More personalized rooms?

[synfinity]

We have a lot of bedrooms and a decent number of houses, but so many feel sort of drab and empty. Real rooms have people living in them and there should be artifacts from those people.

Take Marburg's Zanna Bedroom here: 

Great room, love it, but posters only on one wall. Now, with rooms like the 3dcg house where each wall has its own texture, I can just add posters and picture, etc. to the wall textures. But with rooms like the Zanna Bedroom, all the walls use the same tiled texture.

My question is twofold:
Are any of our talented room artists interested to release more simple bedrooms and houses with these sort of things?

OR

How hard would it be to add the simple flat planes to the walls in a 3d editor to put more pictures up or whatever? I'll admit I've tried and failed with the 3d modeling and import before, but if someone could point me in the right direction for instructions and software, I might try it for myself.

EDIT: Please do not be offended, Marburg. You do a great job, I realize not everyone has the same tastes and priorities I do.

Edited May 28, 2021 by synfinity

[synfinity]

Another similar question: How would I go about adding video walls to the TVs in rooms like the 3dcg house? Also, would it be possible to add videowall support to skydomes? Like if I wanted to add a video of rain falling to the under the bridge room:
 

 

[EJAX]

5 hours ago, synfinity said:

would it be possible to add videowall support to skydomes?
 

 

 

The video on something like a skydome would have to be at such a high resolution that the game couldn't reasonably run it; especially if you wanted to see detail as small as raindrops. You could potentially use the particle system for something like that, but the math involved in filling an entire scene is likely to drag your machine to a halt. The way rain is done in most video games is with a textured single plane overlay that follows the camera; which as far as I know, this engine doesn't support.

 

A skydome video might work well for low-res effects, like trees whizzing by on the highway. But the video would still have to be at a ridiculously high resolution. I don't know where you'd find the source video for something like that, unless you worked at ILM. It might be a practical idea if you only wanted a view it from a single window (single stationary plane outside). But you can only have one video per-room. I'm still holding out hope that someone will figure out how to attach video to a toy, then you could put it anywhere you wanted it. But it would likely conflict with anything else in the game that has video support.

 

And then there's Hook...

Edited May 28, 2021 by EJAX

[Marburg]

Quote

How hard would it be to add the simple flat planes to the walls in a 3d editor to put more pictures up or whatever? I'll admit I've tried and failed with the 3d modeling and import before, but if someone could point me in the right direction for instructions and software, I might try it for myself.

Not that hard at all. There are two ways: using a 3d design tool like Blender or "by hand" by editing the scene script code. I made my start by copying & pasting code, making small changes and seeing how they work out. replacing one texture for another, copying objects, moving objects... its all possible. The only way to learn is to jump in and try to swim. Start with a simple room (like the standard Bedroom) and study the *.bs script file to see how it all works.

 

Of course if you  want/need more possibilities, you will need to use something like Blender. It's a bitch to get used to with lots of features you'll never use and an awkward interface. If you want to learn how to use it, i recommend YouTube. Blender has a steep initial learning curve but just keep at it, step by small step. I think it took me several months to get to grips with.

 

Preblem is that writing good clear instructions on the whole creation process takes an awful long time and lots of work.

(Time and effort most people would rather spend on new projects).

I did publish a VideoWall How To on the old Modsgarden but i cant find it right now.

 

Quote

How would I go about adding video walls to the TVs in rooms like the 3dcg house? Also, would it be possible to add videowall support to skydomes?

 

that is actually a pretty good project to get started with "room hacking".

It doesn't involve a lot of code and the bits you do need are already out there and fairly easy to grok.

If you are serious, take a room with videowall support (Room341 "Hotel" is a good example) take the zip file, unzip it in a new folder and study the scripts.

 

Start with \Scripts\Luder\R9ZRoom341\AcRoom.bs and see how it links a new file called greenscreen.bs like this:

i even marked the added code so it's easy to spot

 

// --- start new code ---
    AppImportScene . {
        .NodeName "Room" + :room;
        .ParentPath "/RoomRoot";
        .SceneFile "Luder/Room/R9ZRoom341/greenscreen";
    };
// --- end new code ---

 

The file greenscreen.bs is the generic file you willl need to include for any videowall screen.

