3D-Inferno
News Archive 2004
News Archive 2006
News Archive 2009
 
Diverse Jme Mangalore Nebula Project1 Project2 Tabletop

News upto 2005

Oct 29, 2004
The code merger from radonlabs brings an annoying hardcoded module preselection with it and some minor changes in gui handling. Anyway I have the rubyserver actualized to the current source and now the Quake 2 Interpolator and the water algorithms source packages are ready for download. Just head over to the download section and have fun with your favourite q2 models appearing in Nebula2.
Oct 18, 2004
Two months have gone now since the last update. So what's new ? I have updated the md2 interpolator for nebula 2, ported the water code to N2 and written an exporter for static meshes for the free modeller gMax and commercial heavy weight 3D Studio Max. Only the exporter is for you at the moment. Max script so to say, source included, with a little documentation for exporting stuff in gMax. You can find it in the download section. Other things I'v done is modelling so don't expect much from me now :-) Next week I will release the new Quake 2 Interpolator and the actuall nWaterserver sources into the public as soon as I have incorporated the last changes from the cvs update imposed by the Nebula 2 SDK merge. Not sure if as download or as a contributed module in nebula's cvs. So that's all right now, stay tuned!
Aug 18, 2004
Long time has passed with nothing happening on the website. But I have not been that lazy. Just not passed on everything to the website. I have been busy addapting an ai scripting and messaging system as described in Game Gems Volume I which I have now completed. I have created an entity system which sends messages and updates it's state based on timed messages instead of polling. Next thing I have been working on is an spheretree implementation as described in Game Gems valume II. The spheretree will be used to cull away objects, visibility determination, collision help and fast object lookup. The implementation is finished, the visual presentation not. As soon as I can show something I will post a link for download. And for anybody working with the waterserver, or the nmd2 implementation here's the news: I will port both to nebula 2. So be patient folks.
May 01, 2004
Updated the nrubyserver as the recent changes in nebula 2 have brought some new script dependencies (a gui server for nebula 2 finally). The source is in the cvs, and as always in the download section. Other stuff was not updated as content creation has some priorities at the moment.
Feb 11, 2004
nRubyserver is ready for Nebula 2. I finished the the porting of the nebula 1 version. Just drop by the download section, or look into the contrib directory of the current cvs on sourceforge.
Jan 19, 2004
I have updated my md2 mesh animator for nebula 1 which now does not use stl anymore and checks the type of the provided quake 2 file. I found out that there are many files around having an mdl ending but have nothing to do with quake 2 models. So here's the update.. In addition I have been working on a ruby extension for nebula. Tcl is quite annoying with its braces and syntax restrictions. Ruby is simple to learn and write and very powerfull. If you want to have a look at it you can grab it here. The porting of ruby to nebula 2 should be quite easy but I still do not like the idea of creating an extra workspace in the new build system just to have all the nebula 2 stuff + ruby. What about extensions other people conrtibute, well they again have to be mangled manually into the new build system. Not an improvement from my pov. But anyway, nebula2 is the buzz so I'll be porting the whole stuff to nebula 2. Any volunteers ? :-)
In the meantime work goes on in content and scripting creation for my space fighter demo. Scripting and interaction will be in ruby and made public as soon as I have some good shots. By the way I cannot omit to point you at the site of Alex Kireev with his great release of a very cool gui (called AKGui) for nebula 1 !! It's hot, no joke.
Nov 11, 2003
Some days have passed by and the watertool is finished. It is a windows executable which creates a wavefront file for each frame of water animation. You can specify the sizes, water algorithms used and other things. You do not need nebula to run this executable. I also added a scripting example for playback in nebula. It creates the same water as seen in the water section. Have fun.
Oct 31, 2003
Happy halloween! Guess what I just read on the epicgames site !

Want to harness the power of the second-generation Unreal engine for your
non-game application? The UnrealEngine2Runtime lets you work with the core
Unreal technology without the video game trappings. Plus, it's free for
non-commercial use!


Yes right ! free for non-commercial use !! Have a look at the UnrealEngine2Runtime Website.


