DeleD Community Edition

[rakkar]

I didn't see any information about the level editor capabilities in Delgine. What I want to do is given a level created in MAX, to place objects in that level, assign properties to those objects, assign properties to certain faces of the object, and lastly to export the object along with those properties into Ogre3D.

Can Delgine do this? If not, which parts can it do and which parts do I need to write?

[Paul-Jan]

Basically, AFAIK, Ogre3D doesn't have any specific support for level definition, so there is no one-step integration solution for it in DeleD.

The question is a bit generic, but what I'd do is
a) export the different models as Ogre meshes using the Ogre Exporter
b) Import the level from .max through the obj/3ds importer, light it up, and export the level geometry to a lightmapped Ogre mesh
c) place the objects in the level in DeleD, mark the primitives with specific tags, and write a small exporter/convertor to convert that data to a proprietry 'scene definition format', and load that into Ogre combining (a) and (b).

DeleD doesn't allow you to mark individual faces. However, you could use a dedicated material for those properties and use that to mark the faces.

[rakkar]

Yeah, I was intentionally generic in my wording to see if you had any high level solutions in place.

I know that Delgine has the ability to model as well as level edit. Is the modelling capabilities up there with Max and Maya such that I don't need to buy those tools but can have my artists use Delgine directly? Or is Delgine more of a level editing tool than a modelling tool?

One of the lead artists at the company I work said that Softimage is better than both Max and Maya and cheaper now as well. So I was looking into using that but I didn't see an importer among your importer list for Softimage. Is there one?

[Jeroen]

Hi there rakkar, and welcome!

[rakkar]

I haven't worked with it personally so I can't help you there. Here's a webpage that I think might have info on it
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/default.aspx

It's only $500 for the cheapest version so is much more affordable than Max or Maya and the artist I was speaking to swore by it.

[louis]

Softimage XSi is actually a partner of Ogre (not sure what that means in Open Source terms) and therefore the expoter should be fully functional and remain bleeding edge in terms of supporting the new flavours of the Ogre engine. - Softimages scalability and tiered pricing seems like a great idea, however as you can see from the gallery etc Deled gives everything a run for it's money - though it wouldn't be a first choice for organic stuff like trees etc and of cours there's no animation (yet?) so avatar models would have to hit another platform anyway .. like Blender or Fragmotion ???

[jwatte]

The biggest limitation right now is that DeleD doesn't support showing sub-selections to plug-ins (so you can't select faces and run a plug-in to attach some data to those faces). DeleD also doesn't support hierarchy (so you can't create a "dummy node" to show where something should go in engine).

Instead, you have to use materials with well-known texture names, and map the appropriate faces/objects using those materials. Then in the engine, look for the well-known textures, and do the right thing with those pieces. It's a little bit cumbersome, but works fine as a work-around for now.