I have an Open Simplex Terrain generation in Godot system based on the one showed in this video, and I was wondering the most simple way I could implement biomes like mesas, mountains, plains, etc. How would I alter the height different segments of the terrain while keeping them seamlessly connected, and also how would I change the intensity of the noise in these areas to make them flatter or higher?
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I have made a house (without roof yet) with some rooms in blender 2.9 and exported it to unreal engine 4. But in Unreal engine i can't move in it with the 3d standard third person character. I can only walk on it as it would be a closed cube or something.
What do i have to do, to be able to walk in it around?
UE is automatically generating a convex (i.e. with no holes, caves, dents, openings, etc.) collision mesh that essentially wraps the whole model. Possibly just a cube. There are a couple of things you can do.
Open the mesh in UE and set the collision complexity to 'use complex as simple'. This isn't advisable unless the mesh is very simple as it uses every polygon in the mesh to query collisions against.
or
Create a set of collision meshes - one for each element of the house (walls, floor, etc.) - and bring them in with the model. These must be convex in shape. See here: Static Mesh FBX Import. You must follow the correct naming convention for the FBX import to recognise them as collision meshes.
If your house model has low enough a polygon count that you would end up with as many polygons in your collection of collision meshes, number 1 saves you the trouble of number 2 (and might even save some memory).
Don't forget everything needs to be triangulated.
i am using multiple Kinects within the scene. So I need to calibrate them and find the extrinsic parameters like translation and rotation world coordinate system. Once I have that information, i can reconstruct the scene at highest level of accuracy. the important point is : i want to get submillimeter accuracy and may be it would be nice if i could use powerfull IR projector in my system. But i do not have any Background about IR sensor and calibration methods. So i need to know about tow subject : 1- is it possible to add IR LED illuminator to kinect and manage it? 2- if i could add how to calibrate my new system?
Calibration (determining relative transforms (rotation, scale, position)) is only part of the problem. You also need to consider whether each Kinect can handle the interference of the other Kinect's projected IR reference patterns.
"Shake n Sense" (by Microsoft Research) is a novel approach that you may be able to use that has been demonstrated to work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSBDY0RuhS4
Currently I'm working on a little project just for a bit of fun. It is a C++, WinAPI application using OpenGL.
I hope it will turn into a RTS Game played on a hexagon grid and when I get the basic game engine done, I have plans to expand it further.
At the moment my application consists of a VBO that holds vertex and heightmap information. The heightmap is generated using a midpoint displacement algorithm (diamond-square).
In order to implement a hexagon grid I went with the idea explained here. It shifts down odd rows of a normal grid to allow relatively easy rendering of hexagons without too many further complications (I hope).
After a few days it is beginning to come together and I've added mouse picking, which is implemented by rendering each hex in the grid in a unique colour, and then sampling a given mouse position within this FBO to identify the ID of the selected cell (visible in the top right of the screenshot below).
In the next stage of my project I would like to look at generating more 'playable' terrains. To me this means that the shape of each hexagon should be more regular than those seen in the image above.
So finally coming to my point, is there:
A way of smoothing or adjusting the vertices in my current method
that would bring all point of a hexagon onto one plane (coplanar).
EDIT:
For anyone looking for information on how to make points coplanar here is a great explination.
A better approach to procedural terrain generation that would allow
for better control of this sort of thing.
A way to represent my vertex information in a different way that allows for this.
To be clear, I am not trying to achieve a flat hex grid with raised edges or platforms (as seen below).
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I would like all the geometry to join and lead into the next bit.
I'm hope to achieve something similar to what I have now (relatively nice undulating hills & terrain) but with more controllable plateaus. This gives me the flexibility of cording off areas (unplayable tiles) later on, where I can add higher detail meshes if needed.
Any feedback is welcome, I'm using this as a learning exercise so please - all comments welcome!
It depends on what you actually want and what you mean by "more controlled".
