Oh, and I just found out that you have to be careful with 'Apply Scale/Rotation'
when using a box collider. Normally before exporting with B2CS you would do
an 'Apply Scale/Rotation' in Blender.

While exporting it seems that to create the parameters for a box collider the
DimX, DimY and DimZ settings of the object are used. When 'Apply Scale/Rotation'
is applied, this will result in a wrong set of parameters. In your case you rotate
a cube 45 degrees and when 'Apply Scale/Rotation' is used this results in DimZ
and DimX being the length of the diagonal of the side of the cube. So that
would indeed have the effect your are seeing.

Just to let you know.

Greetings,

Peter

You say the cube act strange. What exactly do you mean?

You might try a different type of collider. Instead of a plane, you might
create a cube for the surface and add a box collider instead of a mesh
collider.

For some reason the lines below have been commented out in csODEDynamicSystem::AttachColliderBox() from
odedynam.cpp. Not sure if it will solve your problem, but you might try to uncomment the lines and see what
happens.

Code:

  //odec->SetElasticity (elasticity);
  //odec->SetFriction (friction);
  //odec->SetSoftness (softness)

Peter

Yeah, I did have a look at it. Looks great. I did install it and got it working,
but it would be nice if you could add some installation instructions.

and from there it makes no sense as I see no objects when I switch views to UV/Image editor. Only a grid.

Yes I know all about the lost feeling you get when trying to learn Blender.

1. In the 3D view select your object
2. Select UV Face Select Mode (press F)
3. Switch to UV/Image editor view
4. At the bottom of the UV/Image editor you select Image->Open...
5. Select an image and voila...

There are a number of Blender tutorials explaining UV mapping. For instance http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=935388

Hmm, I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing.

You might have a look what's inside your world.zip file. It's not that difficult to follow the structure of the file and it is very educational. I've created a simple map with a plane and a cube textured with stone4.jpg and my world.zip file contains the following:

 factories\thingCube
 factories\thingPlane
 textures\stone4.jpg
 world

The world file within world.zip contains a description of the map you created. It lists the materials, textures, camera and light parameters etc. The factories folder contains a factory for each mesh object you created in blender, each of which contains all the information for CS to create a mesh.

Below you find the world and thingCube files for the map I created. You should pay notice to the <material> and <texture> tags in both files. For more information about the contents of a world file you might have a look at http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/XMLWorld_Tutorial

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<world>
  <plugins>
    <plugin name='thing'>crystalspace.mesh.loader.thing</plugin>
    <plugin name='thingfact'>crystalspace.mesh.loader.factory.thing</plugin>
  </plugins>
  <shaders/>
  <textures>
    <texture name='stone4.jpg'>
      <file>textures/stone4.jpg</file>
    </texture>
  </textures>
  <materials>
    <material name='Materialstone4.jpg'>
      <texture>stone4.jpg</texture>
    </material>
  </materials>
  <sounds/>
  <settings>
    <clearscreen>yes</clearscreen>
    <clearzbuf>yes</clearzbuf>
  </settings>
  <library>factories/thingPlane</library>
  <library>factories/thingCube</library>
  <triggers/>
  <sector name='Scene'>
    <cullerp plugin='crystalspace.culling.frustvis'/>
    <light name='Lamp.001'>
      <center y='1.07134' x='3.07218' z='3.66705e-008'/>
      <color blue='1.0' green='1.0' red='1.0'/>
      <radius brightness='1.0'>20.0</radius>
    </light>
    <meshobj name='Plane'>
      <plugin>thing</plugin>
      <params>
        <factory>thingPlane</factory>
      </params>
      <zuse/>
      <move>
        <v y='-2.18084' x='0' z='-7.46471e-008'/>
        <matrix>
          <rotx>-1.5708</rotx>
        </matrix>
      </move>
    </meshobj>
    <meshobj name='Cube'>
      <plugin>thing</plugin>
      <params>
        <factory>thingCube</factory>
      </params>
      <zuse/>
      <move>
        <v y='0' x='0' z='0'/>
      </move>
    </meshobj>
  </sector>
  <sequences/>
  <start name='Camera'>
    <sector>Scene</sector>
    <position y='4.63004' x='7.48113' z='-6.50764'/>
    <up y='0.895343' x='-0.330657' z='0.298373'/>
    <forward y='-0.445245' x='-0.654862' z='0.610666'/>
  </start>
</world>

Code:

