Thursday 9 October 2014

Light at the end of a tunnel!

Whoohoo. Project E might be back on track sooner that I expected! Remember those 'software bugs' I've been mentioning earlier? well they seem to be solved, and fucking quick too!! I'm just waiting on the finals on them and then I can see where I can go from there. I'm well excited!!

So just a quick future projection on Project E:

  1. Mesh - done
  2. Rig - done
  3. UV mapping - done
  4. JCMs - can now be done properly
  5. texturing
  6. making essential morphs
  7. trying out in comic
  8. placing PE original head
  9. texture conversion software*
  10. preparing for the store*
Those last two items are vital for the development of PE. Without an ability to convert your V4 textures, PE will be left stranded like most other figures. Preparing for the store is also a BIG fucking hurdle because I wanna make sure I don't piss off any legal entities, I don't wanna mention any names like DAZ for example... lol.

So now about this texture converter. I have experience in C#, and I've got a schematic for setting up the geometry calculations. I can set up a class schema. But I'd rather do something else than program and debug it. Are there any clever buggers out there that wanna make some cash? Full experience with C# preferred, good knowledge of UV mapping and OBJ files essential. If you're into python, that's fine, but you need to be flipping brilliant at it. Email me.

Timeline? ETA? fuck no. These things take time friends, a full figure is no joke. I've never done something like this before, and remembering Lali's Bits, there's always something unforseen to delay the development. So, like I always say, and I maintain: my first priority is comics, but obviously I'll need PE for there comics, just as much as, or perhaps even more than you. So that should guarantee some sense of urgency on my behalf hehe... I'm on your side bothers and sisters!!! :D but be patient! 


10 comments:

  1. I'd love to help you, but I only know Objective-C.

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  2. Sadly I know of no way to help you. You've probably encountered or yet to encounter more than I could fathom so I have no insight.
    I was just wondering if utilizing Poser's coding might work more efficiently since I know Poser's built in models seem to flow so much better, and faster.
    From my experience, loading DAZ models into Poser is slow, sometimes the infamous (not responding) pause before crashing, then the model appears with missing magnets, and morphs that seemingly vanish into oblivion requiring several reloading attempts.
    Regardless, I can wait as long as it takes to get it right, and you have my utmost respect.

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    1. I'm not entirely sure why DAZ models are slow, unless you're talking about DSON, but it could be because when they load, it actually gets assembled on the spot with a lot of channels, whereas Poser's models are probably pre-assembled... I think. But as far as I know, Poser's CR2 hasn't really changed, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.

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  3. Are you wanting to do texture conversion on the fly at load time? If so, I can't help. There are several tools that will convert textures for use. You would need to look at them and evaluate suitability, I only know that they exist, not how well they work. To wit:

    2nd Skin 2 by Dimension3D at R’osity
    Texture Transformer by Blacksmith3D
    Utilities 2 - Vol4 - Materials by Semidieu at RuntimeDNA

    If this helps, cheers. Otherwise, sorry.

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    Replies
    1. oh anything helps man! Thanks for this, sorry for the late response! I checked out Blacksmith's stuff and at first I thought it was only through templates, but the new software seems more flexible. I still need to double check it all. The whole idea is I need to get a simple converter going for customers to convert their own textures.

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  4. Am intermediate with C#, I suck at UV mapping. Wish I was more knowledgeable to be able to help.

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    Replies
    1. hey thanks man, sorry for the late reply!

      Well, its actually just string reading and parsing, mathematics and geometry. If I get round to it I'll post another blog post and send out the schematic to any responders.

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  5. Just make sure that isn't a locomotive approaching, bubba! Take care...I'm off to West Texas tomorrow!! See you and the girls when I return....

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    Replies
    1. hehe yeah I've had that steam engine barging at me a few times these last few weeks. Took a bit of a breather! Hope you have fun in Texas bud!

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Hey, because of a sudden influx of spam, I need to moderate comments from now on, unfortunately. I'll try find a work-around in the meanwhile. Cheers!