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3 Dimensional Chat / JTEdit 0.18 released - free 3D modeler/skinner/animator

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TheSquid
21
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Joined: 29th Sep 2003
Location: Ohio
Posted: 1st Dec 2003 20:02
Well, for starters, I am using version 0.23. I was planning on downloading 0.24 tonight. I'll try it again after that and let you know what happens.

Other than that, I don't know what else I can tell you. I also received this message when opening up the infamous "alien model" animations, though I didn't have any of the problems other people have reported.
mm0zct
21
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Joined: 18th Nov 2003
Location: scotland-uk
Posted: 2nd Dec 2003 22:56 Edited at: 2nd Dec 2003 22:57
hi, thanks for trying but i am now sure it was just my pc acting up so you would have no chance of recreating the error, my pc no longer seems to have this problem either and i haven't changed anything so don't worry about it, great program btw

AMD duron 1.3G, 640Mb ram, 40Gb HD, ati saphire radeon 9600 atlantis w/128mb ddr ram, good creative-labs soundcard, cd-rw + dvd drives.
JAT
22
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Posted: 3rd Dec 2003 20:02 Edited at: 4th Dec 2003 08:20
mm3zct,

Thanks.

I had a mysterious crash the other day upon trying to open a new document (not closing it), so there appears to be some problem I haven't figured out how to reproduce yet. I hope to have either a fix or an internal work-around in the the next release for that crash, at least.

All,

I finished the new 3D select tool and a couple other new features, so I'm going to focus on some bug fixing until the next release in a week or so. Keep the bug reports coming in. Please do include any model you have problems with (if applicable) so I can reproduce the problem. Also, to avoid filling up this thread, I'd encourage you to make use of my forum at http://www.jtgame.com/forum to ask questions or post bug reports.

Thanks.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
ZomBfied
22
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Posted: 6th Dec 2003 01:38
First, Wow.

Second. I noticed when I tried to load one of the darkmatter2 people x models, only the gun shows up...
JAT
22
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Posted: 8th Dec 2003 16:31
ZomBfied,

Which one? I tried several.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
ZomBfied
22
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Posted: 8th Dec 2003 18:12
The male crew. Anybody with a gun, actually. Maybe it loads the meshes separately and I'm just looking at one of them, but I can't seem to find the other one...
JAT
22
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Posted: 9th Dec 2003 14:52
Oops, I didn't notice the reference to DarkMatter2, which I don't have, as I only have the first DarkMatter. Could you send me the model and its textures, for testing purposes only?

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
JAT
22
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Posted: 9th Dec 2003 18:39
I released JTEdit 0.25 with new selection features and a number of bug fixes. See especially the new 3D selection tool that uses a bounding image to select the enclosed items, making it easier to select from depth-overlapping items. There are still a couple of .x file-related bugs that have been reported to me (VIM.x and DarkMatter2), but I haven't been able to fix these yet, so stay tuned.

Having gotten out version 0.25, I'm going to skip ahead and work on the long-awaited animation overhaul. This will include filling in missing features in the Animator palette such as the Move, Duplicate, and Scale features, implementing undo/redo, and fixing cut and paste problems. I'll also be adding an IK tool and related joint parameters to the Joint parameter palette. The IK tool will be like an enhanced translation tool that does the IK calculation and application. Its parameter palette might contain a joint tree control for selecting the anchor, target, or current joint for bringing up a Joint parameters palette.

Of course, I'll be taking breaks to fix bugs. I don't know when the next release will be. I might spread this all out over 1, 2 or 3 releases, depending on how difficult it is, and how much bug-fixing I do in-between.

Thanks for all the bug reports. Keep them coming! Don't forget to always include the offending model file or steps for reproduction.

Take care, and have a Merry Christmas!

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
JAT
22
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Posted: 3rd Jan 2004 09:05
I've refreshed the JTEdit release (http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit) because of a major regression bug with the Extrude tool crashing. Thanks to Tim for reporting this.

I can't believe JTEdit was out there with this bug for a month before someone reported it. Please don't assume I know about problems already unless they are on my bug list page. I really need an automated test suite, but that would be too much work to implement for now, so I'll just have to come up with a reasonable sanity check before I release, and live with the occassional regression.

This release also features a first cut of the new Inverse Kinematics tool, kind of still in the middle of development, as it only works for an anchor joint that is a direct ancestor of the joint being moved, I haven't done the anchor graphic, it only works for skinned mesh models (not frame-based), and I've not written any documentation for it yet. I've also added joint parameters for limiting the joint rotations.

Find the IK tool with the Transform tools. Basically you click on a joint in the joint tree control and press the Anchor button to mark it as an "anchor". Then, with the Joint checkbox checked, you can drag a grandchild joint around and watch the other joints rotate to track it. I'm still having some problems with singularities and problems with multiple rotations on a joint, and I want to make it work with child nodes as anchors also, so stay tuned for more. In all, this is a pretty painful bit of work given that I'm mathematically challenged, but seeing things start to work makes it worth it!

