DudleySoft.org

Someone was writing on the XNA forums at Microsoft about trying to get a poser figure imported into XNA, well since I’ve got Poser 5 and V3 (Victoria 3) that I would try importing her into HDL as a test to see what happens when you try to use a really high polygon model in XNA. First though I had to get the data exported in FBX format, long story short, since this is the most useful part. Download Autodesk’s FBX Convertor, export the model as a Wavefront OBJ file, then convert it to an ASCII FBX file (this is important for the next step), next you need to edit the texture paths, I found it easiest to pull the textures out of their respective directories and store them in a directory local to the FBX file. I replaced the paths with the new path to the textures (since it made them relative to the FBX file, and not pointing at the original files).

Once I’d done that I loaded the model as normal in the game, first using the basic effect shader, because I wasn’t sure it would work, then once I’d got the model working I decided to ramp it up a bit, and render it into both the shadow map and the reflection, then just to make check I added an FPS counter to the title page. Here’s the resultant screenshot.

I had to increase the scale since it appears that poser uses the same scale as my world does, so she’s 40 times actual size, you can see her reflected in the water, and her shadow behind the boat, you can also spot that she’s shadowing herself as well.

So there we go, rendering a poser model not once, but 3 times in XNA, and running at 62fps (possibly more since the update rate is fixed)

I decided that the old title page didn’t really reflect the game as I envision it, so I’ve changed it, and made it a bit more dynamic, instead of the helicopter sitting on a static helipad, I’ve move it out onto the Xena and created a scene that’s a bit more animated. It also tests my camera curve code that will be used in the cutscenes in the game engine.

Here’s what the new screen looks like:

Of course a still picture doesn’t really do it justice, so I put together a little video of the new engine in action, I’ve also replaced the temporary music I was using with something a bit more martial.

Another feature added to my engine, I was never entirely pleased with the water effect in HDL, yes, the ripples and warping of the texture looked alright, but it really needed to reflect the environment, however since I’d designed a top-down game, I hadn’t added a sky-box, so I had to create one first, now that I’ve done that, I’m able to render reflections.

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I’ve updated my software page with some demos of games I’ve written or worked on in the past, visit the software page from the page menu on the right to see screenshots and information about each game.

Okay, I’ve found out what was causing the shadows to break, when you begin a sprite batch it sets up the RenderState in a format that is suitable for rendering sprites, however this isn’t suitable for rendering 3D. (more…)