Oct 16, 2003
Again weeks passed by and I am working on a LOD/visibility technique similar to the one used in the Playstation 2 game Smuglers Run. As I am working on this I thought it would be great to release the current (version 0.5) working set of waternode/waterserver for anyone interrested. As soon as this is finished and I have the other points on my water todo finished I will move on to a portal renderer and scene manager for nebula. I released some design sketches for project2. It seems to be quite easy to find real samples if you live in a country with medieval history. Feel invited to have a look at the sketches and real samples. One thing I' d like to mention is nebula 2. Nebula 2 is all around the talks nowadays but it seems to me more a hype than a working solution. There are to many things to be done by each developer himself.
Jul 24, 2003
A long time passed since the last update of my working on 3d inferno. I reengineered the water classes to remove dependencies. Not everybody likes downloading additional libraries. I removed the stl and fftw lib references and switched back to Chen's and my own implementations. Speed increased by ca. 500% by doing so. Normals are also available now but I changed back to basemaps of power 2 sizes. You can read more about it here. You can await a new official release as soon as I finished a seam creation for tiling. Read more about the progress here. The other thing keeping me busy was Enter the Matrix and Warcraft III only the last game being a real pleasure.
Feb 24, 2003
I released the version 0.4 of nwater. It is an early preview version showing the direction where the package is going and what is already done. It requires an up to date STLport and Fftw release. You can grab the files form the download section....
Feb 18, 2003
Had some problems with stitching water tiles together but solved it with a quick and dirty triangle strips algorithm. It showed up that three people in total were experimenting with Chen's water. So I helped Ken a little with his implementation of nocean which has some nice features like frensel terms for water coloring, normal computation and a boat sailing on it. Yet I decided to work on my own code as it is a little different approach from Ken's. So Version 0.5 of the nWater package is soon to be finished. Just a little polish and tests with the current cvs changes of nebula. Read more here....
Feb 10, 2003
Been a while on skiing vacation in the Erzgebirge in Germany with nearly no time for coding. The choppy waves algorithm works, Gerstnerwaves also. Now the implementation of a waterserver, waternode (1:n) system started. It is still not clear which LOD technique to choose, so for the moment only brute force fills are used.
Dec 30, 2002
I have been busy for a while on different things. First of all I must point you to two important websites. One for nebula and the other one for 3d development in general. Take a look at Alex Kirrev's site . It is full of great own nebula resources and linkes to most of the sites you need to know about. The other site you must see is Gottfried Chen's site . A very good designed engine with top effects. Gottfrieds implementation of diverse water algorithms led to the idea this is an absulute must for nebula. So I emailed with him and here is the result, the first algorithm is ported and working (statistical water) the next one ist to come soon (choppy waves). You can find screenshots here, source will follow as soon as I have the choppy waves implemented and found out how to texture it more like Gottfrieds water.
Nov 23, 2002
Worked on on the Named Hierarchy Browser as I need some level editor for my small space game and other projects with nebula too. Now version 0.7 is available with some new features. You can now modify properties of nodes, OK just two at the time BUT: everybody is invited to write plugin tcl scripts for any additional nodes. A simle pluging can be easily created by placing a new tcl file with read, update new and write functions to be able to modify the properties of the node. Just grab the actual release from here
Oct 21, 2002
I have finished another UNION fighter for Project1 called Blade and posted the image of the scout ship. There are still textures to be done for the fighters but we are lacking of texture artists. So if you'd like to contibute textures to a space sim join us at Collapsarcreations. Another thing I have been playing around was modeling of buildings for Project2. I also tried some horrible textures on the buildings. As soon as I have the details like chimneys, windows and doors modelled I can start the LOD tests with modular geometry. This will have to go for next month I think. Last two goodies are a fixed link to the nmd2 interpolator sourcecode only version and added the link for the 2d bounding box code for Nebula.
Sep 21, 2002
I've been working on an example to move objects on terrain. It is a quite general example although it is realized with Nebula's scripting interface. Another thing I'll release soon is a 2D bbox class for Nebula which I have done a while ago. Project1 is also advancing, having finished the raw texture map for the lance fighter. Next thing on TODO for Project1 is to update the design document with xsl tags. For now you can read the article Moving on terrain here.
Jul 31, 2002
I'm currently working on the new texture for the alien fighter from project 1 and on the logo for 3d-inferno. The efforts to detach the nebula browser from the tekdemos has delivered no result so far. I get crazy errors stating missing tk library, or tcl or package bwidget. Just no good.
Besides this the story for Project 2 is finished and I am creating models for a first test based on nebula. You can read the rest in section LOD thesis of Project 2
Jun 06, 2002
I just again completed something new for nebula. I think the 3D-Inferno engine is now at a complete hold, same goes for project2. The lack of a visual hierarchy browser which several people did complain about now has an end. I found a very usefull library which is capable of tree building. It's in the free Bwidget package which is also available at sourceforge.
You can also customize the browser and display an own image for each node class. Just place the image into the appropriate directory and the browser will use it for you. Just grab the actual release from here
Apr 11, 2002
The Quake 2 interpolator is now in beta 2 stadium. The only thing left to do is normal computation so that directx lighting will work correct and the newly added precache functionality. Don't know when I'll be quit with it, as it has all I need.
Mar 03, 2002
Moving to a new provider. I'm currently working on a Quake model loader. First I thought about splitting the model animations into nebula meshes and then create the animation by dynamic interpolation with nebula means. Now I decided to go with loading the model and its animations completely from the mdl file and then do an internal interpolation into a dynamic vertex buffer. Animation are switched by setting .setanimation("run")
Nov 22, 2001
I'm moving to another town, so I got little spare time. Worked on with the Nebula Articles and tested the exporter with the nebula shell, got some trouble with the shaders. But I trie to get behind shader magic. So now I can start to create small tutorials explaining the scripting classes and their working. Otherwise I still got to do some chapters about installation of Nebula.
Okt 21, 2001
The exporter is now ready to export static meshes. Now I'll start the export of blend animations. That's all for today.

Sep 28, 2001
Updated the Nebula Exporter. The filenames of some materials caused the exporter to crash. On objects where no name is present std_mtl.bmp is inserted. Anyway this feature is still pre alpha and not activated.

Another thing I've thought about was the automatic copy of materials to the data/textures directory but so far, 3D Studio causes me haedaches if I try to access non BMP files with the sdk functions. Anyone ever copied material with MAX-functions to bmp's ? Any help here is appreciated. I've decided to freeze this feature until I see any solution for it.


Aug 23, 2001
Started the site about my little 3d engine and my stuff created for the nebula 3d engine.



Something missing? Mail to cc


2009-06-01
WoW Importer for Max
The World of Warcraft tool for 3D Studio has been updated. It now converts model files from WoW Client version 2.x (upto 2.7) and displays correct animations for multi mesh models. The script can be found here....
2007-03-07
nGUI explained
If you ever wanted some more details on the nebula2 nGUI System you can find it in the nGUI System article.
2006-10-17
Mangalore entity ID's
If you need information about the mangalore entity ID usage have a look here..
2006-08-06
Mangalore Articles
Added a new section about the mangalore game framework from radonlabs. The section contains some articles about my experience with mangalore. Read more here:
2006-03-10
Free models
Finally some free models for the Radonlabs SDK. You can download them here.