Equity 4.0

[hgt_terry]

Equity 4.0

Equity is in development the idea is to make an Actor viewer/editor something lacking in the RF community as a complete package. At the moment i am concentrating on the viewer which should tell you everything about the Actor. One key thing is to allow the viewer to import / export in different files formats.

Things Done :-Version Build 160308 05 -Sunday

Actor Splitter:- Decompliles the loaded actor into Motions files,texture files and .Bdy files
more formats will be added in the next version such as Lut and geometry files.

Motion Time and Speed:- This as been improved in this version the motion file plays completly through its motion and can now be speeded and slowed down.

3D Mouse Control:- Moving the 3D view is easier just click on the Pan Rotate Zoom ect buttons and hold down left mouse in the 3D view to navigate.

Things To Be Done Next Version

Display Texture on the Actor:-Display and edit Actor texture on the fly then when you are happy with your work rebuild the actor and save it.

This is what will make Equity come alive the ability to edit things such as textures motions bones and geometry and then rebuild the actor and is the Goal of Equity.

Download at http://hgtsoftware.com/software1.htm

Thanks any ideas please let me now such as the brush to actor post sounds good for equity to do this as an automated procedure.

[bernie]

Thanks for the update. Very useful tool.
Please would it be possible to support 32 bit .tga for the textures as well as .bmp in the editing bit when you do it? It's used for transparency in the actor.

[hgt_terry]

Thanks bernie

As far as Equity is concernd its not a problem But when rebuilding the Actor I dont know at the moment if it supports the file format you are on about.

Do you use it just to edit or is this format stored in the actor.
Please let me Know
And in any case i will add it to Equity

Thanks Terry

[bernie]

Yes the actor supports it but the only way to get it in to the actor at the moment is to compile with a dummy .bmp format in Astudio and then use the skin replacer tga2gebmp2.exe that comes with rf to replace the .bmp with .tga file. The skin replacer is a bit unstable as it crashes if you try to load a second texture without first closing it down and then restating it again. Astudio does not support the .tga format and at the moment an actor with a .tga texture won't decompile the .tga texture.

[hgt_terry]

Hello bernie again

I see the procedure you create a dummy bmp and then use more software to replace it.

Well the good news is if the actor supports it you can work on the the tga format live and Equity will add it to the Actor saving time.

I first need to up date Equity for the next Release 23/03/08 which will Deal with .bmp format But i will include the tga file format in the release after that.

I will stay in touch with you as i do that.

Thanks Again
Terry

PS
This is the type of thing that i need to know Thanks Again bernie

[bernie]

Thanks terry, much appreciated.

[metal_head]

that's awesome dude,but I want to ask when I decompiled the actor for example Virgil.act I edited the texture than converted the bdy file back to act file and the texture was untouched. how can I edit the texture of the actor (sorry for the stupid question)

[scott]

well this seems like an exelent time to ask for such a feature i do belive that this may infact make RF more powerful by making the actor support easier, as it is, if you build an actor from a model it is lumped and loaded as one model, for obvious reasons level design can not be made in this way because of optomisation.

the idea i am asking is to be able to export the model to severel .acts, 2 ways wich would be exelent is by texture, so every object within the model with the same texture will be exported as one .act, this would be done for all textures used in the entire model, the other wich would be more powerful and would possibly mean could make entire levels in a 3d programe is to export to .act using groups, within most modeling apliaction each new object is a different group, this means if you make corridoors and large buildings that it could be split into lots of smaller actor files and would make loading and rendering alot easier on the engine.

the problem with that is all the actor entities would be in the same place, not sure how RF handles rendering of acts, weather its proximity or sight of the actual entity point or the actual geometry.

my final idea is if this is possible then to get an offset value of the center of each new model in x,y,z co-ords compared to the original entire model, these figures could be outputed in a text file with the offset values that would be enterd into RF.

an example of what i mean

here we have 3 cubes (could be rooms or could be objects within a room)


the center of the model would be the red ball, RF would render all of that even if not all of it is visable, now my idea would make the current single model into 3 .acts each cube is a different group and a different texture, though i made it have different textures but could easily have the same one.

each of the 3 .act files could have the same center as the red ball, in wich case you would add 3 entities at the same position, alternativly, you could give each of the 3 .acts a new center each, this would be located in the actual center of the new models but would have a text file output on how far that center has moved from the original (red ball) center.

