I seek a game engine that uses all that new stuff like normal maps and such. Buit it really does not need to be a game engine I just want an open gl render engine that uses new tech for my animations from blender and zbrush.

Using a standard cpu render just takes tooo long, I could get so much more work created if I could find a render engine that can play back a keyframed animation from something like cinema maya lightwave blender or whatever. Note I am on OSX.

So, is there anything out there for using new tech, todays open gl can output some really nice stuff really fast.

Come again? I see a lot of buzz, but no sense.

tripdragon Wrote:I seek a game engine that uses all that new stuff like normal maps and such. Buit it really does not need to be a game engine I just want an open gl render engine that uses new tech for my animations from blender and zbrush.

Use OpenGL and write it yourself... And, What does this have to do with games?

tripdragon Wrote:Using a standard cpu render just takes tooo long

Are you talking about a graphics package or a game? If a game then what API are you using?

tripdragon Wrote:I could get so much more work created if I could find a render engine that can play back a keyframed animation from something like cinema maya lightwave blender or whatever.

So write your own! People aren't gonna do all the programming for you.

tripdragon Wrote:So, is there anything out there for using new tech, todays open gl can output some really nice stuff really fast.

Yes. Yes it can. And it IS the new tech. You don't need anything to use it for you. You use it yourself

If I get you right, you want some kind of preview application that can show your animations with all the latest fuzz on, right? Try Blender, because that's the closest you're going to get. At less, I'd suggest to look towards dim3, which sounds like it is somewhat up your alley. Apart from that, there's only OpenGL and XCode that is going to do it for you.

Fenris Wrote:If I get you right, you want some kind of preview application that can show your animations with all the latest fuzz on, right? Try Blender, because that's the closest you're going to get. At less, I'd suggest to look towards dim3, which sounds like it is somewhat up your alley. Apart from that, there's only OpenGL and XCode that is going to do it for you.

Um Blender does not support any opengl features past 1.2 so there is no shader language nor glsl. And it's 3d view port is still vertex color based with uv's thrown in.

Now what is all of this talk of telling me to just write my own and such. Is it wrong of me to ask if anyone smarter at code has created started on this kind of project ? Or is it a closed source charge 900$ kind of thing? Even then there are no 900$ apps that do realtime editing with shader rendering that I know of.

Lets start over.

I was looking for an app that could let me import an animation done in whatever program, and have shaders and uvs attached to it. The app then would then just render out the animation of the scene in realtime rendering with multisampleing turned on. So even with all sorts of extra detail turned on the frames it would render would be 10 times faster than a normal CPU raytrace render.

What my view is, todays opengl or whatever is used realtime rendering is really really good at details and colors and such, so good infact it is useable for animations for small animations and movie clips. Of course some quality is lost for items like caustics and real GI, but rendering out a real 3d scene is time not well spent. And it gets wourse when something goes wrong and you end up having to re re re re render out the animation over and over again.

Just look at the doom project and Halo animations people have made with just recording there play inside of the game. If you could inject your own models and animations it would be a perfect solution for effects fast.

Now does it make sense ? Cause I really hope it does I am lost for words if it does not

It seems like your going to want to use Dim 3, yyou can make ur own games in that, and if thats not wat you want, learn Opengl and make your own Renderer.

:-)
thanks

So I got your point close to alright, then. The quick answer is: not that I know of.

The long answer goes as follows:
• GLSL isn't supported on Mac OS X yet.
• There are currently something like three games for PC/Mac that do normal mapping, so don't expect it to pop out for free.
• Something like this would be a significant amount of engineering, and an indie game community probably isn't the right place to ask.

That said, it does sound like a cool idea, that might possibly have a commerical success tied to it. But still, the short answer is: no. :-/

tripdragon Wrote:Now what is all of this talk of telling me to just write my own and such.

Ignore that, its just one of those idevgames cliche things that people with nothing useful to say will always say.

tripdragon Wrote:Is it wrong of me to ask if anyone smarter at code has created started on this kind of project ? .

No, and thats something some people here can't get to sink in.

tripdragon Wrote:Or is it a closed source charge 900$ kind of thing?
Even then there are no 900$ apps that do realtime editing with shader rendering that I know of.

Isn't Maya in that range?

tripdragon Wrote:Lets start over.

