The Milkshape UI is based on the 3dsmax interface...if you can model more efficiently in Milkshape it's because you don't know how to use 3dsmax or refuse to learn. I think if Alexei or anyone else wanted to turn JED into a modeling program, Milkshape is *not* the software to take cues from.

That could be doable. The only tricky part is picking the direction to extrude - plane of the currently selected surface OK?



Might be tricky but I'll see.



What do you need it for?



That's a major feature, so not likely. I'll keep it on the list though.



How are you building them?



That may be fairly easy. I'll see.



What's U/V unwrap?



JKL viewer and a 3D preview in an editor are not quite the same thing. A lot fewer things can go wrong in a viewer.

The key question here, though, is not "how hard", but "how long". And the key issue is not writing it, but integrating in in the present JED code and/or redoing big part of it to fit the new addition.

As for using someone else's code: when 2 different people write two different pieces of software without any initial plans to put them together it's often better to not even try to put them together. Making them fit might turn out to be more work than writing it from scratch...

If you do this, please make it an "off by default" option - spending so much time with a program, and then changing the behaviour like this, it would cause some issues for sure.

Well, it'd be easier if we could extrude with the mouse so we can drag it in a direction. But yeah, the selected surface would be best.


This ties in with UV mapping.




Placing camera things [automatically assigning camera cogs etc] and placing second, 3rd, etc frames, the line between them, then allowing me to set the speed to travel at, the angle to be looking at, etc. Yes, you can already do this in Jed, but you have to do a lot of guessing and guest work. Simplifying it would make cutscenes a lot easier to make.


Allows you to lay a texture over a plane or model or whatever and move the vertices behind the texture, then apply the texture. It wraps around curves or bumps in the surface. Check out ForceRemap for something like this for models.

Good point.



Come on, be specific. It pays.

BTW, you are aware of the "Use in COG" command (invoked by U key) in JED, aren't you?

There's also a "Set 3P Preview to Item" (F5) that will set 3D preview camera to the position and orientation of the selected item - that could be useful.



I'll add that.



I'll probably add something like "make thing/frame look at" where you can specify where the thing/frame is looking.

And if you want some really specific automation (such as what you described - add thing, automatically assign a COG to it, set its angles, etc)- write plug-ins in JavasScript or VBScript (it's a built-in Windows scripting). That's what plugin feature's there for.



All right, now it's clear. That basically means - distorting the textures. I'll see what I can do but this might be really tricky since at some point I took extra care to keep JED from distorting textures.

Um, no. ForceRemap just has orthographic texture projection. UV unwrap is where the texture coordinates are unwrapped, much like unfolding a paper cube back into it's 2D shape. The unwrapped UVs are saved as images and textures can be drawn over them. I think. But I do know that ForceRemap is nothing but 6 way orthographic projection. That's why it'll distort if you try it on a sphere or a dome.

That said, simple orthographic texture projection would be great and (relatively) easy to implement. This along with texture locking can get you perfectly textured spheres, domes, curves, etc. The editor just has to be sure the texture is projected onto a flat surface, and THEN drag the vertices into the desired shape, otherwise it'll distort on the edges (thus is the nature of projecting textures). If you've ever worked with curves in Radiant, you know the distortion I'm talking about.

I'm currently working on using Sith 2 as a JED plugin which loads the level data directly from JED and displays it in realtime. Because Sith 2 has a COG VM, cogs should work in the preview too.

Bender, how does JED store things internally as far as template data is concerned? Is there any function to access a template or just the properties of a thing?

Yes, Milkshape is inferior compared to real professional 3d packages like 3dsmax and Maya. I used to use milkshape a lot until I got my hands on 3dsmax and Maya. The only use I have for milkshape is its import/export plugins. Milkshape is alright for only 20 bucks but once you try using something like 3dsmax, you really don't want to go back. BTW, there is a free version of 3dsmax called gmax. Gmax is a bit limited but if you ever are curious about how 3dsmax works, you should give Gmax a try.

Not to mention it can take weeks/months for the email to come with your GMax key

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Not to mention it can take weeks/months for the email to come with your GMax key[/QUOTE]

Wow, I must have been one of the lucky ones. Mine came within 10 minutes.

same here.

Templates are a separate database. That can also be accessed by plug-in functions, I believe. Things just have template references in them as text string - just like in JKL. Actually, I think current 3DO that the thing uses is also loaded and referenced, but that is not exposed through plug-in interface.

Hmm, seems that templates are exposed through OLE interface, but not plug-in. You can use "CreateOLEObject("JED.App")" from plug-in to get IDispatch OLE interface, of load "master.tpl" (or mots.tpl) yourself.

I don't see any accessor functions for templates. I do see GetThingValueData and GetThingValueName, which I'm guessing get individual template arguments, but no actual template.

They are in OLE automation, not in plug-in.

You can access it by using

jedole:=CreateOLEObject('JED.App');

templates:=jedole.templates;

and this object offers the following methods:

TOLETemplates=class(TAutoObject)
automated
Procedure ClearTemplates;
Function NTemplates:integer;
Function GetTemplateName(n:integer):String;
Function GetTemplateParent(n:integer):string;
Function GetTemplateValues(n:integer):String;

Function GetTemplateDescription(n:integer):String;
Procedure SetTemplateDescription(n:integer;const desc:string);
Procedure GetTemplateBBox(n:integer;var x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2:double);
Function GetTemplateBBoxEx(n:integer;what:integer):double;
Procedure SetTemplateBBox(n:integer;x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2:double);

Procedure DeleteTemplate(n:integer);
Function AddTemplate(const name,parent,values:string):integer;
Function FindTemplate(const name:string):integer;
Procedure LoadTemplates(const filename:string);
Procedure SaveTemplates(const filename:string);
end;

And, as I said, a better (quicker) way might be to just load and parse master.tpl (mots.tpl) file.

Would it be hard to add a feature to add/change Jed's hotkeys? I'm thinking like that menu option in Joke and Fun3do...

Can you provide a beta download?
Please?

way to revive a year old topic.

I lost my necromice pic a long, long time ago.

I don't understand this. You don't just randomly come across a year-old thread. You have to look for it. So this guy was looking at hundreds of year-old threads?

BTW, what ever happened to the JED creator?

JED 0.96 turned out to be buggy and very few people sent back bug reports to Bender (Alexei Novikov, JED creator), so Bender never released the 0.96 version.

There is a different update to JED called ZED, compiled from the 0.951 source with a few new features.

Good thing no one is closing this. *cough*

Cool guys thx, btw does any one have the rbots sdk?

ibtl