a new mesh viewer: seeking feedback on demo

the_cX · Post by **the_cX** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:29 am

hi,

im looking for some feeback from some artists or some artistic programmers for a work in progress mesh viewer.

from an interface perspective that is.

dont forget the windows are 'pinnable,' so use that. also, multiple animations can be played at once, so use that as well.

lastly, be sure to edit the resources.cfg file to point to your ogresdk media folder.

thanks

link: http://www.like-a-mug.com/cXviewer/bina ... 2_5_06.rar

EDIT: this application was made with visual studio 8.0 and requires the .net 2.0 framework. if you dont have it, you can download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

the_cX · Post by **the_cX** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:45 pm

to quote the guy from office space: ...yeaaaaaaaaaaa...

so either:

i. i posted this in the wrong forum

ii. nobody really downloaded the archive

iii. people downloaded the archive but the program sucked so bad that no one bothers to give feedback

iv. i didnt quite explain the archive well enough

so, here goes again.

this is a mesh viewer for ogre.

it looks like this:

you can download and play with it here: http://www.like-a-mug.com/cXviewer/bina ... 2_5_06.rar

im working on this project as a personal goal, as well as doubling it for a human computer interaction class im taking. as such, i need some feedback from users...and all this stuff. so id like some feedback on the interface, if possible.

as stated earlier, this system is not completely finished. but it will be soon, hopefully.

also, if any noble moderator feels this is not the right forum for this thread, feel free to move it.

sorry for bumping it, but even jacmoe didnt reply.

...and jacmoe replies to *everything*!

thanks

Post by **jacmoe** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:02 pm

I take that as a compliment!

Nice, clean, good-looking interface!

Is this MeshViewer capable of loading several meshes, move them about and export a scene file?

IFASS · Post by **IFASS** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:22 pm

Hm.. that looks great.
However i'm not able to start it (application failed to start because the config is incorrect, reinstalling.. bla bla)

Post by **jacmoe** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:46 pm

VC8 debugger wrote:An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in cXviewer.exe

Additional information: Could not load file or assembly 'SandDock, Version=2.3.1.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=75b7ec17dd7c14c3' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Note that the resources.cfg will need to be edited to point to your Ogre media folders.

IFASS · Post by **IFASS** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:13 pm

jacmoe wrote:
VC8 debugger wrote:An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in cXviewer.exe

Additional information: Could not load file or assembly 'SandDock, Version=2.3.1.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=75b7ec17dd7c14c3' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Note that the resources.cfg will need to be edited to point to your Ogre media folders.

aww crap.. thanks

Hm.. another error now:
cXviewer.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Which dumb mistake did i make this time?

P · Post by P » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:42 pm

Same problem here.

Looking great according to the screenshot

There is a little feature easy to implement I would like to see : being able to name the submeshes. There is an attribute for that inside the format, and then it allows to get a subentity by its name. Very usefull imo.

I would like to add this feature as a post export process inside my Lightwave exporter, but it only makes sense to have it in an app when you can realtime view which submesh is corresponding to which part of the model, and then choose a name for it.

Great work !

Post by **haffax** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:43 am

the_cX, as to why no one replied before: Your thread caption could have something to do with it.
When I press "Posts since last visit" and it shows 40 some posts, then the non-descriptive ones are more or less ignored. The caption doesn't tell anything about what this thread is about.

As for the tool, I couldn't start it too, because of the afore mentioned reasons. But I'm definitly looking forward to it.

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:46 am

@the_cX:
If you add the SandDock assembly, we will be able to take it for a spin!

the_cX · Post by **the_cX** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:21 am

haffax: i think your right about the title!

haffax + everyone else:

totally sorry about posting something that doesnt run! i should of tested it on some other machine before uploading it, indeed.

ive made a new archive in place of the old, it should work:

http://www.like-a-mug.com/cXviewer/bina ... 2_5_06.rar

on another note...

all the meshes in the ogre/media folder work fine when loaded on my machine. however on a friends laptop, the robot mesh just shows nothing when loaded, and on another friends laptop, the program crashes when the robot is attempted to be loaded!

so, im interested to see how some of your other systems will fair. meanwhile, im wondering why its happening...

OvermindDL1 · Post by **OvermindDL1** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:54 am

Looks interesting, but cannot run it.