I was looking for an app that could let me import an animation done in whatever program, and have shaders and uvs attached to it. ---

Anark I believe handeled light wave scenes and animations, and had some great real time effects and rendering, quicktime output I think as well, but its canceled for the Mac. But now we have a man on the inside, maybe we'll shake the pillars of heaven and see what falls out.

tripdragon Wrote:The app then would then just render out the animation of the scene in realtime rendering with multisampleing turned on.

should be able to do that with torque, there is a plug-in for blender.

tripdragon Wrote:So even with all sorts of extra detail turned on the frames it would render would be 10 times faster than a normal CPU raytrace render.

Just look at the doom project and Halo animations people have made with just recording there play inside of the game. If you could inject your own models and animations it would be a perfect solution for effects fast.

On windows you can inject your own models into almost every game.

To get "real time" animation recordings from "any" game on the mac you need a second video card with video out, record the video out to tape, import to iMovie or Final Cut Pro or some such, edit, compress, post to web. Screen capture programs barely cut it when you are running a 3D game in full screen.
This process can be almost slower than just animating and rendering in a ray tracer and getting the exact shots you want with endless editability. Of course the trade off for "playing" a movie instead of constructing one seems reasonable.

tripdragon Wrote:Now does it make sense ? Cause I really hope it does I am lost for words if it does not

Yeah, you want high quality machinima on the Mac. There are some books at Barnes & Nobles on making this stuff with different programs like UnRealEd and uh something else I forget, they are in the game dev section now. Its all PC of course, but it doesn't hurt to read em for free.

You might want to discuss quicktime output from game play in the Blender game dev community if you are already a user, it couldn't hurt.

iGame3D has video output to quicktime files.
This is 10 fps recorded in iGame3D then cut from a larger video recompressed into mp4 in quicktime pro.

Its not far off....

Fenris Wrote:So I got your point close to alright, then. The quick answer is: not that I know of.

The long answer goes as follows:
• GLSL isn't supported on Mac OS X yet.
• There are currently something like three games for PC/Mac that do normal mapping, so don't expect it to pop out for free.
• Something like this would be a significant amount of engineering, and an indie game community probably isn't the right place to ask.

That said, it does sound like a cool idea, that might possibly have a commerical success tied to it. But still, the short answer is: no. :-/

Aw, thank you. Rats. I mean I would love to make a game to but for now I am just after the drawing engine. Over here on Blender we have this game engine but it lacks anything remotely current from 2003. Though it does out put frames but the quality is just not up to snuff.

Now an idea is could take a game like Halo and implat allowances for just testing animations and frame captures ? I know Unreal tournament has mods for custom characters and animations on them. If this is to wrong they please accept my apology for the idea. I just need something faster.

I will check out dim3 and see if it is something I can use.

HaloMods.com may me a place for Halo hacks
There is GTKRadiant for Quake Engine modding
SecondLife has some editing tools, I didn't look into how they could be used offline I guess you could set up a "theater" community to act out scripts in 3d environments and record them somehow.

The fastest "hack" is video out and back in for editing.

If you know *SOME* c/c++ you could use Ogre3D.

It has a lot of the 'newer' features of openGL implemented. Not to mention bones and other nifty non openGL features.

Its kind of a pain to compile, but once its up and running its pretty easy.

Only for Windows I'm afraid, but check out IntantViz for Amapi Pro.

Keep an eye out for Unity:
http://otee.dk/site/Tech/frameset.html

It is in beta right now, and can read in scene files from some major 3D apps with more to come. Maybe if you ask real nice you can get on the beta test. ;-)

-Jon

aarku Wrote:Keep an eye out for Unity:
http://otee.dk/site/Tech/frameset.html

It is in beta right now, and can read in scene files from some major 3D apps with more to come. Maybe if you ask real nice you can get on the beta test. ;-)

-Jon

OOO I had thought I lost that link for good when this site server went poof at the hacker attack. I whish I could get on the beta team. Any tips on what theye are looking for?

Well I sent them a letter so we shall have to see. Not to be over excited but dude the stuff I could make with that if it is really simi realtime .... *brain explodes*

PowerMacX Wrote:Only for Windows I'm afraid, but check out IntantViz for Amapi Pro.

Aw geezes Thats what I want ! D@m windows Heres to hopeing that Tiger ushers in a whole new sting of 3d apps .. At least the new core image stuff in High level , soo I might in theroy be able to code some of it. If I do it is all free source so anyone can fix or mess it up here here