Topic: EXIT: ColladaDOM 3 Reference Viewer (Read 3529 times)

Holey Moley · « **on:** May 31, 2017, 04:56:50 PM »

Quote from: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/archives/exit/2017/05/colladadom-3-reference-viewer/

It’s deadline time again. All I can manage, again, is a follow-up to April’s post.

Here is a link from some time ago in the forums that leads to a new graphical application that visualizes COLLADA’s XML resources. It works much as a web browser displays a web page.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/holy/ColladaDOM_3_Reference_Viewer.zip

I am keeping it up-to-date with new capabilities as they come online. There are sample files and keyboard and mouse usage instructions to be had in the following link.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=234.msg2253#msg2253

In May I could hardly recall where I spent my time, except that in the previous week I’ve worked extensively on the “FX” part of the application in preparation for taking it beyond the confines of Nvidia’s Cg API that was part of an initiative for the PlayStation 3 but is now gathering cobwebs; Only in the last weeks while I was working on it Nvidia took down its online documentation.

In the week prior I decided to apply myself to nooks and crannies: working on nonlinear curve design and its application to 3-D animation.

Finally I was able to recall the earlier part of the month. In that time I believe I hit upon a practical way to incorporate the newer of COLLADA’s two XML schemas (1.5.0) into the software; Which was a first.

This application is a refinished version of what is very possibly the earliest existing COLLADA software package. By this point I’m heavily invested in COLLADA. I may be the only person who is so. In fact I have my doubts about its future, including my own. It is because of what I’ve learned working on it. That I’ve doubt I can do anything to spur its adoption, no matter what I may achieve. I chose to do this quite simply because I felt like it. That’s how I still feel, and I’m not one to cut my losses and walk away. What this means is that COLLADA may be no better to Sword of Moonlight than if it had its own proprietary format. Which is not good. Because it will mean that COLLADA will only be as good as the software that I develop for it.

I guess if that’s its fate it will be, if nothing else, a stunning rebuke of this abysmal field’s inability to escape the gravitational well its self-satisfaction has made for itself.

To make this software work on Windows you need to drag-and-drop a DAE file onto it. If it's ran with a non-existent, valid DAE file name it crashes. I may upload a new copy just to fix that but it's easily avoidable.

It's hard to explain why working on this indefinitely is integral to Sword of Moonlight's case. It's important technology. However I don't know how much of it SOM will actually use. Probably very little, but the devil is in the details. It's definitely overkill. It's choosing the wrong tool for the wrong job, but what the hell else do you do when there's only one tool? I'm just glad there's one tool. And that it suits me. I've never thought of SOM as a time sensitive project. If anything I think quite the opposite. So what is two years ultimately?

EDITED: This is open source software https://sourceforge.net/projects/collada-dom/

Holey Moley · « **Reply #1 on:** June 07, 2017, 11:27:14 PM »

Today I updated the ZIP file with the EXE inside in the top post's link.

Details about the update are written-up here:

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=234.msg2258#msg2258

The samples/ folder is also updated. It has some improvements and the rubber ducky in the link screenshot is made to use <phong> instead of <blinn> because it's the much more eye-catching of the two with the per-pixel GPU program. Really the changes are inconsequential, but noteworthy nonetheless.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #2 on:** June 21, 2017, 07:17:09 AM »

I updated the ZIP file again yesterday. Its early Windows demonstration has a location-bar and if the software is run (unzipped with the extra DLL files) without a URL (or file name) provided it defaults to an example.dae file located in the same download folder.

It doesn't have a webcache as of yet. There aren't any DAE files online that I know of. It's designed to be an online resource format, but it's a testament to COLLADA's failure to achieve any kind of foothold (adoption) that there aren't DAE file repositories located anywhere online.

The default URL uses an "sRGB" enhancement that is not part of COLLADA but probably should be. COLLADA doesn't define its color-space. I also recall adding a feature that lets the profile_COMMON profile modulate a texture with a material "color" like SOM does, which is common practice. It's important because to change the color of a texture the information in the texture has to be destroyed, and darker textures actually have less information in them.

Either this approach can be used to bridge the gap between profile_COMMON and SOM's material properties; or the download functionality can be used to host a SOM specific effect (FX) for SOM's models to use.

