Nuclex Framework, Community Character Voting and Morph Targets
Markus “Cygon4” Ewald announces the immediate availability of an intermediate release of his Nuclex Framework, adding: “There are still outstanding issues, but the previous release is already getting a beard and I'm getting reports for issues already solved
”
Amit Ginni Patpatia of FatCow Games AS fame reminds the community to vote for a character for an upcoming game.
Last but not least Barnaby Smith pokes me about an XNA 3.1 Morph Target implementation he put online: “This example uses multiple vertex streams and blends between them using a vertex shader. This approach is a differing method to CPU or VTF based implementations and does not require the calculation of vertex textures, making it quite simple and straightforward.
”
XNA Morphing Meshes Tutorial
The Cansin posted a new and interesting tutorial about morphing meshes in XNA
With documentation and source code available, the tutorial takes you through the steps of implementing morphing meshes.
Check it out here.
Article: Rolling World Tutorial
by Christian Schlager
When you look around the XBox Indie Games Channel, there aren't a lot of 3D games around. Most XNA games only feature 2D graphics. I hope to contribute with this tutorial to making 3D graphics a bit less intimidating. And maybe the little prototype we will create throughout the next pages will be the starting point of a great 3D indie game by one of you
We will make a prototype that features the kind of rolling world effect that you can see in games such as Animal Crossing or DeathSpank. We will also create the textures and 3D models that go along with the rolling effect and recreate the combination of 2D art with a 3D world you can see in the game DeathSpank.
Article: Simple 3D Camera in XNA
by Pete Street
How do I make a 3D camera?
This is the most common question I hear from people starting out with 3D game development.
There are many different types of possible cameras and various ways to achieve each of them. The amount of unique camera samples available online, while some are more complicated than others, can be daunting to those just beginning with 3D games.
Additionally, it’s frustrating and nearly impossible to combine two different samples without doing some serious hacking.
My goal for this tutorial is to remove that frustration from 3D-beginners by providing a back-to-basics approach to three of the most common types of cameras used in games:
- a free camera
- a chase camera
- a orbit camera
HOWTO: Step Away From Storing an Orientation as ‘3 Angles’
Via our local but currently distant MVP Catalin “Please leave a message after the beep” Zima comes the tip to an overview of matrix math for rotations:
As intuitive as the ‘3 angle’ approach is, the Matrix approach might be that daunting to the beginner. But it doesn’t have to be. I believe that after learning the basics of a matrix and how to visualize a matrix in the mind’s eye while manipulating it, it will be very easy for the beginner to pick up. So for the cost of investing a little time to understand the Matrix, your effectiveness in 3d programming will increase dramatically and you can stop the insanity of banging your head again the ‘3 angles’ brick wall.
Get your full fix at Matrix Basics. How to step away from storing an orientation as ‘3 angles’.
Light Pre-Pass
Michael Quandt has posted a write up detailing the theory behind his Light Pre-Pass code he released for educational use previously.
KiloWatt Animation for XNA
Jwatte has tweeted news prediction of a new version of his KiloWatt animation library and Pre-release bits are here.
"This is the third-and-a-half release of the KiloWatt Animation library. It is intended as a companion to the kW X-port 3ds Max X file exporter, to be used with Microsoft XNA Game Studio. This release is for version 3.0/3.1 for Windows and Xbox 360. Sorry, no Zune support "
He goes on to explain how this is different to the XNA Skinning sample on the creators website
The KiloWatt Animation Library is different from the XNA Skinning sample code in several ways, including:
- KiloWatt Animation stores animation keyframes as position, rotation and scale (for a total of 10 floats), instead of the full matrix used by the Animation Components.
- KiloWatt Animation removes unnecessary keyframes (down to a tolerance that you can specify), for a usually quite significant savings in file size.
- KiloWatt Animation does interpolation between animation keyframes using quaternions, which means that slow-motion and varispeed playback will still look smooth.
- KiloWatt Animation supports composition (blending) of animations to generate the final output pose for a given Model.
- KiloWatt Animation replaces the Effect used for your Model only when you tell it to.
- KiloWatt Animation does not make any specific demands of your geometry; you can (and should) use it to animate rigid objects such as windmills, catapults etc. in addition to skinned meshes.
Henge3D Physics Library for XNA
There’s a new Physics engine targeting the XNA FX (hat tip to to Nick Gravelyn for the discovery):
Project Description
Henge3D is a 3D physics library written in C# for XNA. It is implemented entirely in managed code and is compatible with the XBOX 360.
Overview:
- Rigid body simulation with collision detection, response, and approximated friction.
- Supports collision skins consisting of arbitrary convex polyhedra, spheres, capsules and planes. Collision detection against triangle meshes is also supported.
- Supports a number of constraints, including body point constraints, revolute joints, universal joints, prismatic joints, etc.
- Multi-threaded collision detection and collision response.
- Ability to import collision skins from Blender and potentially other modeling programs.
- Supports ragdolls using collections of rigid bodies with constraints (see the Holodeck program for examples).
sgMotion v1.0.0 Released
Tom Looman released his sgMotion library to CodePlex. Says Tom:
sgMotion is an animation library (based on XNAnimation by Bruno Evangelista) and provides full integration with both the Sunburn Engine and the Sunburn Framework.
More at the source.
Geodesic Grid, Part 3
Brian Schaeflein published part 3 of his Geodesic Truncated IcosahedronsGrid series, covering his design decisions about how to store the cells to aid pathfindig.