Choppy Animation
by Brett Fattori · in Torque Game Engine · 01/06/2003 (8:31 pm) · 6 replies
Hello all, I'm new here... My first post will just be a quick one -- hopefully!
Anyways, I've been pulling stuff into the TGE and adding features from code snippets. This is one hella powerful engine... I have a couple of game ideas, with one that will be my first attempt.
As a side note, anyone that would be interested in helping a TGE newbie to develop this, let me know! It's a kid-oriented FPS (no violence [ie: blood & guts] but still full of fun) that spawns from a game I did back in 1984 on an Atari 800. Did it all in Turbo Basic, with custom everything. Anyways, if you're interested, drop me a line at brettf@renderengine.com.
Anyhoo, on to my question:
I created a shape in trueSpace, imported into MilkShape, and animated it. I've added materials and exported it, yet two problems arise:
1) The animation is CHOPPY in the TGE. It looks fine in MilkShape, but it's horribly choppy in TGE. I tried expanding my animation (2 times its original size) and upping the FPS, yet it's still the same. I'm just using the SHOW mod to view it, so maybe that's my issue?
2) The materials are all missing. It's just plain white, even though I added a front texture and colored the other sides. I have the images in TGA in MilkShape, and I thought that might be the problem. I'll admit, being a programmer I tend to speak before I try at times -- thinking things through after the fact. So, does TGE only support BM8 and PNG?? That seems to be what most textures are. Any help or forum post links would be appreciated.
Soooo... after my long winded hello, I say adieu. Really looking forward to working on this with everyone. Hopefully I'll get my C++ skill up to date (been doing Delphi coding for a while now) and get into the TGE itself shortly!
- Brett
Anyways, I've been pulling stuff into the TGE and adding features from code snippets. This is one hella powerful engine... I have a couple of game ideas, with one that will be my first attempt.
As a side note, anyone that would be interested in helping a TGE newbie to develop this, let me know! It's a kid-oriented FPS (no violence [ie: blood & guts] but still full of fun) that spawns from a game I did back in 1984 on an Atari 800. Did it all in Turbo Basic, with custom everything. Anyways, if you're interested, drop me a line at brettf@renderengine.com.
Anyhoo, on to my question:
I created a shape in trueSpace, imported into MilkShape, and animated it. I've added materials and exported it, yet two problems arise:
1) The animation is CHOPPY in the TGE. It looks fine in MilkShape, but it's horribly choppy in TGE. I tried expanding my animation (2 times its original size) and upping the FPS, yet it's still the same. I'm just using the SHOW mod to view it, so maybe that's my issue?
2) The materials are all missing. It's just plain white, even though I added a front texture and colored the other sides. I have the images in TGA in MilkShape, and I thought that might be the problem. I'll admit, being a programmer I tend to speak before I try at times -- thinking things through after the fact. So, does TGE only support BM8 and PNG?? That seems to be what most textures are. Any help or forum post links would be appreciated.
Soooo... after my long winded hello, I say adieu. Really looking forward to working on this with everyone. Hopefully I'll get my C++ skill up to date (been doing Delphi coding for a while now) and get into the TGE itself shortly!
- Brett
#2
01/08/2003 (2:16 am)
Yes, the Milkshape exporter isn't really "complete". I noticed that it only exports the keyframes, without any interpolation. However, the one in HEAD should have that issue fixed.
#3
01/08/2003 (7:46 am)
I told you this on IRC last night Brett, but I wrote TGA support for Torque ages ago, but never cleaned it up and submitted as a resource. Maybe I'll be able to do that shortly - but definitely not before next week.
#4
http://garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=3598
01/08/2003 (8:32 am)
Someone else has already submitted Tga support as a resource. I don't have the knowledge to know if its an optimized, clean chunk of code, but the install went perfectly, and the images do load just fine.http://garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=3598
#5
01/08/2003 (9:34 am)
Ah cool, saves me some work then *grin*
#6
01/08/2003 (7:12 pm)
Well, Simon, you'll notice that I made the post before I talked to you last night!! :-) 
Torque Owner Jarrod Roberson
that said, Torque likes PNG.
The default PNG importer/exporter for Photoshop is broken ( at least for 7 I know ).
I use SuperPNG any image editor that supports Photoshop plugins can use it.
And be sure to read the instructions completely on how to install it for your particular system.