New Modview

[Xycaleth]

We have the original ModView code I was in the middle of making it cross platform but it got put to the side. If there's demand for it, I can go back and try to finish it off and adding improvements. I was in the middle of wiring up the UI to the old code so all the functionality is still there, but needs to be made accessible again to the user.

 

https://jkhub.org/files/file/3051-modview-for-windows-and-mac/

[Mandalorian]

Everyone uses this tool at some point I'm sure. Any improvement is worth it.

[Omicron]

Oohh, didn't realise that the code was released. Good to hear that you've atleast started it!

[eezstreet]

Yup. We got ModView, Assimilate and ROQ.exe source with the original source release, and we've had MD3View's source for a while now.

[Archangel35757]

Would be nice to add proper Shader support and rend2 (normal maps). Also, IIRC... ModView supports playing supporting sounds for a character using the animevents.cfg file.

 

If we add facial wrinkle (normal) maps (for mo-better facial expressions) then it would be nice to add support for a "face_event.cfg" (similar to animevent.cfg but it tells engine to use an animated normal map in sync with a facial expression animation).

[Ruxith]

I'm sure most of us would love to have an updated modview to cater for those areas mentioned above. Having visible shaders, better alpha previews and being able to view JK2 models without changing the _humanoid files to the JK2 ones would be great.

[DT.]

I'm sure most of us would love to have an updated modview to cater for those areas mentioned above. Having visible shaders, better alpha previews and being able to view JK2 models without changing the _humanoid files to the JK2 ones would be great.

 

It's hard when they are named the exact same. Best thing you could hope for is Modview to do what the game does for JK2 models - convert them over to the JKA _humanoid via a conversion table. You won't be able to see any JK2 animations, but at least then the JK2 model will load on the JKA _humanoid.

[Archangel35757]

Couldn't a revamped ModView handle the GLA & CFG file swapping automatically using a Boolean check on the bone count or something?

[Xycaleth]

I take it by the number of likes and responses that people want an updated ModView

[DT.]

Ya but rend2 is more important.

[minilogoguy18]

Yeah, I agree, ModView is fine for now, as long as it can load a model to ensure that it will load in game then that's good enough.

[Archangel35757]

Yeah, I agree, ModView is fine for now, as long as it can load a model to ensure that it will load in game then that's good enough.

But would be nice to preview shaders and normal maps-- more convenient than loading model up in-game... as you can spin around and view from any angle while an animation plays, etc.

[minilogoguy18]

Normal maps aren't even fully implemented in the actual game so why worry about the viewer?

 

As far as other shaders we all know what the basic ones look like and I know how to set up realtime shaders in Softimage to mimic what they'll look like in JA.

 

Implementing rend2 is definitely more important.

[Archangel35757]

@@minilogoguy18 -- I don't disagree with you... but sometimes you need to take a break from one project and do something else so you don't burnout.

[Xycaleth]

Seems like I was a lot closer to finishing my port of ModView that I thought I was I'm almost done making all the functionality available again, and taken out some stuff which I thought was useless. I can always add stuff back in if people did use it.

[Circa]

Seems like I was a lot closer to finishing my port of ModView that I thought I was I'm almost done making all the functionality available again, and taken out some stuff which I thought was useless. I can always add stuff back in if people did use it.

An actual Mac version would be lovely. I'm tired of using Wine.

[Archangel35757]

Seems like I was a lot closer to finishing my port of ModView that I thought I was I'm almost done making all the functionality available again, and taken out some stuff which I thought was useless. I can always add stuff back in if people did use it.

What functionality did you remove?

[Xycaleth]

What functionality did you remove?

 

• Viewing SoF2/JKA bot files
• Always on top option
• Copy/Find options under Edit menu
• Changing Global XYZ scales
• Viewing alpha blend (this is always enabled now)
• Viewing texture filtering (always enabled)
• Show origin lines
• Show tri/vertex indexes (might consider adding this back in. I used this not too long ago)
• Show all polys double-sided (always disabled now - only makes debugging harder)
• Show unshadowable surfaces (not sure what this even did)
• "Stu's test function"
• View OpenGL driver info

[Archangel35757]

I like the show origin axes... show unshadowable surfaces-- does that show/highlight objects that have > 500 verts ( not reactive to dynamic lighting?)

[Xycaleth]

I like the show origin axes... show unshadowable surfaces-- does that show/highlight objects that have > 500 verts ( not reactive to dynamic lighting?)

I'll add the show origin axes back in The main reason I'm removing stuff is to try and streamline ModView. I planned to redo the GUI a bit to be more intuitive.

 

And yeah, you're right. The unshadowable surfaces thing is supposed to show objects that have more than 500 verts. I never even knew that limitation existed.

[Archangel35757]

I'll add the show origin axes back in The main reason I'm removing stuff is to try and streamline ModView. I planned to redo the GUI a bit to be more intuitive.

 

And yeah, you're right. The unshadowable surfaces thing is supposed to show objects that have more than 500 verts. I never even knew that limitation existed.

Can we up that vert limit? Maybe 1000? So that it's same value as 1000 verts max per object?

[Xycaleth]

We could but then it wouldn't match up with JKA. I want to keep ModView working with vanilla JAMP as well.

 

EDIT: Just had a quick look in the source code - the limit is for stencil shadows (cg_shadow 2) which I don't think many people use anyway...

[Archangel35757]

What are stencil shadows?

 

Edit:

 

In its original incarnation, a stencil buffer was a one-bit-per-pixel (i.e. black or white, but no grays) framebuffer. You could render to it whatever you wanted like any other framebuffer. Then, later, you could use the contents of that buffer to "stencil" or mask out when drawing to your regular buffer.An example: Let's say you're making a driving game. You want to have a little rear-view mirror onscreen that shows you what's behind the car. You'll need to render a view pointing behind the car, but you only want to render that within the little rounded rectangle of the rear-view mirror. The typical solution is:

 

Render the rounded rectangle shape to the stencil buffer.Enable stencilling.Render the backwards pointing view onto the regular buffer.The stencil will then mask it out so that you only draw into the shape of the mirror.Now that render pipelines are much more flexible and programmable, stencil buffers are used as just a generic 1-bit framebuffer that you can do whatever you want with. Shadows are a common use case.

[Xycaleth]

 

They're pretty CPU intensive and look pretty bad in most cases though (it's easy to get shadows floating in midair, etc).

[Archangel35757]

Each character shadow seems to have a different light source angle in that shot, no?