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Some TruePlace Questions
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.
Some TruePlace Questions // New Users
Post by Igor K Handel // Feb 10, 2008, 12:01am
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Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
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Hi guys n gals
Having just purchased TS 7.51 some 8 weeks ago I am now becoming intrigued by the potential of TruePlace. Please forgive me if any of the questions have already been answered.. I have searched but some of the info is a bit vague.
1. Can bone animation be used in Trueplace ?
2. Does TS support vertex animation and if so in Trueplace also ?
3. Texture animation within Trueplace?
4. What is the maximum realistic working file size of a usable TruePlace environment (for use live online)
5. This one is a bit general. Does anyone know if a virtual scene in TruePlace copying a scene from a film is an infringement of copyright, has the law got this far yet?. OK an example... A virtual trueplace of perhaps Startrek Enterprise bridge.
6. Is it complicated to provide a kiosk mode that could be incorporated with touchscreen. Example... I stand at kiosk in a Museum, I press the you are here button onscreen. I then take a virtual walk in realtime to the area of the museum that interests me. On virtual arrival I examine the exhibits virtually in 3D. I click pages onscreen to bring up text, audio and video information. I decide that this area IS where I want to go. I return to the main page of the touch screen, I have a choice of printed directions, or to insert the usb stick I have rented at reception along with headphones. With these I have the option for an audio tour of the area I have chosen, activated by me on arrival at the exhibit area. Oh by the way I am possibly online or in a wheelchair, or may never actually be able to visit the museum in person, perhaps its on a different continent! Maybe I am a student doing research, Possibly I am a 10 year old at school finding out about dinosaurs.. the possibilities are potentially mind boggling.. I want to explore the Titanic underwater. I want to see the holiday apartment I am about to book online or in a travel agent. I am at Notradame Cathedral in Paris, the choir only sings on Sundays, this is Monday, I press the touchscreen for a guided tour of the crypt in full 3D (because the crypt is closed for renovation) and then listen and watch the choral evensong of the day before on an imbedded video.
ok enough... Is this Doable?
Yours
IKHandel |
Post by Délé // Feb 10, 2008, 1:41am
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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Hi IKHandel,
Glad to see more people getting interested in the online capabilities of trueSpace. It's way fun and there is so much potential yet to explore.
To answer your questions:
1. Not yet, but if truePlay 2.0 is to have fully articulated Avatars, as Roman stated in his blog, it will need to support bones I would think.
2. No not yet, except through script. Jack wrote a cool vertex morph script that can be used online. I think that Glen's "intelligent" shark used vertex morphing via script too.
3. Again, not yet except through script. I wrote a little script that can create animated textures but it does not run well enough for online scenes. It does work for rendering though.
4. You probably want to keep your scenes/portals under 5mb. That seems to run good right now for most people.
5. IMO it would be best to avoid material that is copyrighted without consent from the owners of such things. In other words, yes I think they could definitely go after people legally if they found reason to.
6. I'm not sure about the touchscreen idea. If the touchscreen acts like a mouse click then I would think it could work. As for the rest, it would take a bit of scripting, but I see no reason why not. Take a look at the example scene I posted HERE (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=4733). If you open it with truePlay, you can open panels via script that have web content in them including videos and such. I also recently wrote a little game demo that some of us played with at the scriptors meeting last Tuesday. It creates a little database node for players and keeps track of their skill levels and possessions. So there really is a LOT that you can do through script and I see no reason why you can't do most, if not all of what you mentioned.
Swing by the scriptors meeting sometime. We meet every Tuesday evening. The folks there are always willing to lend a hand with scripting and could show you some of the possibilities exposed so far. :) |
Post by Igor K Handel // Feb 11, 2008, 8:05am
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Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
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Many thanks for your answers.
Looks as though scripting is pretty well going to become a requirement as this evolves. Shame I am so pants at it ,oh well.
I have downloaded your scene and will check it out after dinner, it sounds pretty cool.
Is there a central repository for scripts at the minute, or to put it another way how do I aquire functions if as yet I cannot script myself? hmm ok tutorials anywhere?
Cheers for your help
IK |
Post by TomG // Feb 11, 2008, 9:46am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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On scripting, don't forget that you may not need to do any yourself.
Scripts are only required for behaviors, and only when adding new behaviors. You will find quite a library of behaviors already exist, and folks are always creating more. You'll also find much can be done with a drag and drop approach, with no need to actually script or write any code yourself - there's a pretty extensive collection of building blocks in tS7.5!
Next with collaboration you can get a lot of help from others who are more into scripting - just as the 3D artist for a game doesn't usually write the AI for the characters he is making, the work can be divided up if required amongs experts in their field.
All that said, scripting really isn't too hard, especially as much can be done by taking existing scripts and tweaking them.
So for sure, don't despair about it! Of course any model that is just geometry and textures won't be requiring scripting, so a large part of the world would be just be regular, static models. Naturally for your kiosk where your object will take on some life and respond to the user, then it needs its functionality (its brain if you like) to be created, but there are a lot of options there that mean it is not as tricky or as alien as it might at first sound!
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Igor K Handel // Feb 11, 2008, 1:45pm
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Igor K Handel
Total Posts: 411
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Thanks for the info Tom.
I am beginning to see that collaboration may well be the ONLY sensible way forward. There are just so many different disciplines involved to do this WELL.
After a fair bit of research it seems to me that the opportunity for current TS modellers, animators, scripters, and designers, even illustrators for supplying non creative occupants/visitors of this virtual space with products and or experiences, is absolutely monumental, and a lot of fun too. I just need to work out which bit I should concentrate on. Time for a SWOT analysis methinks lol. (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
At the minute I feel like an information vacuum cleaner, trying to filter the critical nuggets from the sheer volume of information available on these forums. There are one heck of a lot of helpful people around, its very refreshing, and somewhat unique for sure.
I have a arrived with TS at a watershed in it's evolution. Kind of instills some urgency as I don't want to miss this boat! but boy my head hurts lol.
Yours
IK |
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