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
walaber
21
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Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 5th Jan 2004 17:00
I was messing around with the IK today, and I just want to say NICE JOB!! It worked really well for me, made it very very easy to pose my character!!

Overall, JTEdit is just a fantastic program- keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!
JAT
22
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Posted: 5th Jan 2004 18:32
Walaber,

Thanks for the feedback!

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
TheSquid
21
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Joined: 29th Sep 2003
Location: Ohio
Posted: 7th Jan 2004 01:11
Has anyone else experienced a tremendous slowdown while using the animation tool? I've noticed this in both versions 0.25 and 0.26. I didn't have this problem in version 0.24. I'm running on Windows 98, if that makes a difference.
JAT
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Posted: 7th Jan 2004 16:37
What kind of slowdown? I.e. is the software unnaturally slow in keeping up with an animation, or is the animation rate not what you expect, or is operating the UI or doing transformations slow? Please help me understand the specifics.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
TheSquid
21
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Location: Ohio
Posted: 7th Jan 2004 19:49
The software is slow in reacting the mouse clicks, scrolling, things of that nature. If I had to guess (and I never thought to check), it seems like system resourses become a problem.

Remember, this only seems to happen to me once I open the animation tool.
Guyon
22
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Joined: 6th Jun 2003
Location: United States
Posted: 8th Jan 2004 18:09
Hi JAT,

How well does JTEdit work with Cartography Shop? A small chat with Josh Klint might boost both of your programs.
TheSquid
21
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Location: Ohio
Posted: 9th Jan 2004 17:26
I think the problems I'm experiencing are worse than I originally stated. I was using JTEdit last night and had several issues.

1) Changing the scale in the Z axis was very buggy. I was finding it nearly impossible to make the object smaller, moving the mouse in any direction would make the object bigger. The only view that seemed to make the object smaller on the Z axis was the free form view, top or bottom would always make the object larger.

2) Once I had the program open and had loaded a model, my system resources dropped to 33% free. I couldn't even minimize my JTEdit session to see my desktop. I am going to assume that the system resource problem is what caused the animation palette response issue I reported earlier.

I never had a problem with issue number two until I downloaded version 0.25 and 0.26. You might already know about issue number 1, I had never noticed it until last night though.
walaber
21
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Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 9th Jan 2004 21:20
yeah I`ve had similar problems with JTEdit, not just scaling though.. generally when moving/rotating/scaling something in the orthogonal views (front/left/top), the two axis' NATIVE to that view work fine, but when you hold down CTRL and drag (to adjust the axes perpendicular to the current view), there are some strange things. like the object will jump from positive to negative values with just a slight move of the mouse.


I've been getting around this problem by just switching to another view and then re-rotating/scaling/moving... but it's a problem that probably should be addressed.

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!
dhballer1
21
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Joined: 19th Oct 2003
Location: MA
Posted: 11th Jan 2004 06:25
JAT, have you tried these?
http://files.thegamecreators.com/newsletter/TGCChristmasPresentBIG.zip
JAT
22
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Joined: 7th Nov 2002
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Posted: 11th Jan 2004 07:07
TheSquid,

Regarding the slowdown on Windows98, since it appears to have happened starting in Version 0.25, it occured to me that it might be the change I made in that version to avoid the 100% usage indication in the performance meter. It seemed fine on WinXP and it didn't occur to me that it might behave differently on Windows98. I'll back out that change. Basically I added a sleep(0) call in the main loop as a yield, thinking that would return immediately if no other task was ready to run. The behavior must be different on Win98.

Also, a general performance tip. The Bigger Points rendering option that is turned on automatically with the Wireframe mode is much slower than the other render modes. Basically it quadruples the number of vertices rendered, and does so in software. Just activate each wireframe view and unclick the Bigger Points button. There is, however, some optimization work I need to do to both the wireframe and bigger points rendering. I need to deal with the backface culling and selection rendering in software, and it probably could be tightened up.

Also, if you are mainly using just one view, you could switch to Single View mode. Because it is only rendering one view instead of 4, it will be faster.

Guyon,

Sorry, I've not used Cartography Shop. However, my goal is to supplant it and all other level editors and modelers and become the Master of the Universe. However, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it.

TheSquid,

1. Regarding the scale tool, yeah, sorry I didn't notice that it was misbehaving. It's caused me lots of grief in the past to get it to work, so I'll have to give it some more attention.

2. Regarding the system resources, I assume you mean CPU utilization. Because JTEdit is based on a game engine, it renders in a loop whenever the system is idle and when JTEdit is the foreground application. Because of this it will still use a large percentage of CPU even when nothing apparently is happening. This shouldn't be a problem unless you are seriously doing some background processing, and even then, since JTEdit is using the idle cyles it shouldn't be too much of a downgrade on system performance.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
JAT
22
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Posted: 11th Jan 2004 07:32
dhballer1,

Thanks for sending me this reference. I hadn't heard of it.