Do you want to be able to say "there will be a mountain on coordinates [11, -127] with radius 20"? Complexity of this this depends on how far you want to go. If you want just mountains, then radial gradients are enough (just add the gradient values to the noise values). But if you want some more complex shapes, you are in for a treat.
I explore this idea to great depth in my project (please consider that the published version is just a prototype, which is currently undergoing major redesign, it is completely usable a map generator though).
Another way is to make the generation much more procedural - you just specify a sequence of mathematical functions, which you apply on the terrain. Even a simple value transformation can get you very far.
All of these methods should work just fine for hex grid. If artefacts occur because of the odd-row shift, then you could interpolate the odd rows instead (just calculate the height value for the vertex from the two vertices between which it is located with simple linear interpolation formula).
Consider a function, which maps the purple line into the blue curve - it emphasizes lower located heights as well as very high located heights, but makes the transition between them steeper (this example is just a cosine function, making the curve less smooth would make the transformation more prominent).
You could also only use bottom half of the curve, making peaks sharper and lower located areas flatter (thus more playable).
"sharpness" of the curve can be easily modulated with power (making the effect much more dramatic) or square root (decreasing the effect).
Implementation of this is actually extremely simple (especially if you use the cosine function) - just apply the function on each pixel in the map. If the function isn't so mathematically trivial, lookup tables work just fine (with cubic interpolation between the table values, linear interpolation creates artefacts).
Several more simple methods of "gamification" of random noise terrain can be found in this paper: "Realtime Synthesis of Eroded Fractal Terrain for Use in Computer Games".
Good luck with your project
I was wondering if I could get some advice on the best way to approach this.
I'm in the process of writing an emulator that runs old UK arcade fruit machines games that have 'feature boards'. The machines are similar to US slots. The actual board consists of many semi-transparent squares that are lit from behind (see image for an example). Image
What I'm looking to do is render a 3D representation of a machine by (preferably) using an open source 3D engine. What I'm not sure of is how best to approach the 'backlighting' effect of the individual squares of the feature board. A square can be individually turned on or off and dimmed to any level. I'm very experienced with C++ and assembly but fairly new to directx/opengl.
Bearing in mind there could be up to 512 lamps flashing/dimming individually, I'm guessing that using 'normal' lights behind semi-transparent textures would be too intensive? I've read up about pixel and vertex shaders, and was wondering if this would be the best way to approach the effect? (eg split the feature board up into individual textured polygons for each square, but join them all together so it looks as one)
Thanks for any advice
I have some experience with Blender such that I can make a semitransparent cylinder of specified dimensions and small spheres. I want to (for a chemistry tutorial video explaining temperature and heat concepts) write a program that will:
Set up the cylinder and some spheres in a coordinate space
Set up a camera and lighting
Get the spheres moving around in random directions while keeping track of their positions and making them bounce when necessary (this I can figure out given a coordinate space; and I'm not going to get bone-crunchingly accurate trying to do accelerations, taking "mass" into account, etc. just going to send balls in another direction at the "speed" all the balls are going)
Record what this would look like through the camera for a set amount of time (thinking command line option in seconds)
In other words, by #4, this program doesn't even need to be GUI at all. I just want the program to make a video.
It may take me a very long time to actualize this because though I have a lot of experience with C, C++, and Java, I don't know how to take a 3D model file and programmatically control it. I don't even know the infrastructure of libraries and accompanying API to control 3D objects and record the camera to a file.
Are there any tutorials that would go from starting with some 3D models to programmatically setting up a scene (objects, camera, lights), programmatically moving the objects in the coordinate space, and recording the video to a file?
Knowing some programming already, I want to point you to Unity, www.unity3d.com
Unity is a 3d game engine, though it can be used for a number of different things, including this program you have in mind.
It's programmed with C# or Javascript, and I think you could pick these languages up easily enough.
Basically what you described in your last paragraph is exactly what Unity does.