General stuff...

[Firejack]

Hi.

I've got a nice little program that displays .x files in fullscreen mode, with pretty lights and things. The idea is that I make a landscape in a 3D program, export to 3ds and then convert to .x. Then I want to be able to move around it freely.

Problem 1: I want to use a Quake style control, like with the mouse looking around. How do I set the viewport to be looking in a certain direction according to the mouse? Keyboard control (fwd, back, strafe) should just be movin viewport pos left and right, yeah?

Problem 2: How do you texture the 3d objects so the textures are in the right place?

Problem 3: I need a waterfall on the side of a hill (like a spring - very pretty huh?). How do I put the particle system in a certain place and scale it depending on how far away I am from it? Use x, y, z values in the class?

Please help!

[Firejack]

And I have a really cool mpeg 4 movie. How can I play that full screen in VB? Can I do it via DX8?

[Zaei]

1: Use an arcball class. There should be one in the DX helper files (there is in C++, dont know about VB). Basically, what it does is turn mouse movements into rotations.

2: Texture the object in whatever modelling package you use. The conversion to an x file should preserve those coordinates.

3: You shouldnt have to scale your particle system at all. If you set it in a certain place, it should render the particles to scale, depending on the distance. The only problem you will have is when to stop drawing the particles.

4: Yes, you can play your movie using DirectShow.

Z.

[Firejack]

Thanks. I managed to move the camera/viewport using a matrix trnsform, and then used a quarternion thing (I think that's what you were saying about in C++) to describe the rotation of the camera. Make the rotation dependant on the mouse and...

WHUPAH!

Quake style movement.

Now I've got to learn a lot about 3D modelling. I have 3ds max, any decent 3ds sites out there?

[Zaei]

Dont ask me, Im a programmer =).

Z.

[Sastraxi]

If you PM Igor, he's a seasoned 3DSMAX developer working on our game (Zaei, Igor, Me, Jorj, basically). He'll have some sites for you.