You know what? I am not using Virtools 4.0. We have it - that’s not the problem. The thing is, I am not motivated to use it. Every year the prices are increasing twice as much as it gets improved. The EULA changed and is now saying that webpublishing isn’t free anymore. Office and XE players could be an alternative if they wouldn’t be so crazyly overpriced. You may think differently if you live in Paris or London - but not *ALL* do.

In 2000 I read an article about Virtools 1.0.1 written by my current boss. It was that article that let me discover that tool and technology. At that time I was studying. The tool seemed interesting but I needed time to learn it and my workload didn’t allow. Somehow it happend that I could wake the enthusiasm of one of my professors for it and some months later it was bought and the first course took place. Finally I got the justification to take time to learn it ;). Friends told me that then, for some months, I vanished from their radars.

At that time I struggeled intensively with the Character export (very unstable and buggy). Now it’s more stable and much less buggy but look at the large number of people asking for help about character export. Still a workflow with lots of pitfalls - 6 years later!! I had to discovered many of them the hard way. It’s time-intensive and therefore cost-intensive.

Today I started to ask me if I should stop helping with this because it’s repetitive and feels more like beeing ‘Virtools support’. Like many other advanced users, that are visible in the online community, I invested a lot of time over the years in troubble shooting, making suggestions, writing reports … it had an effect, no doubt, but somehow the frustrations from the past 2 years of hitting very frequently shortcomings are heavier in weight.

They say "3D For All" … now I wonder for what does "All" stand for?
AYM ??

You don’t know AYM? It’s new and part of ALC, PLC and PLM … it stands for "All Your Money"
… oops, I was wrong. I just got an eMail saying that I am wrong … it’s actually AYMABTU ( All Your Money Are Belong To Us)

Yesterday there was an IGDA Berlin Chapter meeting. I think it was the 7th but for me it was the first. On the program there were two presentations: Realviz Movimento (a video-based capture-system) and Paraworld  (a RTS-Game with dinos and new army controller) PostMortem by SEK-OST .

Unfortunally we didn’t saw that much of Movimento though it seems an interesting product. Most of the time was spend on MatchMover as it’s the base technology for Movimento. Also missing was how this could be interesting for game developers. It was said, that this ain’t part of the product (offering a ready-to-use workflow to get the the data quickly on an animation-rigs) but it seems that they still think about it and may present some approaches in the future. The interesting aspect of video-based capturing is the flexibilty. For example you can use moving cameras. It also has the possiblity to auto-calibrate itself using specifque visual patterns. The main backdraw is probally that it is not suited for capturing and outputting data in real-time (if this is requird).

SEK Ost made a very interesting presentation though they had not that much time anymore as it was getting late. One factor why development was long was the aspect that engine and tools has been developed in-house. He stressed that maintenance (updating, extending, bug-fixing) of tools is major time and cost factor. In addition to that you don’t have people or a community around these technology opposed to licensing an engine like unreal (the engine he mentioned several times). The benefit is of course that they now can develop similar titles without any licensing fees etc.

The choice to develop in-house was made after evaluating several products (probally in 2000 or 2001) and none seem fit the requirements. I know that they also looked at Virtools (version 1.0.1, i think). They also showed screenshots of their tools and I must say that it once more confirmed the thoughts I have about a good workflow and missing issues in Virtools content pipeline. Their exporter has the ability to tag/classify objects within 3ds max. Thus the artist can say: this is a "connection point for the sattle" or "this is a building" or "this is a connection for arms" etc. It’s something I am looking for too and therefore modded the Virtools exporter to allow specifications and export of attributes - but I am still not happy with it. Though Virtools improved recently their exporter, I am not sure why they don’t come up with something even more robust in handling and features. Unfortunally the photos I took are totally blurry as there was not enoug light, so just one shot: 

Very intersting is their cut-scene editor. They did a demo of it and it’s fantastic. I was impressed. They said it allowed them to do a cut-scene in 2 days instead of i.e. 3 weeks. The tool has clips that could be layered, resized and moved on the timeline. It seemed also that they can go back and forth in the timeline and get in realtime the result in the viewport. On the Virtools forum some people asked for some kind of timeline editors and I wasn’t so much pro that idea as I was told that often in Flash movements are scripted anyways. But I think, I am changing my mind. For creating and editing sequences of events timeline-based editing seems very productive. I am not sure how much such a system can be generalized so that it usable for RTS or Adventure cutscenes and other stuff like 2D animations - but it seems that there are enough common aspects.

 

Seems like the PhysX SDK and Runtime distribution is now free - even for commercial usage.

(…)
2.    License.  AGEIA Technologies, Inc. (“AGEIA”) grants you (“you”) a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable world-wide, royalty-free license to (a) internally install, use and display the PhysX SDK, solely for purposes of developing Physics Applications; (b) internally use, copy, modify and compile the Sample Code to design, develop and test Physics Applications; and (c) reproduce and distribute the Redistributable Code only in object code form and only as fully integrated into Physics Applications, provided you meet and comply with all requirements of this Agreement.
(…) 

Hm, I wrote wrapper for Tokamak, then I worked on an integration of NewtonPhysics … am I going for HW support? Dunno, but now we have one more option and it can be interesting for some stuff to get HW boosted …

yes… yes I know, AngelOfDark … you heard that it is not working very stable … I keep that in mind, don’t worry ;)