freeciv + blender

[skyscuffler]

as some of you may already know, there is a great (in my opinion 3D software outside, called "Blender" ( blender site ). a few months ago it has become open-source (it already was freeware before) and it is rapidly developing by now.
i have started to create some 3d-graphics projects for freeciv, such as a new nuke animation, isometric city tiles and unit animations, which i have uploaded to the freeciv ftp server (nuke.tar.gz, iso_city_european.tar.bz2 and warrior.tar.bz2).
i would like to encourage you to make yourself familiar to blender and start improving the client graphics. Blender has a very powerful character animation system, which i think is great for animating the units in freeciv using different actions, such as movement, attacking/defending, building, bombing ... Blender is extremely fast to use, due to it's keyboard oriented interface, but i'm afraid this also makes it a little difficult to learn. But after all there is a growing blender community, which gives you all the help you need. And if you don't want to learn blender, you can still give me some feedback.

[CapTVK]

This looks very impressive! What does the nuke explosion look like? Is it animated in a way?

[CapTVK]

P.S

I was one of the contributors to free the blender source code. It's good to see Blender is put to good use.

[skyscuffler]

i have included a small avi file and the blender source in the nuke.tar.gz on the freeciv ftp server - see above. (unfortunately it seems impossible to directly render that animation with a transparent background at the moment, but that's a minor problem)

[Per]

Hey, this is very cool.

Several people have talked about doing an opengl client or adding opengl to existing clients, but the biggest hurdle has always been the lack of 3d art. When you make stuff, please do upload the models to the freeciv ftp site, and add a note saying you put it into GPL or public domain, so that we can use it.

I'd love to learn how to use Blender myself, one day. But that day is not now :-)

[geeslaka]

My only objection is that 3d graphics might slow things down too much.

Edit: I also seem to be unable to download blender, any help?

[laurentius]

Howabout making objects in 3D, but have option for 2D gaming. What would it take? Would it be possible that the computer just "takes a 2D picture" of the 3D model and presents units as small gif or jpg instead of 3D models? If the player has older comp.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by geeslaka
My only objection is that 3d graphics might slow things down too much.

You wouldn't need to use the actual 3D figures themselves but you could use the 3d files as a base for the creation of 2D unit images/animation etc...Civ3 uses the same method and I believe Civ2 as well for thewonders and buildings in the special city view.

Edit: I also seem to be unable to download blender, any help?

Seems to work when I DL it just now.

[MC Escher]

Is there some beginners-guide for blender available?
On the site www.blender.org is only an unfinished manual.

[skyscuffler]

i have just uploaded some of my current blender stuff to ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/incoming . this time officially GPL'd . for further details read the README file included.

Is there some beginners-guide for blender available?

Try the Blender 2.0 Guide . it's available online on the blender site. I have learned blender myself with that. it's a little outdated in some parts (especially the character animation), but still a very good starting point for learning the interface and basic features. the tutorials on http://www.blender3d.org are also good, although there's not much of that. and on http://www.elysiun.com/ there's a big forum with lot's of people answering your questions. hope that'll help

[CapTVK]

I've tried Blender again, following those tutorials is essential.

[skyscuffler]

well, you're probably right . blender has an interface that is very different from other 3D-art programs (like 3D $tudio Max, for example ), but once you have become used to it, you will see that it's very consistent and especially fast ! making the trireme model below only took 3 or 4 hours or so (and that includes the bone system and vertex grouping). of course Blender has it's weaknesses too, but do you know a software that has none ? and you (legally) don't have to pay a cent for it ...

so here are the models i have made so far (the units and the nuke bomb are animated of course ) some of them need some further modelling and animating.

[skyscuffler]

another try ...

[Frozzy]

I like it a lot Very cool

[geeslaka]

Very cool . Looks like another reason for me to change my resolution to 1600x1200 to minimize the loss of visible spaces.

