Creating a Character

[Jsrduck]

Here's an idea for a tutorial: how to get a character on the screen.

I'm using Blender2Crystal at the moment, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to load it into a game. It creates a world.zip file with textures and factories inside, but I'm unsure how to use them.

Currently I'm attempting to export animesh characters, but such a tutorial could walk the user through any mesh type. Originally I exported my character as a cal3d type, and I had it working, but I found it to be unsuitable for me, because the exporter was finicky (the meshes frequently came back mangled) and because crystalspace doesn't support its texture format.

Another point of interest is how to load parented objects (my character is comprised of 4 different meshes). This worked fine in cal3d, but using b2cs, I just get 4 different factories back.

Thanks for any guidance you can give.

-Jordan

[kickvb]

I'll try to find some time to do a tutorial for iAnimatedMesh. I'll post an answer here when it is ready.

You can already see an example of loading of this kind of objects in 'avatartest' (trunk version).

For parented objects in iAnimatedMesh's, you can use sockets (iAnimatedMeshSocket/Factory) but b2cs cannot export it for the moment. You have to export it as separate objects and define them programmatically as sockets.

[Jsrduck]

That's very helpful, actually. Thanks!

[kickvb]

I was wrong about the sockets, blender2crystal can export them for genmeshes and animeshes. I updated the manual for explanations on how to do that.

There was also a bug in the update of the animesh socket position, I fixed it in trunk.

[Aldabright]

Except for the results, I think the idea of creating characters on the screens is amazing enough.