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Dark GDK / loading character with animation SLOOOWWW

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TheeLord
16
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Joined: 23rd Jan 2008
Location: Chicago
Posted: 14th Nov 2011 06:45
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I have a character created, it is about 550 faces and it has about 250 frames of animation currently. When I try to load him into the game it stalls for about 3 minutes, WAYYYY to long for just one character, imagine if there were dozens of different models =( I even have enhanced animation and pre-loading and then loading the animation files separately doesn't help much.

How do you guys handle this? Help please =(
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Hassan
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Location: <script> alert(1); </script>
Posted: 14th Nov 2011 12:53
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is it .3ds? this format sometimes takes ages to load, try to convert it to .X, or better yet, .DBO

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Matty H
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Joined: 7th Oct 2008
Location: England
Posted: 14th Nov 2011 16:05
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Yeah, I had this problem with my laptop and I think I now know the issue.

When you load anything which is not dbo then GDK converts it into dbo internally. I suspect that dbo data contains information for the size of the animated model and perhaps its limbs. I think it iterates through every frame and calculates its boundaries, this is a guess, if I'm not correct then it will be something similar I suspect.

Anyway, simple solution is to save all your 3D media as dbo, this format holds all the information needed by GDK without the waiting.

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TheeLord
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Posted: 14th Nov 2011 23:15
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Wow thanks, I hope this takes care of it. I have it in .x format now. What's the best program to get my model into .dbo?
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Mr Bigglesworth
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Posted: 15th Nov 2011 04:51 Edited at: 15th Nov 2011 04:52
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Quote: "Wow thanks, I hope this takes care of it. I have it in .x format now. What's the best program to get my model into .dbo?"


I use FragMOTION to animate, it also supports .x and .dbo files, perfect for conversions.

Here: http://www.fragmosoft.com/

It isn't free, but you can download a trial to do what you need. You could also write a quick program in DarkGDK to save it for you also.
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TheeLord
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Posted: 15th Nov 2011 06:23
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I actually used the dbo conwerter downloadable from the forums here somewhere. Works so much better!! Takes 1 second to load instead of 2 minutes, so so many thanks guys! I had some issue seeing the mesh when using the fragmotion exporter.

Thanks again guys!!
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Matty H
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Posted: 15th Nov 2011 16:13
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Good you got that sorted.

There is a command to save the object, I think its dbSaveObject() or something like that

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Mister Fuzzy
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Joined: 27th Feb 2011
Location: XNA
Posted: 21st Nov 2011 21:41 Edited at: 21st Nov 2011 21:42
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Since the engine runs on DX, .x models textured by .dds is the best way to go, speedwise, because directx supports these formats directly. I've used models MUCH larger than what you described, and usually they take only a fraction of a second to load.

Tunnel vision yet? Have a carrot!
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Matty H
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Posted: 22nd Nov 2011 10:45
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Quote: "Since the engine runs on DX, .x models textured by .dds is the best way to go, speedwise, because directx supports these formats directly. I've used models MUCH larger than what you described, and usually they take only a fraction of a second to load."


This is not true, although I see your reasoning.

DarkGDK does use DirectX but it has its own file format(dbo) which is the most efficient.

Unless you have come across an instance where dbo took longer to load?

It's important to note that the x file loading time issue does not happen on all machines, it takes forever on my laptop but not on my desktop.

It is advised somewhere in the official documentation that you should save all your 3D media as dbo before shipping the product.

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Hassan
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Posted: 24th Nov 2011 18:29
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dbo should be faster, although .x is the DirectX format, it is pretty much "general", but the dbo is dedicated for dbp/dgdk (my old format used to be 5-10x faster than .x)

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