SimanQzia

Does anyone knows a good efficient method to export rendered 3D model to Isometric view?
I would also like to hear some suggestions what kind of 3D Modeling software are the best and user-friendly.

I appreciate for the time and help! :}

Greetings again,

That's a second project that I'm posting in this forum.
I was searching for more efficient ways to generate and draw lighting or shadow layers.
However, I never came up with a way that I can apply to both, OpenGL and DirectX.

Note: I've also attached two demos. (High Quality Set)
1. Day lighting demo, just sun shadow generation which has a lot of options.  Daylighting Demo.rar   205.01K   64 downloads
2. Room and day lighting demo.  Room Lighting Demo.rar   205.46K   68 downloads

1. Static Lighting Generation (OpenGL & DirectX 7/9)
At first, I programmed static lighting tool that allows you to generate lighting layer and export it as an image.
I even made some use out of it. I used it to generate shadow mapping for a game called CS2D.

You can check a short preview of it. Just in case, it is available to download.


Tool Screenshots




2. Real-Time Methods and Improvements (OpenGL & DirectX 7/9)
I felt like it's not enough, so I tried going further.

The main problem I had, the slow calculation of light and the process to record it in the image.

So, I came up with several improvements.
I saved every pixel of light source that was recorded in main pixel map.
This way I just had to remove only the pixels that are necessary in the update - light moving or map changing.
Later on, I changed all the pixel map drawing to scaled image on the screen.
All that was left, to overwrite buffer image only when necessary, that is when player or light is moving, or walls appearing/disappearing.
In the end, I managed to create an algorithm that generates light pixels way damn faster, that was the last step till now.

3. Practical Use
Finally, my lighting library was finished. I searched for the ways to use it. The library was written in BlitzMax and C++Languages.
Surprisingly, it was applied on new CS2D version (0.1.2.0)

Don't mind that daylight shadows shows up in room, that was decided by the creator of the game.
The original library disabled day lighting in the rooms ;}

Comparison between new with Lighting and old CS2D.



Video Preview Of The Engine


4. Open Source 2D Lighting Library
I didn't intend to release it to public, however I think I could share it if someone ask it privately :}
I'm also searching for the people whom I could use this engine for!

I could also create a tutorial, that will depend on interest and feedback.

Enjoy!

Greetings Forum,

To begin with, recently I decided to work on Isometric engine. However, it was simply too boring.

So, I came up with an idea to make Voxel based isometric terrain for the game.

Before the main post, the programming language I use is BlitzMax which is rather slow.
However the code I have written can be simply rewritten in C++, since the syntax is only thing that differs.
I have attached the files to the thread, Terrain demo's works on OpenGL, in case you have some problems, tell me. Tile system demo works on DirectX.
I may compile it for DirectX or vise versa in a minute.

1. Voxel Based Terrain

Note: Demo Applications Are Attached To The Post

At first, I made isometric tile based terrain which supported some height values (1st part).

Secondly, I used Cubic Spline Interpolation for both, X and Z axis to create smooth edges for the terrain.
That way I created prime voxels. (2st part)

Later, I found a solution to draw voxels properly (3rd part), though the method is rather too slow for real time rendering.

4th part shows how I implemented texture displaying on the terrain.

Terrain collisions already have been implemented.
In the end of terrain development I also implemented lighting + map bumping.

The practical use of engine's terrain would have been: export the voxel terrain as image tiles and use it in the game.
That was the progress with voxel terrain:


Real-Time Lighting Implementation:

2. Voxel Based 3D Tile System + Destructible Terrain
Note: Demo Applications Are Attached To The Post.

Well, to play with voxel engine was quite fun!
I have accomplished terrain system in just couple of hours and wanted to try something more complex.
The next step was to create 3D tile system. I did it and implemented Destructible Environment as well.
I found a lot of optimization methods, but I had one simple problem to which I still do not have a solution.
Unfortunately, I didn't found any proper way to create fast real time 3D voxel bumping/day lighting.

My results so far

3. Voxel Engine Basic Platform & Physics (OpenGL)
I've also attached demo file so you can check it out :}
Controls: Space and Arrow keys.

My achievements:

• Fast voxels drawing with depth
• Simple and basic lighting
• 256 colors for voxels
• Create or move loaded voxel objects

Screenshot


Enjoy, I hope you find this interesting!
Waiting for feedback :}