OZ - Ascii Custom Scene Import

[Windcatcher]

I'm not sure about everything that .3DS supports, but OpenZone's .3DS import expects everything to be composed of triangles.

You're right about RECTANGLE/RECTANGLETEX being quads. The -TEX variants allow you to specify texture coordinates, while the non-TEX ones force OpenZone to use it's own algorithm to guess at decent texture coordinates. Obviously, if you're importing from an external source, I strongly recommend using the -TEX variants. The non-TEX ones are mainly for OpenZone's use since many of its scripts don't generate texture coordinates and have to rely on its internal algorithm.

All of my 3D software use OpenGL, which requires that textures be a power of 2 on each side. They don't have to be square, but they have to be, for example, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. on a given edge.

KhaN has taken the route of modeling entire zones and then importing them as a giant .3DS file. It's possible, but has some minor limitations. The main one is that the .3DS format doesn't have a way of setting the "masked" and "solid" flags I mentioned above, so it means setting them after the import. These flags are critical for objects like trees where solid has to be set to FALSE so players don't bump into their leaves (and the masked flag is critical so the masked-out parts of the textures will be transparent). The new features in OpenZone 5.6 under Edit Polygon Properties should make those easier (until then, the only real way was to do a search-and-replace on the .SCN file to set the flags for a given texture).

Importing entire zones also means that OpenZone doesn't know which mesh is the "ground" mesh, so if you place objects in the zone after importing it, OpenZone might have trouble keeping them on the ground (when OpenZone generates its own ground it can make sure that trees, for instance, always adhere to the ground). It's not an issue if you don't plan on adding anything from OpenZone's internal library after you import your zone or, if you do, if you plan on placing objects precisely.

If you only want to import and immediately export to .S3D, then the only issue is the "solid" and "masked" flags (and possibly the transparent/semitransparent flags), which can globally be set for a given texture from the Edit Polygon Properties dialog.

[GeorgeS]

Thanks for the replies. I'm nearly there with object import.
Here's a few previews of the objects in the modeler.
I had to fix a few things on a few objects, but they import into OZ and subsequently into the zone viewer nicely! I'm rather impressed!!

http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes1.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes2.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes3.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes4.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes5.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes6.jpg
http://www.wizardportal.com/optimaiv...mu/scenes7.jpg

I will spend some time exporting these to 3DS and a nice zip for ya all.
There are many more of these on the way.

George

[GeorgeS]

I managed to write an exporter for my world editor and the .scn file looks fine.
What I cannot figure out is how to import it into an Existing zone I set up. What happens when I file/open the import.scn in OZ, the previous zone dissapears and the imported one appears with just the objects and no zone.

Is there a way to import onto an existing prepared zone?


Thanks
GeorgeS

[Windcatcher]

Yup. Click Edit...Insert Scene. It should do the trick...

If you have any problems, let me know...and if you have any nice shiny screenshots, those are fine too (wink).

P.S. Have you tried the File...Convert to transparent bitmap option?

[GeorgeS]

Excellent WC!
So far so good, my world editor now correctly exports the .scn (except for the slight issue i'm having with Z-heights being offset a bit.)

...but position and heading work!
Once I get the Z-height issue worked out, I will submit the program. Since I am actively working on it, I might as well create a help.pdf as well.

But before that, I will have screenshots of it with several zones! I'm actually pretty amazed I made it this far.

The world editor was being made for an offline eq-like game, but I realised that those games take a lot of time to code.

After I get another hundred objects made for the editor, I will start on monsters. Already made some good textures, and have my sketchpad ready for the monster texturing (I color by hand on real paper and scan the textures in)

GeorgeS