Apparently JTEdit is having trouble with the DarkBasic2 actors, which are using a skinned mesh configuration I haven't seen. I'll get it to work.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
dhballer1
21
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Joined: 19th Oct 2003
Location: MA
Posted: 11th Jan 2004 19:29
No problem
TheSquid
21
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Joined: 29th Sep 2003
Location: Ohio
Posted: 12th Jan 2004 15:23
Thank you for your continued attention and prompt "tech support" on your product.

I would simply like to add that I am quite pleased with JT Edit and I have recently suggested it to a friend of mine who recently purchased DB Pro and needed a .x modeling software.
JAT
22
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Posted: 14th Jan 2004 20:03
Thanks for the feedback and recommendation!

I've updated the release with version 0.27.

This release features a little more work on the IK tool, but mainly is for fixing some of the reported bugs:

- I added an anchor graphic when the Inverse Kinematics tool is selected, and the means to select the anchor with the mouse.

- I fixed some problems with cutting and pasting geometry.

- I added normals to the pop-up menu that appears when the "Prompt" option is set in the Select tool.

- I fixed the bad tracking when scaling in the view Z direction.

- I fixed a couple of problems with loading .x skinned mesh models (i.e. from DarkMatter2). Unfortunately, when writing out the file, the frame organization is not exactly the same. The separate meshes for added accessories (like the shield and sword in one of the models) get written back as a separate skinned mesh instead of a separate frame. I don't know if this will be a problem or not relative to your usage of DarkBasic. If it is, I can probably put in some more work to change it.

- I fixed the "Unable to create Connector pen" message on Win98.

Sorry, but I was unable to reproduce the loading and animator tool performance problems that have been reported, hence I haven't been able to fix them yet. I was able to get access to a Win98 machine so I was finally able to fix the "Unable to create Connector pen" error message.

Stay tuned for more work on the IK tool and the Animator palette overhaul and outstanding bugs.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
JAT
22
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Posted: 14th Jan 2004 20:14
Whoops. I just realized I forgot to test the other skinned mesh model in the DarkMatter2 demo (viking.x), and found that it has other problems. I'll fix it and a few other outstanding bugs and release again next week. Sorry for the hassle.

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
TheSquid
21
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Joined: 29th Sep 2003
Location: Ohio
Posted: 14th Jan 2004 22:04
Thanks yet again for the quick turnaround on bug fixes. I can't wait to give this a try tonight. The "connector pen" fix alone is worth the download.
walaber
21
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Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 15th Jan 2004 05:06
the loading problem seemed to be on my end, after re-installing JTEdit as you instructed (by email) the program is running very fast and smooth.

now just waiting for the long-awaited animation tool update

the animator tool is definately usable right now, but a more complete tool would really speed up my modelling process!!

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!
TheSquid
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Location: Ohio
Posted: 15th Jan 2004 15:21
In using version 0.27 last night, I had the following issues:

1) Upon using the new version for the first time, any mouse movement in the view window would change the camera perspective, regardless of the tool selected. After restarting my PC, this problem went away. Thought it was worthy of mentioning though.

2) Using version 0.26, I created a large object by using the Add Object tool several times. This object will no longer load in version 0.27. I attempted to create another object in this same manner and the object I added did not save when I saved the model. Is there a new problem with the Add Object tool, or is there a problem reading the direct x syntax created in version 0.26? The model created in version 0.26 is 0.96 MB, so sending it to you isn't really an option on my dialup connection.

If you need further explaination, you can email me at [email protected] (home) or [email protected] (work 8 - 4 Eastern Time)
JAT
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Posted: 19th Jan 2004 19:52
Note that this thread has moved over to my forum at http://www.jtgame.com/forum.

In fact, it's a good idea that most questions and problem reports from JTEdit users be posted in the afore-mentioned forum so that this forum is not used as a JTEdit support forum. I will, however, until JTEdit becomes more widely known, continue to advertise new releases here, as long as they are welcome.

Thanks!

-John

John Thompson
http://www.jtgame.com/jtedit
Preston C
22
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Joined: 16th May 2003
Location: Penn State University Park
Posted: 20th Jan 2004 03:30
Hey Jat, got a bug for ya:

Whenever I click open, the program fails silently. Not sure, but it may be a problem on my end (I didnt uninstall before installing the new version). v0.17 would work fine for me though.

Windows XP Home Edition
Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz
512MB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128 MB

Cheers,
Preston


Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz 512MB Ram NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 128MB
AnDrEy
21
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Joined: 11th Jan 2004
Location: In Da Club
Posted: 24th Jan 2004 19:17
EXCELLENT PROGRAM
i really like it only problem when i try to apply texture it does not apply it, but only a similar color texture, should it be this way or is it just me?
OpticEvIl
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Posted: 30th Jan 2004 09:08
I have the same problem as Preston, will this be fixed soon?

http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=opticevil01272004174820&comments=no
walaber
21
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Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 30th Jan 2004 10:31
make sure you completely uninstall JTEdit before re-installing the newest version. that fixed problems for me.

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!
Preston C
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Location: Penn State University Park
Posted: 30th Jan 2004 14:39
Yep, its fixed over here. And I must say, the menu bar on the side is a much better improvement over the last version I used (0.17).

Cheers,
Preston


Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz 512MB Ram NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 128MB

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