[Pave]

It IS cool and its for Freeciv? Ten thumbs up

[skyscuffler]

i've made two more meshes, the caravel and the fighter plane (see below). at moment i'm mainly concentrating on the unit meshes instead of animating the bone actions, because it's perhaps a good idea to use the still images of the units as long as there is no support for animation and to get an impression of the overall look. furthermore i think we should discuss what different action animations of the units we really need, so there is no abundant work done. so here's my suggestion:

- for standing (non-moving) units that are SELECTED (that's only one unit at a time of course) we can use a slow animation that simplifies their recognition on the map (think of planes hovering in the air, going up and down slowly). for all other inactive units still images could be used.

- for movement there must of course be at least one animation (there are different possibilities for movement starting/ending and so on, but one anim should be enough for the start). it's important that this one is fast enough to prevent it from slowing down gameplay !

- for fighting it might be usefull to have 3 anims:
one "dying" animation for the unit that looses the fight and is destroyed, and an attacking/defending animation for the other one (depending on whether it's the attacking unit or not), that is displayed at the same time.

there should also be a couple of special anims for settlers, spies, etc. and all animations should be rendered in 8 directions (which could increase the required amount of memory and downloading pretty much, so unit animations should remain an optional feature !)

[Yog-Sothoth]

Looks great

[Pave]

Can you send a in-game pic with those

[Glip]

wow

[CapTVK]

That caravel and fighter plane are good stuff. How do you it? Do you start from scratch or do you have some basic 3D forms to work with?

In the meantime i've tried out some tutorials and only managed to create my own tubes and cubes in Blender. They're very nice tubes and cubes though.

[skyscuffler]

for most models i first have a look at the internet via google to find some images of the object i want to model. it's best to have images in the classic top/front/side constellation, but that's often hard to find. in blender it's possible to use an image as background of a 3d window, so you can directly form the object's shape. anyway, the best image has to be in your head.

my modeling technique is based on the extrusion tool in most cases: i start with a simple circle (with only about 4-10 vertices, since we want to have low-poly-models and modeling is easier then) and then i use the extrusion tool to form the faces. i often form the object in one "dimension" after the other, meaning i first only watch the object from the side and when the shape looks ok, i go on with the front side and so on. many models are symmetrical, so it's often a goo idea to only form one side of it, and after it's roughly finished, i copy and mirror the vertices and ...

well, i think that's enough for now . have you tried that castle tutorial yet? it's good for learning extrusion and that's the most important mesh editing tool.

[skyscuffler]

So here's the next two units, the Phalanx and the Archer:

[skyscuffler]

... and the settler (i'll make a new ftp upload soon):

[maubp]

Wow skyscuffler, by the time you're finished FreeCiv should look excellent.

[skyscuffler]

hey, that's what the whole thing is about, isn't it !?

the musketeer and the submarine (don't be surprised about the relative size, that's just a matter of rendering) :

[skyscuffler]

the destroyer (the ships will all get some water- and spray effects later):

[skyscuffler]

I just had a look at the web site and saw Blender 2.28 is available ! A lot of things have been improved, such as the python scripting system.

Several people have talked about doing an opengl client or adding opengl to existing clients, but the biggest hurdle has always been the lack of 3d art.

I've also thought about that. Blender has a realtime engine for making 3D games. I've never really worked with that before, so i don't know how if and how it could be integrated in the freeciv client sourcecode. It also seems to be designed especially for 3D action games and might not be suitable for complex strategy games like freeciv.
Apart from that it is a quite young feature that is strongly being developed by now, so maybe even if that isn't possible now, it might be in the future. Anyway, having animated 2D graphics would be a great step forward.

[skyscuffler]

Here's the horseman: This is probably the most complex model until now, because of the additional horse skeleton (especially those $/"=!"# front legs ) and the bow. Anyway, the other models will be quite easier.

[geeslaka]

Won't the knight, chariot, dragoon, and cavalry units be just as hard?