Code: Select all

---------------------------
cXviewer.exe - Application Error
---------------------------
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate the application. 
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Perhaps it would be good to let your program create a crash dump as mine do so that we can send it to you and you can see the state of the stack (and heap too if you enable it, but it increases the dump size from ~20kb to how-ever many megs big the process is upon crash)?

From a quick look-through, seems to be something relating to .NET that is crashing, a direct link... Is this not C++?

Post by **xavier** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:09 am

C# or VB.NET, I believe.

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:29 am

If it crashes, you probably did not edit resources.cfg to point to your Ogre media folders.

Nice tool!

It would be helpful to make it zoom in on what you load into it.
Otherwise you just might miss it: the fish was a tiny dot in the far distance..
And it would be nice to have rotate and pan.

celic · Post by **celic** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:34 am

coool!

i like the GUI very much, good job!

OvermindDL1 · Post by **OvermindDL1** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 9:35 am

Nope, I linked, it gave a different error before I did that, a proper complain. This however is not a proper complain, it crashes inside one of the .NET libraries (and mine are fully updated, checked to make sure). Sometimes I like .NET, sometimes I don't, either way I'm not programming in it...

SunSailor · Post by **SunSailor** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:51 am

Short suggestion: Extend it to the point, that Ogre is able to load meshes and textures from outside it's ressource pathes, but this would concern Ogre more than this nice viewer (Which I couln't get running till now, will try the new version tonight).

Emmeran · Post by **Emmeran** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:51 pm

i've a weird problem - when i try to start the viewer i get the following error:
"Diese Anwendung konnte nicht gestartet werden, weil die Anwendungskonfiguration nicht korrekt ist."

this means something like:
"This application couldn't be started, because the applications configuration is not correct."

any ideas somebody? google didn't help me yet

Post by **haffax** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:02 pm

Emmeran, you get this error, because the MS runtime libs aren't registered. For with Visual C++ 8.0 created applications it doesn'T suffice anymore to just copy the DLLs next to the exe, they have to be installed properly now.
It works for people who have MSVC8 installed, since the installation procedure did the necessary steps.

the_Cx, see this tutorial for how to create a valid setup routine: http://blogs.msdn.com/nikolad/archive/2 ... 60368.aspx

the_cX · Post by **the_cX** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:32 pm

SunSailor: i agree that would be cool, but its not on the current list of priorities right now. maybe version 2.

OvermindDL1: the program is written in managed c++. if its not working for you, it may be because of the reason haffax mentioned.

jacmoe: yea, zooming in to the mesh on load time is on the list of things to do. as for panning and rotating, there is actually a third person camera that is available in the 'Rendering' tab. although i disabled it in this release because its about 90% done.

haffax: thanks for the resource, i didnt even realize that would be such a problem.

i think that at this point, making an installer might deter some from downloading it.

although when i do release a real version, i will do good to use the steps defined in that link, so thanks.

for now, if the user downloaded the .NET Framework version 2.0 from the ms website, would that not suffice?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

so i guess, if you have vs8 installed the program will work for you, if you dont have it installed, then you might have to wait till a real version comes out with an installer. :/

everyone else: thanks for playing with it.

CaseyB · Post by **CaseyB** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 6:00 pm

Looks really good, but I couldn't figure out how to zoom, I was able to pitch and yaw the camera with the RMB, but no zoom.

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 6:04 pm

The ordinary wasd keys works..

the_cX · Post by **the_cX** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 6:57 pm

The ordinary wasd keys works.. Wink

yea :p

are you guys playing with the animation controls? are they inuative? can you get it to play multiple animations at the same time without struggling too much?

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:00 pm

Ah, I totally forgot to tell you that I really like the ability to choose a couple animations from the list, and then play them back to watch the result.
This is very useful when setting up animation blending, or checking out new models.

CaseyB · Post by **CaseyB** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:06 pm

I didn't have the view window focused, sorry! But I did find a strange thing, when I put the Robot Material on the Ninja it looked like this:

Post by **haffax** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:11 pm

This robot-material on the ninja problem, could be because of the hardware skinning. Looks as if not all bones get handed to the shader, maybe the ninja has too many bones. The number of bones supported by the shader is limited.