It basically setups the canvas that is used to project the movie on. Open it and see what it does.

Feel free to copy and re-use, that's what it is intended for

 

Next, we add an entry to the room description file \Scripts\Luder\Common\R9ZRoom341.bs

This will tell the game engine that this room has a VideoWall and enable the selection of a media file with the Album Controls.

 

// --- start new code ---
    .VideowallConfig RoomVideowall . {
        .WallGeometry "Room:TV_Screen_mesh";
        .WallDefaultShader "Room:TV_Screen_material";
        .WallUserShader "Room:GreenScreen_Shader";
        .WallOrientation I32(1);
    };    
// --- end new code ---       

 

The tricky part is getting the right WallGeometry and WallDefaultShader parameters.

WallGeometry should point to Object.Name of the "mesh" we are projecting our movie on

WallDefaultShader is the Object.Name of the RenderShader used to texture/paint that mesh.

The videowall playback will "hi-jack" that Shader and overlay the video on it.

 

Note: this also implies that you can use ANY object as a screen... a wall, a floor, a cube, a rotating skydome.

How it will LOOK is another matter but it's certainly possible.

 

Finding the right mesh/shader can be hard and frustrating. Not every room is created equal and some use very cryptic names like SDS23_ST_Object001_A34 instead of TVScreen. In that case, work you way backwards... start by determining which texture file is being used by the screen and then look in the scene file which RenderShader is using that texture file.
 

And that is basically it. It is quite simple once you know how to do it. Two easy steps:

[1] add the file \Scenes\Luder\Room\RoomName\greenscreen.bs and link to it in AcRoom.bs

[2] add the VideoWallConfig entry in \Scripts\Luder\Common\RoomName.bs

 

PLEASE NOTE! This room is a Berger room and he often used the same name for his TV Screens across a number of rooms.

But it is not always so simple! In fact, ive looked at the 3DCG house before and it uses more complicated textures to render the TV screens, making this method impossible. In a room like that, you would need to slip in an extra invisible screen in front of the TV but that's an advanced subject for lesson 102.

 

Quote

I'm still holding out hope that someone will figure out how to attach video to a toy,

 

Unfortunately this can't be done with the current game engine. Video streaming is limited to one shader per scene. There's no way to add more and that's basically what a toy would do. never mind what would happen if you have several video-enabled toys in a scene (performance issues aside).

 

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by Marburg

[EJAX]

6 hours ago, synfinity said:

How hard would it be to add the simple flat planes to the walls in a 3d editor to put more pictures up or whatever?

 

If you just want to do static pictures, then OysterMug's Movie Title Overlay.rar  is exactly what you 're looking for. I swear by it.

 

You could also just make a box in toymaker and put whatever texture you want on it. But it's a bit fiddly, and you can't get full resolution because one texture covers all six sides..

Edited May 28, 2021 by EJAX

[Marburg]

BS Scene structure 101

 

A short intrduction to Bionic Script (room) scene files structure:

 

BS-structure.pdf

[synfinity]

17 hours ago, EJAX said:

 

If you just want to do static pictures, then OysterMug's Movie Title Overlay.rar  is exactly what you 're looking for. I swear by it.

 

You could also just make a box in toymaker and put whatever texture you want on it. But it's a bit fiddly, and you can't get full resolution because one texture covers all six sides..

Only problem is, not wanting to deal with positioning a toy in every pose.

Marburg, I'm gonna give it another shot.

[EJAX]

6 hours ago, synfinity said:

Only problem is, not wanting to deal with positioning a toy in every pose.

If you build one pose off of another, like I tend to, that's not a problem. It just carries over from the last pose. MY biggest problem is forgetting to re-lock it after running the timeline.

[Marburg]

Quote

How hard would it be to add the simple flat planes to the walls in a 3d editor to put more pictures up or whatever?

not hard at all;  the hard part is finding the right artwork to match a room.  

 

but watch this space. my next release wil have several poster locations.

what's even better: you can create a number of ActiveMod folders with your own poster artwork and then use the room options to select the images you want to display. You can also leave the location(s) blank if you prefer a more austere look

Edited May 29, 2021 by Marburg