I was compressing some of the structures for josephines the The Trial the Trail today. It is amazing how this tower looks even better with fewer triangles. I might still redo the texture though.

I really wish josephine would pick the green one. I love it much mroe than the purple one but its her call.



Here is the UV mesh. It took me forever to get it just right for painting in 2D and 3D.

I was cleaning up my office computer this afternoon and found a couple of unfinished projects. One was a fixed up model from my pull-a-tune project. I re-rendered it for nostalgia's sake and processed it with photoshop.

I made a little interactive environment (~5MB) using the shockwave exporter on maya. There is an avatar of me in the world. When you find it, it hides twice. After the last time, it speaks and becomes a link to my journal.

[size=m]SGI's Performer[/size]
Currently at UB our modeling for the VR environemnt based on SGI's Performer is limited to polygon models. A newer version of Performer (3.1.1) does offer some limited support for NURBS and subdivision models. Version 3.1 also offers a native Maya plugin for Maya 4.5.

[size=m]Creating models for Performer[/size]
Because we are using Performer 3.0.1 I will be talking about polygon modeling exclusively. Just because we are making our final export as a polygon mesh, does not mean that we are limited to polygons when modeling. Examples, the theatre curtains below.





[size=m]UV mapping polygon objects[/size]
Once your model is created and converted to polygons it is best to texture it using one single texture map. Performer, accets texture maps of any size, but must natively convert them to powers of 2, so it makes sense to start with textures that are powers of 2. E.g. 128 x128, 1024x 1024, they do not have to be proportional e.g. 128 x 512.

Using a single texture map has several advantages over multiple texture images.

[list]
Saves on RAM. Only one textuer needs to load into video am. There is also much less wasted space on a texture.
Easy to organise, one texture file per object
Texture image can span across polygon borders.
[/list]

In the below example I created a model with very low poly cont, textured it using Cinema 4Ds Bodypaint and then exported it using Kaydara's FBX format into Maya 6. The FBX format is a universal 3D model format for moving meshes between modeling and animation packages. Alias just bought kaydara and has promised to continue development of the free plugins. they can be found at





Brought into Maya for further manipulation and rendering.



[size=m]Reducing Polygons[/size]
Reducing Polygons is vital when working in a Realtime environment. The fewer polygon in the final mesh, the better. Maya's polygon reduction tools are excellent at reducing the number of polygons in an object and most often preserve the texture coordinates very well. make sur eto use the heads up display to see details. FOund in Display ->Heads up Display -> polycount





[size=m]Checking Normals[/size]
Make sure the object has polygon normals facing outward. In maya this is found under Display -> Polygon Component -> normals

[size=m]Obect Axis[/size]
Make sure to center the object axis where you want the scaling and rotation and transormatiosn to occur. In maya this is done by hitting the insert key and moving the axis where you want it to be.

If the model is going to be moved around in the scene, it may be wise to center it at 0,0,0 in the world coordinate system. If it is part of a statiic envirnment, you may want to export it with the transformation already made, so that those calculations don't have to be made by the GPU during processing.

[size=m]Exporting[/size]
You may want to change to z-up in maya. This is done in the preferences as performer is Z up. This can also be done afterwards by performing a rotation on the model. It is, however, easiest to do it at this stage in the process.

Next, enable the obje xport plugin in Maya and export the object to obj. If you have performer installed you can now go ahead and convert the model to a pfb using the pfconv command at the command prompt. This can also be done in linux afterwards. Change to the folder with the obj model, mtl file, and texture file.

Make sure the ob
ject texture is in rgb fo
rm
at. If it is not, simply convert it using phothsop or the gimp and rename all the file ending to .rgb in the .mtl file. Then type the following to convert

pfconv input_filename output_filename

To view your model in performer, make sure you are still in the directory with the pfb model and type
perfly your_model.pfb

Edit the .mtl file and change all Kd calues to 1.0 instead of 0.0 and reconvert if you object appears black.




You can find example models from the project here:

I was working on some really low poly heads with hair to demonstrate how few polygons can still confer an idea of the subject. It's kind of like line drawing with few lines.







Here I made the hair bigger than the head, so that it looks like a hood.

Well, I am still working on this VR world for Josephine. My version of the cat monkey doesn't look like how she wants it probably but I fell in love with it now after 8 hours and its not going to change much.

I am working on some new models. the best part is that you can view them in 3D if you have java installed on your browser. Check it out.

No one seems to be using any flash stuff. Should we host a class maybe? I wouldn't mind teaching it. Anyone else want to teach with me?

::Download Flash SWF::

Turn the volume up to hear my new test of the flash system. This should make it really easy for you to get your flash on the web.

::Download Flash SWF::