Subject: Re: [plib-devel] Majik3D + texture formats + PPE (long)
From: Steve Baker (sjbaker1@airmail.net)
Date: Thu Jun 03 1999 - 04:56:16 EEST
Simon Britnell wrote: > Saw these > guys on freshmeat or happypenguin or somewhere and, when I looked at > their page I thought "Oh no! Yet another graphics library", so I > e-mailed them as attached. Many thanks. It doesn't look like any of these people have signed up to the plib mailing lists (yet) - so I'll CC: them. (Sorry if this results in duplicate mailing!) > > From: > > Tommi Leino <namhas@majik.netti.fi> > > > >We have looked at it before. I think it is a very good idea to use > >PLIB, however, the developer responsible for all the current GL > >code says "We can use some parts of it." and he is not interested > >of the SSG, maybe because it would take just too much time to > >recode the current engine ;>. That's why PLIB is split into 'components'. Although I like PLIB to be distributed as one package, all the header files and 'component' libraries are separated. (Although in some cases one component relies on the presence of others - I have tried to avoid that were possible.) > >We'll consider this again. The SSG doesn't yet have support for PNG > >images, right? Right - although that's easily fixed with libpng. > >Harum (the graphics coder) said, "We'll use it.", as I asked again do > >we use it or not, so we are going to use it now. Cool! Welcome! > > You can add us to the list of projects using PLIB > > if you have one.... Actually, I've been to busy to compile one. > > but still the PNG-support is needed, as soon as possible. Well, I don't think it's hard to do. > > When the times comes, > >we are going to need an 3DS-loader too, if there is no such loader > >at that point we might contribute it then, if it is ok. That would be great. Loaders are certainly a weak spot in PLIB right now. > Having mentioned the "small side project to build a modeller", I had > better get on with it. I'm about ready top take this discussion to > plib-devel, but want to have "started down the road" before I start > getting input as it makes for more progress and less discussion. > > I recall from a previous mail you said that PPE needed adapting to ssg. > What's in PPE already? Would it be better to adapt it or start from > scratch? Well, PPE (for those who don't know) is like this: * I couldn't find a free Linux modeller with source code under GPL that suited my needs, so I started to write one. * PPE stands for "Pretty Poly Editor" - it's logo is a parrot. * I intended to write it on top of PLIB so it would be portable. Hence, it'll run full speed even on a Voodoo-1 card. All the GUI is in PUI and all the I/O is in GLUT. Graphics are of course OpenGL/Mesa. * The problem was (at the time) that I didn't have SSG written and you really *NEED* a solid scene graph package BEFORE you write your modeller. * So, I stopped work on PPE to write SSG. * Partway through writing SSG, I had a change of heart and purchased a shareware modeller called 'AC3D'. AC3D isn't perfect - but it's just about usable. (Just). * I needed a demo program for SSG - that demo turned into my game "Tux_AQFH". * PPE is now seriously out of date. I think much of the code, and the overall principles are good - but the code itself needs considerable rework. * I can't (easily) release the code as it stands for other people to work on because it relies on a matrix/vector math library that I wrote at work that is NOT available. At the very least, I have to do a bunch of edits to make it use the PLIB math library 'SG'. * Now I'm *SNOWED UNDER* with PLIB stuff - to the extent that I can't get back to doing TUX_AQFH - let alone go back to PPE. * What I'd like to do is take a week vacation from work and get the backlog of PLIB work done so I can hack PPE and release it to Simon (and/or anyone else who wants to work on it). > My present thinking is to build something similar in outlook to ME3D ( > vertiex, surface, fan & strip modelling ) with a better interface for > plotting points ( maybe click with mouse to select point on grid + two > keys to move grid in and out of picture ). You need something better than that - but it's too much to explain in this email. -- Steve Baker http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1 sjbaker1@airmail.net (home) http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker sjbaker@hti.com (work)
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