<library>
  <meshfact name='thingCube'>
    <plugin>thingfact</plugin>
    <zuse/>
    <params>
      <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      <v x='1' y='-1' z='1'/>
      <v x='1' y='-1' z='-1'/>
      <v x='-1' y='-1' z='-1'/>
      <v x='-1' y='-1' z='1'/>
      <v x='1' y='1' z='0.999999'/>
      <v x='0.999999' y='1' z='-1'/>
      <v x='-1' y='1' z='-1'/>
      <v x='-1' y='1' z='1'/>
      <p name="0">
        <v>3</v>
        <v>2</v>
        <v>1</v>
        <v>0</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
      <p name="1">
        <v>5</v>
        <v>6</v>
        <v>7</v>
        <v>4</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
      <p name="2">
        <v>1</v>
        <v>5</v>
        <v>4</v>
        <v>0</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
      <p name="3">
        <v>2</v>
        <v>6</v>
        <v>5</v>
        <v>1</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
      <p name="4">
        <v>3</v>
        <v>7</v>
        <v>6</v>
        <v>2</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
      <p name="5">
        <v>7</v>
        <v>3</v>
        <v>0</v>
        <v>4</v>
        <material>Materialstone4.jpg</material>
      </p>
    </params>
  </meshfact>
</library>

More information might be helpful. For instance, what OS are you running, which versions of blender, b2cs and crystalspace do you use? Did you follow the installation instructions at http://b2cs.delcorp.org/index.php/ArtistInstall?

First the b2cs example appears to be for a older version.

I just installed Blender 2.44, blender2crystal-0.6.0.zip and its dependencies and followed the steps described at http://b2cs.delcorp.org/index.php/First_steps_with_blender2crystal. No problem, works for me.

I do not see anything related to a material pane. Did I miss something?

Well, if you click on the icon at the top of the b2cs overlay that looks like an eye, and then select the icon that looks like a ball on the left side of the overlay, you'll get to the material pane. When you correctly assigned a material with a texture image, then you should see the texture image in the upper right corner of the pane.

I link(correct terminology?) a data block with a material, texture and color.

That should be oke. Are you sure you are using an image (e.g. .jpg/.png) as the texture type?

I attempted to add a texture but may have failed to do it properly.

If you just want to give your object a single color, one simple way to do it in blender is as follows:
- create a 1x1 pixel size (or another size) image of the color you want
- select your cube
- press F5 and add a new material to it (if it not already has one)
- press F6 and set the 'Texture Type' to image
- on the image panel select the image

If you now look at the material pane of the b2cs exporter, you should see the image in the upper right corner.

Now if walktest sees the object then I assume its in the world file. Right?

Hmm, yes.

Note, it's still not clear how I would manage the object once I get to "see" it.

You can locate mesh objects by their name. When in walktest, if you press <tab> and then type 'listmeshes' you get a list of meshes. Once you know the name of a mesh, you can get a handle to it by asking the engine. To get the position of a mesh called "Cube", you would do something like:

Code:

   iMeshWrapper *mesh = engine->FindMeshObject ("Cube");
   iMovable *movable = mesh->GetMovable();
   csVector3 position = movable->GetFullPosition();

I'm trying to create objects that I can "hook up" to realtime monitors and display their relative positions

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

Did you install the cs-win32libs package? This contains a number of pre-compiled libraries on which CS depends, including zlib. (See http://www.crystalspace3d.org/docs/online/manual-1.0/cs_2.3.php#2.3)

Peter

You need to add a texture to the object, just setting the color of an object in blender will not work. Did you follow the 'First Steps With Blender2Crystal' tutorial on the B2CS site?
http://b2cs.delcorp.org/index.php/First_steps_with_blender2crystal

You might have a look at the simpmap sample application.

Are you sure the object is actually in the world file?

To answer your question partially, from the Blender2Crystal documentation:

The renderloop represents the kind of lighting we want for a sector. This is a very important concept to use crystalspace materials successfully, as each of them serves for a particular render loop. For example there are renderloops for terrain sectors (terrain, terrainf), for fixed lighting (standard), dynamic lighting (diffuse) and different kind of shadows (shadowed, shadowed2, shadowmap...).

The renderloop can be set in a worldwide manner at the world tab (Image:Icons-world.png), or per sector at the Sector tab (Image:Icons-scene.png).

    * ambient: ambient term lighting. Just renders the geometry with the ambient term, no lights.
    * diffuse: dynamic lighting. An ambient pass and lights pass.
    * fattest: is an experimental renderloop that is supposed to auto adjust to all conditions.
    * shadowed: dynamic lighting with shadows. The shadows are sharp edged and its heavier on the processor so there will be a fps drop.
    * shadowed2: dynamic lighting with shadows. It is faster than shadowed renderloop but it will only do shadows for closed objects.
    * shadowmap: dynamic lighting with shadows. Does shadows using projected textures. (experimental)
    * standard: static lighting with precalcalculated shadows.
    * terrain: dynamic lighting for worlds with terrain.
    * terrainfixed: static lighting with precalcalculated shadows for worlds with terrain.

PS. It would be great if the CS conference sessions will be captured on video.