Asolutely Stoked about Blender 2.5!

Talk about anything and everything
Savage
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Their is another great feature to be added into 2.5 but before I go into what it is, i would like to sadly admit that I always found Blender Game Engine to be a bit... Poopy. It's crap, it really is but after reading a newly published article which I will share with you, I was absolutely blown away and even more excited about Blender 2.5. Here is the article:

Hierarchical Nodal Logic for Blender 2.5
The game engine has already a GUI for logic creation: the logic brick system. Logic bricks are easy to implement but not easy to use. We want it the other way round: a logic system should be easy to use and useful even to develop complex application, no matter if the implementation is complex.
The Logic Bricks system has several limitations:
It is very difficult to see the logic as a whole when it gets a little complicated. Also the logic is not presented in a confortable form: the sequence of actions are not easily visible.
The state system is the only level of hierarchy available and that's insufficient for complex logic.
A game is always a dodgy mix between Bricks and Python:
Python access to game engine features is incomplete; you cannot get away from using some logic bricks, possibly inefficiently, if you want to create a 'only python' application.
Logic brick access to game engine features is incomplete; you cannot get away from using some Python code if you want to implement a complex logic.
Logic Bricks are not easily extendible: you must code in C and modify Blender to create a custom brick.
Logic graphs are not reusable: you cannot create a library of logic graphs and apply them to multiple objects. This is because Logic Bricks are closely attached to objects.
This project will try to address all these limitations by providing a system that's easy to use, extendible, hierarchical, efficient, complete and reusable. It would be nice if in addition it is not too difficult to implement but that's a secondary requirement.

Sound familiar? It should for some of you, it is Kizmit only using Python instead of Unrealscript. Read further if you care to...


The concept
After reviewing some of the most popular nodal logic systems in the market and consulting with other Blender devs and users, I came up with a Nodal Logic design. Various well-established analogies include: flowcharting, data flow diagrams, and integrated circuit design methods. The pattern we want to use is Blender's Node Editor, where we have a set of connected nodes in a tree-type of structure (a "noodle"). Inputs feed data and events into the noodle, where it is processed and results in changes relayed out through output nodes. Inputs can be taken from, for example, a Wii remote, a joystick, the keyboard or motion sensors. Processing can include any number of math functions, scene functions (object create/destroy, play actions and animations, get/set a variable or property). Outputs can be relayed to set a property, write to a file, or send a value to an output port (for example, controlling a robot), or write to a log file through a file output node.

This is not the only possibility but a well-designed Nodal Logic system can fulfill all the requirements stated above better than any other system. The key features are re-usability and hierarchy. If well used, the hierarchy of Logic graph will provide the separation of tasks, programmatic capability and state engine support that is needed for a complex logic development. We should be able to group nodes into logical processing units, and be able to append/link node groups as well.

... Wow, how exciting...
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Savage
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It is here! Look here to see what is new... Blender 2.5 release log

Download... Here! So far it is available for Windows 32bit and 64bit, Linux of coarse, and Intel and PowerPC Macintosh computers. Some of the features are not yet available for 64bit Windows yet but most, if not everything, needed for game development is up and running smoothly.

I'll have my own custom version for development of the games we know and love and hopefully very soon, it all depends on what has changed. It is considered Alpha at the moment so keep that in mind if you run into trouble and please, report it. You can report it to me if you like and I'll pass it on. Thanks and happy Blendering!

... Oh, and have a great turkey day...
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DW_Bomzin
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Hope it works for you as expected . Looks like they still have a long way to go looking at that road map to 2.6
Savage
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I have been playing with it a lot lately, that is why I haven't been on the forums, and it still needs work but everything is in place for the most part. They haven't ported the import/export scripts to the new API so I must resort to the old 2.49 to do my work but the interface is awesome, just some fine tuning needs to be done. I have been messing with Zbrush also and I love some of their new features, very nice, but I still prefer my Blender. The cool thing about the new Blender is that it is very customizable and hopefully we'll see some new cool features like those from Zbrush like Zspheres and Zsketch which seems likely since Blender already has stuff like metaballs and grease pencil... We'll see. I'm keeping my figures crossed.

The following is the features I mentioned above in Zbrush, hopefully soon to be found in Blender 2.6?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG6HSla2k0c[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVFyRfX84Dc[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXxWA7JN08[/youtube]
(It's ah-me! Ah-Mario!

