeline into a particular game engine, unless they also support Collada and Collada FX.... so I'd say this is a future tech kinda thing and right now the best bet is to use Collada for exporting the mesh w/ animation and doing materials via code or in the editor for the particular game engine. |
Post by rstralberg // Mar 24, 2008, 11:00pm
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rstralberg
Total Posts: 26
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Hi friends
I have started a new thread on my progress with this
trueSpace as gamers tool for the GameEngine A7 (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=5189)
Its in the RoundTable sections. Maybe it should have been in Work in progress. Anyway, please add your suggestions and comments about
game export there
Cheers and thank's for your help
Roland |
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