This ability to host effects online has not been realized or utilized. The entire COLLADA FX framework is more or less ignored by all software that incorporated anything to do with it in the early "COLLADA rush." The download facility can access those effects and "materials."

P.S. Lately I've been doing unusual things that largely started with needing add "copy & paste" to this program's location-bar. (Because URLs are not typically entered manually by hand. But rather copy and pasted from a browser or hyperlink.) Because this work must be cross-platform I wanted to at least make an effort to make copy/paste work for X11, which is the windowing-environment for most of the POSIX world (Unix and Linux) and so in order to do that I had to refamiliarize myself with POSIX development on Windows; which I do with Cygwin. This became a minor project in itself, especially because lately Cygwin/X is very buggy, so much so that I believed that it had slipped into disrepair. I spent two or three days attempting to get to the bottom of its issues instead of focusing on copy and paste. But it was a useful exercise too, or I would not have done it. (EDITED: I do not know if Cygwin is in disrepair of it this is just a momentary anomaly--that should've been easily caught--but I switched to using Xming in the meantime on the server-side. Which I'd never done before. But I recommend it to supplement Cygwin/X. It may even be required later on, to display rich graphics, if "AIGLX" can work through Cygwin that is.)

At the same time I worked on many POSIX specific issues with the UI library I've adopted for this project, called GLUI (OpenGL User Interface) which I'm having to more or less foster along just like COLLADA. It is an old thing just like SOM and COLLADA. I like its style and premise though. I think it suits these projects, and its OpenGL based look and feel matches Windows 95's. So although it was not my goal when I began shopping for a cross-platform UI approach, I envision that it will eventually be applied to porting SOM's classic tools with everything intact.

Its main application will be to serve as a UI for Daedalus which will be the art tool chain that I will recommend to SOM users. It's not specific to SOM's character universe, but Daedalus who invented the labyrinth is an ideal source of raw materials for use with SOM's media empire. The figure of Daedalus is reminiscent of a lot of the statuary that appears in King's Field's materials and adornments. It will be in keeping with its Gothic tone; But also larger in scope that SOM itself; if not necessarily larger in significance.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #3 on:** June 29, 2017, 07:35:50 PM »

Quote from: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/archives/exit/2017/06/colladadom-3-reference-viewer-2/

The software demonstration from last month now has a location bar and downloads a graphic from this website if opened to a blank document.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/holy/ColladaDOM_3_Reference_Viewer.zip

The new graphic demonstrates an experimental sRGB mode and also in this file I devised a way to extend COLLADA’s Common Profile to be able to represent Sword of Moonlight’s material values. This was a major stumbling block when I first approach Sword of Moonlight via COLLADA.

The location bar uses a UI code base that I settled on earlier in June called GLUI. I’ve added “copy & paste” to it. I did so for Unix like environments also, but am still working on a full non-Windows version as I speak. I’ve had good relations with Nigel who develops GLUI. I would like to develop it alongside the Daedalus project to complement Sword of Moonlight with art creation tools. I’m uncertain what the future holds. I know that this is destiny, but the way Nigel works is too counterproductive, so unless I can insinuate my values into the GLUI effort it will have to be reconstituted into a sister project that can develop at a brisker pace. I’ve enjoyed myself, but I must live at the speed of mere mortals.

2 part post this month. (Same title as last.)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #4 on:** August 10, 2017, 06:06:28 PM »

I've reuploaded http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/holy/ColladaDOM_3_Reference_Viewer.zip to not need a C++ runtime DLL installed (I feel certain this was always the case, but today the Visual Studio project was set to use a DLL) and also I made it to work with Windows XP; but this is untested.

I'm meaning to test this and figure out why SomEx's updater is not working on XP in WinSock mode for me. I had to do a full format/reinstall of XP to move it to a new/larger hard drive, so I must reinstall and set up a lot of things before I can do software development work with it again.

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EXIT: ColladaDOM 3 Reference Viewer

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Holey Moley

Holey Moley says,

Holey Moley

Holey Moley says,

Holey Moley

Holey Moley says,

Holey Moley

Holey Moley says,

Holey Moley

Holey Moley says,

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Sword of Moonlight|

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EXIT: ColladaDOM 3 Reference Viewer