Hi,
>I have a 3d background composed of 60 castmembers
>example1: castmember1 shows a tree, castmember2 shows the tree
>closer,castmember3shows the tree even closer.
>so if your using this while pressing the up-arrow key then
>it looks like your getting closer to the tree.
>
>example2: next to the tree is a house but the house is in castmember9.
>
>I dont know if thats clear, but is there a way of lingo figuring out which
>castmember to display regarding of the castmember thats already displayed or
>the key you press. Im trying to make a nice transitional 3D move with the
>background, not something that would look choppy.
>is there a way of doing this, is there a 3d engine. Any help would be
>appreciated.
This makes me remember of the scenarios in some famous western
films. It has been revealed that the houses were rebuilded in
the studios with their facades only. In those movies the fiction
needed just that, since the action happened in front of the
buildings.
And this does not necessarily mean that these movies are less
enthralling than others that use more sofisticated environments.
Though imho the way you wish to build your 3D world can't fit
into a 3D engine, since a 3D engine doesn't represents a scene
by switching flat images in the score.
But, as I said, depending upon your expectations, using a flat
world may be a viable solution. For example, many documents
about DirectX, after having dealed with 3D, report samples of
this technique as a possible straightforward use of DirectDraw.
The games FoxBear and Immortal Klowns are quite well known
standard examples of this.
If you are going on this way, I'd suggest you to not use multiple
castmembers. The use of quads could be instead the right
alternative. With quads you get a little lower speed - but not
so much low, but also a fluid representation of the scene.
I tried to stretch two bitmaps of nearly 400K each (488 x 799,
8 bit) by adjusting their quads. The bitmaps where continuously
scaled from 0 to 10 times their actual dimensions by a function
like 10.0 + 10.0 * sin(kt), with kt = kt + 0.01, put into an
exitFrame handler. This test leads to excellent results: with
233 MHZ the minimum FPS rate is never lower than 25/30 FPS, and this
occurs when the images grow up a size 10 times their original one
(at which their pixels become so big as little stamps).
Such performance is exhibited by the new versions of Director,
starting from 7.0.
If you plan to use this technique, imho you may do without a 3D
engine. You simply adjust the arrow key action so to get what
you want.
On the other hand you could plan to set up a minimal graphical
3D pipeline in order to have a more consistent functionality
for projections.
Anyway representing a house among the trees is a quite tricky
problem: the trees are a far difficult subject.
In the case, I'd attempt to figure the situation in these terms:
instead of thinking to represent the situation of "real house
among real trees", I'd think of a scene where house and trees
have been replaced by the artworks of some infinitely skilled
painter. Let's say that the painter painted them, at their real
size, on surfaces of transparent glass and then put his special
canvas in some place of the real world, at the place of the
originary objects.
You are supposed to be initially in front of them and to be
looking straight at them. You can't realize that these objects
are only painted ones.
How much are you allowed to move away, along any possible
direction, in respect with your initial position? I'd guess
until you become aware of being in front of pictures.
This is imho the situation to manage with a reduced 3D Lingo:
the world's objects to project on the screen could be thought,
since the start, as rectangulars posters, each one described by
four triplets of coordinates, the ones of their four corners.
BTW, an extensive 3D Lingo engine is the one by Gerbil. Start your
search at: http://www.theburrow.co.uk/t3dtesters/general/demos.htm
If you wish to get yourself acquainted with math and techniques
for 3D, these old two books are very good ones. Their approach is
kept general, consistent and essential, and you don't feel overhelmed
by a lot of formulas (though you are on your own when you'll begin
to build your code):
- Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics
William M. Newmann, Robert F. Sproull
McGraw-Hill
- Computer Graphics - A Programming Approach
Steven Harrington
McGraw-Hill
This last is a classic one, far more detailed and full of
formulas:
- Computer Graphics Principles and Practice
Second Edition in C
Foley - van Dam - Feiner - Hughes
Addison Wesley
HTH,
Franco
IFC Programming Consultant
http://www.chnexus.com/main.htm
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