Mount Point and Ship Attributes

[patrick]

The goal of this project is to add mounting points to the .obj models. Mounting points are place holders in the model for other objects (eg. used for weapons, lights, engines, etc.)

Coupled with these mounting points comes a new object information file. This file contains informations about the marker objects in the model. This enables the artist to map any mounting point to any other object that exists in this world. Additionally an artist can specify object attributs directly in this file (like fire power, firing frequencies for weapons, engine speed, light sizes, etc).

Therefore at the end, there are now two files for all world entitites: one model file and one object information (.oif) file. Together they form a useable object in the world.

These two enhancements should make modeling and artistic work much easier for Orxonox!

Just some short examples:

• weapons: slots where weapons may be added
• lights: position lights for space ships
• engines

[patrick]

Created the wiki page for this topic. You can find it here

[nicolasc]

Sounds reasonable...

Try concentrating on the weapon sockets as we need them; Set the rest as secondary goals.

Additionally an artist can specify object attributes directly in this file (like fire power, firing frequencies for weapons, engine speed, light sizes, etc).

Keep QA in mind... As artists normally are more concerned how it look, and less how balanced it is.

cheers
nico

[patrick]

I will make both, weapon socket and the config files, since you will need the config files for weapons, too (nicer to set the attributes in config files rather than in C++ code)

I will finish the project sooner, so you will be able to use it before you finish your projects

[beni]

Interesting idea and I'm sure it's going to become handy in the future.
For example you don't have to compile Orxonox every time you changed the weapon balance, just restart.
It's also lot's easier to define the weapon slots and other positions of other models which are connected to the main model.

What I'm interested in is how one creates such a file. How do you expect us to create it?

[bensch]

One important issue that came up, when i worked with Thierry (from beDiff) was that Mounting points do not necessarily import the object from the 0/0/0 coordinate.

So what I mean is, when you model a spaceship, that has two wings, and one weapon on each of these wings, and you want to split the wings away from the Spaceship, so you have 5 objects, that you can handle just like the hover, you have to move the center (mounting point) of each of these objects to the center of the scene while exporting.

For an artist, this is a very, very unnerving job. So it might be a good idea, to also define where the objects will be mounted at, and also from where they are mounted.

If you have any questions, just look at the model: models/ships/hoverglider_*.obj
they are all centered, but an artist wants to model them with their correct position relative to parent objects.

Some more ideas for mounting points are:
* ParticleEmitters (with behaviour based reaction)
* WeaponSlots
* ShieldMountPoints
* CollisionBox-Definitions (maybe in an extremely later version )
* CenterOfGravity-points
* ParentConnectionPoint

Anyways, I wish you all the best, for it is a challenging work, and for sure one of the things that make life easier for the artists.

[beni]

This issue you describe is only a problem when you build something for a specific spaceship only. A weapon will now be put on different spaceships and therefore it's logical to model the weapon in the center. But you are right that with the hover, there are these problems.

[x3n]

We could add a mounting point to the weapon too, so the engine just connects this MP with the MP on the ship.

[beni]

we could add a mounting point to the weapon too, so the engine just connects this MP with the MP on the ship.

Makes the whole thing even more complicated but is exactly the solution to the problem

[patrick]

We could add a mounting point to the weapon too, so the engine just connects this MP with the MP on the ship.

This really would be a solution and a nice one too

I'm not yet sure what I'm going to cover with this project. I will concentrate on the main problems like weapon slots specification. Perhaps later on I will also cover the model part issues.

[patrick]

I made a full rework of the UML diagram, now its in an implementable state. I will also make a guide for the modlers to use the mount points.

You can check it out here