DeleD Community Edition

[JamesH]

The answer from the C4 forums is that the mesh needs to be completely closed in order for C4 to cast shadows correctly.

Unfortunately the Feeling Viewer does not cast shadows, so cannot be reliably used to test exports.

[Paul-Jan]

First of all, version 0.51a of the exporter just got released, get it here

Gauntlet: Ah, that's good news, thanks!

JamesH: After reading through that thread at therathon I've been thinking about your problem with non-closed meshes for while. The way I see it, there are tree parties involved in your toolchain:

1. DeleD - a generic modeler. Any 'polygon soup' will do, closed or non-closed is of no importance
2. The Collada exporter - The Collada format is by design is even more generic in nature than DeleD.
3. C4 - Does in itself not require closed meshes, but the shadow algorithm does.

As I can only influence (1) and (2), and it's unlikely that Eric will be switching shadowing algorithms anytime soon (in particular because I'm not too sure there even exist such algorithms that efficiently deal with open geometry) here is what I think we could do:

a) We could build some optional validation rules into the exporter that would warn you of open geometry. We could have this implemented very fast as it is little work, but it would not help you much in solving the problem (besides telling you what primitive contains the problem)

b) We already have plans to extend DeleD itself with a geometry 'analyzer', that will search for a pick of potential problem area's (t-junctions, open geometry, non-convex geometry, etc.). This would also help solving the problem by selecting the edges of problem areas, so you can quickly see where the exact problem is and solve it.

My question to you is: given that solution (b) will take a bit of time (i.e. it could be included in the next release, very early 2007), and will probably only be fully available in the DeleD PRO version, do you think extending the exporter with said functionality (a) would be a good idea?

[JamesH]

Yes, I think a) would be a good idea short term for me as I tend to work a lot on my laptop that C4 will not run on, and if I need to really check where the problem areas are, I can load the model into the C4 Model Viewer when at my workstation.

I suppose it is going to be practice creating models without open geometry, and trial and error getting it right. But definitely a step in the right direction.

I'll also look forward to b) long term as well.

Many thanks for your prompt reply.

James.

[jwatte]

[JamesH]

A bit of an update, I'm having more success exporting to the C4 engine with Triangluate set to None.

[JamesH]

An example of the difference in exporting with Triangulate set to None, and set to All Polygons. I created a simple cylinder and exported.

None



All Polygons



By the way you can try this yourself. The C4 demo does not include the Tools folder, but if you follow this thread, you can download the tools folder and add the folder to your C4 demo. You can then import and export the models. Be aware that C4 has a new editor at the end of the month and the demo will be updated.

[JamesH]

I've updated the process to get model into the C4 model viewer

To get the model into C4
- Export the model remembering to add the .dae extension in the DAE export filename box.
- The dae file should go in the C4\Import\dae folder
- The tga file should go in the C4\Imort\tga folder
- Open C4
- Press ESC to remove the game interface
- Press tilde twice to open the menu bar
- Select New World from the tools menu
- Select Import Scene from the World menu
- Select the dae file and it should be displayed in the world (you can add the textures at this point, import the texture, select it in the material manager and Ctrl-M to add it to a selected model, or just leave it blank for the time being)
- From the Edit Menu, Select All (Ctrl-A)
- From the Node Menu, Convert to Generic Mesh (Ctrl-Shift-C)
- Select Export model from the World menu
- Once saved, from the Tools menu select Open Model and the imported COLLADA model will be displayed in the Model Viewer.

Just a couple of extra steps to convert the imported model to a generic mesh.

[granada]

Thanks for the info JamesH.
I hope the proces gets shorter,soon .

Dave
_________________
AMD Phenom(tm)IIx6 1090t Processor 3.20 GHS
8.00 GB memory
Windows 7 64 bit
Nvida Geforce GTX 580

[JamesH]

[Jeroen]

Thanks for sharing that info JamesH, that's great. Info like that is very helpful to DeleD/Collada users out there so keep up the good work.

[jwatte]

[JamesH]

[JamesH]

I've been spending the last day going through numerous DeleD -> C4 exports to find out where the problem lies in open and closed meshes.

I created 2 cube primitives in DeleD, one cutting through the other and then I unioned them. I exported the first model with the cubes separate and the second export was with the cubes unioned. I then imported the models into C4 and there seemed to be a problem with the unioned mesh, some of the mesh was not closed and there were shadow problems displayed in the the C4 model viewer.

So, to test if it was the union function that was causing the problems in DeleD, I exported the models without the union function applied, I then unioned the 2 cubes using the union function in C4. The same result was apparent as exporting a unioned model from Deled.

This image is the cubes imported separately



This image is the cubes unioned in C4



Just to make sure that the union function was working correctly in C4, I created two similar cubes in C4 and applied the union function and it worked ok.

This image is the cubes created separately in C4



This image is the cubes Created and unioned in C4



I tried exporting with the Triangluate set at All Polygons and None, but the result was the same.

[JamesH]

Getting closer .....

I've used a C4 Collada exporter to export a cube created in C4 and compare it against a cube created in DeleD.

If you would like to view them, they can be downloaded here

Apologies for not doing this earlier, I completely forgot that someone over in the C4 community wrote a C4Collada exporter.

Cheers

James.

[collada]