[Jay]

the problem with that is all the actor entities would be in the same place, not sure how RF handles rendering of acts, weather its proximity or sight of the actual entity point or the actual geometry.

my final idea is if this is possible then to get an offset value of the center of each new model in x,y,z co-ords compared to the original entire model, these figures could be outputed in a text file with the offset values that would be enterd into RF.

I know from personal experience that RF looks if the bounding box of the actor is visible. (So it is the geometry. At least it's like that for StatciMeshes, and Levels will certainly be composed of several StaticMeshes) The offset idea would only complicate thinghs because then you had to enter those values into RF. For my terrains i export several actors and put them onto the exact same spot and still visibility calculation is done properly (and it does not render the ones not seen, so this is also a great way to optimize terrains), and since fixed lod calculation is now based on the center of the bounding box, there will be no problems with that.

I personally think that your ideas are some of the best ideas to improve RF i have heard in a long time. I'd personally go for the groups idea. Terrains and Actor-Levels will finally be a piece of cake!

Oh, and hgt_terry, i really appreciate the work you do. It will enhance RF greatly to finally have an own modeller.

[Sph!nx]

Excellent, hgt_terry! Looking foreward to this! Good luck!

[scott]

well if RF hanldes the centering thing alright then i think that issue will be fine, the thing that made me come up with this idea, i have not tried this yet, but i have a model imported into RF, frame rate is exelent until i put z sorting on, without this all the alpha masked objects are not shown in the correct order, i am hoping that spliting the model into severel .acts would help solve this issue, i never thought about terrains or stuff like that, and LoD easily implemented aswel i think this could be an easy but powerful feature to implement compared to other ways going about trying to get the same goal.

hgt_terry, if you think this is possible then i would be willing to help you out as much as possible, i do not know programing as i am an artist but i would be able to test and give constructive feedback on your application.

[hgt_terry]

Hello Everyone

Well ive just finished work and sat in my commputer chair
and looking forward to working on Equity.

I will get round to ansering you all but some very good ideas Thanks.

First thing is the actor postion can be set in the entity but you could set the acto in Equity
and rebuild the actor. now in the entity setting in rf just place at 0,0,0 of course editing
could be tricky. Sounds like An editor is needed i will play with the idea in Equity but
it could become much for 1 program and would split it Equity for Editing the Actor and Somthing
to place actors to getter by the offset in a visual editor.

The other good idea is the making actors by the texture so if virgls
arm was one texture you could export it as an actor just his arm would be visible so then export virgle
with no arm then place the to actors together 0,0,0 you could make virgils arm come away with motion or two seperate motions.

you could make explosion scenes all sorts of things GOOD IDEA and wont take long to write first of
i need to get the texures in and display this my task for the weekend.

Will post when next version is done sunday i think

Thanks
Terry

[hgt_terry]

Things Done :-Version Build 240308 02 Monday Equity 4.1.0

Display Texture on the Actor Equity now displays the actor texture.
.
How to alter the texture First load an actor in to Equity. Then select the texture then click the edit button.
Then click the Save to Edit Button save and edit then reload the texture with the Load texture button.
that’s it.
One thing to note is you must rebuild the actor when you have finished to save the Changes Menu –Build-Rebuild Actor

Rebuild Actor

Things To Be Done Next Version
work on tga format:-Sart work on the format
work on Editing the mesh:-

Download at http://hgtsoftware.com/software1.htm

Please report any bugs
Thanks Terry

[bernie]

Thanks Terry ... works a treat. Really looking forward to the next bit (tga support).

[hgt_terry]

Hello bernie

i want to add tga file format in the next release could you do me a favour.

could you let me have a tga file and an actor with the tga file in it so i can view it.

sorry to be checky but it would speed things up my end

Thanks
Terry