Looking for a few brave souls - See the inner workings of geom files

[Killswitch]

Hey everyone. I'm looking for a couple of heroic type geeks to test out an app I made for Myth. It doesn't do much, but should be of great help for those trying to break down the GEOM tags for models. Oh, and it exports Myth models to Meshwork (cheap 3D program for Macs).

Public beta here:
Mac (OS X): geomview.sit
Windows (98-XP): geomview.zip

Hasn't been tested much. Just run it, click 'Open File' and choose a geom file (extracted already, of course). It'll break down the geom file into more manageable chunks.

If I hear that some people are interested, I'll probably continue working on it.

Killswitch

[mauglir]

I'm no programmer, but I do know quite a lot about creating models for Myth II. I'd be very interested in whatever you're working on.

[iron]

Hey Killswitch, great to see you back I've been waiting for the 2nd instalment of Malice ever since your screenshot of it in the Vista forum.

If you'd like to understand more of what goes on inside models/geometry tags to help with coding your tool (not that you seem to need a lot of help), please drop me a line - iron(at)projectmagma.net

[Graydon]

God...did I read that right? EXPORTS TO MESHWORK?! I love you! Hella nabbing that tool when i get home!

[Killswitch]

hey, Graydon - knock yourself out. :;):

That's kinda funny as Malice has this same export feature and has been out for years.

I'll keep you guys posted on any progress.

Killswitch

[Graydon]

I have malice....but I never really use it...I used it a few times for porting some TFL models over...thats about it. Good to know!

[Road]

On PC windows 2000 I get:
The dynamic link library Quesa.dll could not be found in the specified path.....

Failed assertion:4

Was XP berfor 2000?...does it work on windows 2000 or is my download bad?

[iron]

http://www.quesa.org/

Download the DLL and put it in the same folder as Geomview.

[Killswitch]

Oh, that Quesa thing: I already started implementing a 3D window in the app. Although you (the user) can't redily access the window, it still makes some calls to the Quesa library.

Iron has the solution - download and install the Quesa library.

Killswitch

[Industry]

PC version.
on double clicking:
Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3dSpace.Hither.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3dSpace.Yon.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.FieldOfView.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.SkyColor.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.AmbientLight.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.AmbientColor.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.FloodLight.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.FloodColor.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.FogStart.Set

Failed Assertion: 4
plugin.cpp 4988
Failure Condition: pluginEntryTable.GetEntry( entrypointName, out) can't find plugin method Rb3DSpace.WireFrame.Set

It then starts and displays all the cool goodness
Only problem in the program is on each tab (surfaces, vertices, facets, and unknown) the second text box descriptions are all messed up. It looks like the descriptions for each tab are all displayed for every tab (ie. the text overwrite each other and make the text indecipherable).

Otherwise pretty cool.
I don't have meshwork (as I am on a PC) but the export to Meshwork button works. It brings up a Save As dialog, completes successfully and pops up an OK dialog with "21" as message.


So where do you hide Malice?

Industry

[Industry]

Yeah, I should have read the posts more thoroughly. I copied quesa.dll into the same folder as geomview.exe and it came up fine without any of the failed assertion warnings. Other bugs still exist though.

[mauglir]

One thing I would really like to understand better is how Myth handles (or doesn't handle) depth sorting of faces. As some here know all too well, Myth does a poor job of properly rendering complex models -- surfaces that should appear behind another surface often appear just the opposite, forcing you to do a lot trial and error work with Vegas to get things sorted properly.

There is also the very annoying problem of model faces clipping when they don't line up perfectly with the edge of a mesh cell -- I suspect this problem is closely related to the depth sorting issue. My theroy here is that this clipping/blinking/breaking happens when Myth doesn't know whether to render the model face in front of, or behind a mesh cell, so it just always give priority to the mesh. Again, this problem can be solved by editing the tags in Vegas, but the options are limited, and you're almost always forced to choose the lesser of two (or more) evils.

Killswitch, Iron, or anyone else have any insight into these matters? I'm not necessarily looking for sollutions, just more facts so I can understand things better.

[Killswitch]

There is also the very annoying problem of model faces clipping when they don't line up perfectly with the edge of a mesh cell

I know what you're talking about. For example, the cathedral walls in 'Covenant' (TFL map played in M2). The bottom edges get all fluttery when you rotate the camera. Very annoying.

My assumption is that Bungie was aware of this, but couldn't quite every get it fixed 100%. My reason for this assumption is because in many models in M2, the model is given a 'ground' facet and then the mesh for that square is deleted. (For example, see 04rowboat_mode and 10 ship front model in Vegas.)

I wonder what would happen if you set a few of the facets to 2 sided? (View>Surfaces>Two Sided). Wonder if that would stop the fluttery-ness. Or just make it worse - must try this later...

As for the bugs in the Windows version, all I can say is it's extremely beta. Actually, it's really alpha. It was built in REALbasic on the Mac, and compiled into a Windows app by REALbasic. (Maybe their cross platform abilities not up to par? never! )

[iron]

I actually spent a lot of work on the cathedral trying to understand what had changed between that and TFL - in TFL there's no fluttering at all, and no gaps between the parts of the cathedral like there is when you place it in myth 2.

In short I found nothing to answer either question. I even experimented by replacing Myth 2's model rendering code with TFL's and still it fluttered (don't worry this never got anywhere near the source code repository).

I feel the error isn't in how it renders the model vs the mesh, but in how Myth 2 renders the mesh itself. You can stop the fluttering by setting the lower surfaces to "use closest Z" in Vegas, however this then causes the model to clip the heads off nearby units, shrubs etc.

Btw Killswitch did you get my reply to your email?

[Graydon]

Quick question Kill....I'm wondering when exporting models why it gives random number statements along with the OK? Is it related to how many faces/vertices the model you just exported has? I exported a few different .geoms and got several different numbers, some in the 200's others in the 20s. What's the deal?