In the above video 'more about zbrush 3.5' the hard surfaces at 1:40 will soon be possible in Blender due to the new Bmesh feature, and at 3:07 once again the future holds good things for Blender. With the new Macro design anything could be possible. You can change your mesh and change your mind and not worry about messing anything up. Of coarse, you could never get the polygon count nor detail that Zbrush can have but maybe in the future they could incorporate something similar.
Last edited by Savage on Sun Dec 13, 2009 5:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Savage
DW Clan Member
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Speaking of future possibilies in Blender, I just found this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8U0TJUJxrE[/youtube]
[BBvideo 475,400]http://www.vimeo.com/2753749[/BBvideo]
[BBvideo 475,400]http://www.vimeo.com/2032424[/BBvideo]

Seems they have already started plans for their own version of Zspheres already, not quite their but well on their way. A Python script for Zspheres in Blender has already been made by someone outside the Blender development community, I haven't tried it but here it is for anyone interested. I think it is to be implemented on 2.4x but once the ports are finished maybe it could be used on 2.5? Blender Zspheres and Skinny I love the Zspheres and I'm so looking forward to Bspheres!
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Savage
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DW_Bomzin wrote:Hope it works for you as expected . Looks like they still have a long way to go looking at that road map to 2.6
Yup, they released an Alpha to get more community support I can only assume. The deadline for 2.6 is at the time of the third open movie release(Dorian Project,"Sintel".) As you can see by the development pipeline, it pretty much coincides with the production of the movie. Interface first, modeling second, then animation, and finally rendering... The Project Dorian production funding is to last 9 months and has already been in production for a couple months, so I would expect both to be complete by next summer. I can't wait so I don't, I download the builds constantly and help when I can with testing. As I posted earlier, I found Blenders equivalent to Zspheres and couldn't help myself, I downloaded it and tested it out on both 2.4x and 2.5 but 2.5 API has to be ported so it didn't work but I got it to work on 2.4x so here it is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT_krlvmaKs[/youtube]

With the ability to draw in your armatures with etch-a-ton, it seems more than likely future releases will be able to draw in forms like Zspheres using something like envelopes that can be converted to meshes like you see here but without converting anything. Draw in a basic shape and begin sculpting just like Zbrush but on the freely available Blender!
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Savage
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This here is the latset test build of the Blender sculpt build running at an amazing 45 million faces and running smoothly. Trust me when I say that that is very impressive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT_hkSbK8Iw[/youtube]

Notice that it only does a partial refresh as you sculpt similar to Zbrush. I can't get Mudbox to run that good and this is on a 2.6 8600 machine! Of course you will lose some performance when attached to the rendering animation side of blender but wow, that is the whole package and with the best UV mapping in the industry... Well, you all know I can go on and on so I'll spare you my opinions... Happy blending!

Something else to take a look at:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksk4zkxdqhw[/youtube]
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Savage
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This guy makes great tutorials for the Blender Game Engine but these same tutorials can be used for UT3 but not 2k4 due to the use of materials suck as specular and normal maps; However, you could leave those steps out and make something cool for 2k4... Well... Enjoy!

The following is a tutorial to make a simple rock:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb0ZRnly2RI[/youtube]

This tutorial is to make a rusty metal wall like that on the side of a container of sorts, enjoy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H18xKtxkt-U[/youtube]

The previous tutorials are for the 2.4x series of Blender.
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PixelSmash
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:33 am
Location: Netherlands

Traditionally I'm a 3dsmax guy myself... however, I have seen blender a bit, and I must say it does have some very useful features... especially the material browser is so much better than I'm used to from max.

Also, zbrush is teh shizzle, but only if you have a tablet...
Find me: PixelSmash @ Death Warrant:Monster Mash RPG - Server 2

I'm working on a level... as soon as I have some visuals, I will share them!
Savage
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Good thing I have a tablet then but I prefer mudbox when working with high poly, zbrush just has too much useless junk that gets in my way. Fun to play with though but a lot of zbrush tools are just not practical; Although, I do like the HD sculpt feature in zbrush but once again it's not practical for game development. Maybe if you do movies or something but for games, blender has all you need for any game on the market today with the exception of high poly normal bakes but they are well on their way to that as I speak. I have been busy working on porting the UT scripts to Python 3.1 for the next Blender 2.6 release and once I have them, I doubt I'll even use mudbox. It will be strictly Blender at that point. Blender 2.5 alpha is already giving 2 million quads!
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