Flow 3D Ogre wrapper

Does anyone know the status of the Flow3D Ogre wrapper?

I have been looking forward to it for a while now but I haven't seen it mentioned for quite some time and now the website, www.flow3d.org seems to be offline.

I do hope it isnt totally dead...the videos of it on Youtube looked really promising :-S

I was also looking fordward to seeing this engine in action. Any news?

I vaguely recall they mentioned something about changing the name, so that might account for the website not being renewed.

I've been looking forward to this, too. It would be a shame if it was dropped.

Hmmm a name chage might explain why I havent heard anything about it for a while. Can anyone remember who was coding it?

It's still in progress and we are making plans to releaee a beta soon. there are a couple of videos on youtube.

We made a simple demo to test flow and Cygnus made a video some months ago, shows the game demo running with the editor integrated kind of like torque.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVmhScL1jI&feature=related&fmt=18

It's coming along quite well and were hoping to release it soon. We had a low point that spanned several months where team members had various troubles and little progress was made. The last couple of weeks had some pretty furious activity and we updated the standalone editor which has been the main thing holding back release of a beta version. Shouldn't be too long now before people can play with it, will be interesting to see how they get on.

The editor is there to make scene building a bit more straightforward because in ogre every entity has to be attached to a scenenode and the scenenode manipulated for basic transforms. So creating and naming scenenodes and attaching meshes in source isn't much fun if your coding a scene from scratch and makes things more complicated than B3D, hence the editor which has a lot of 3dsmax like transform tools and shortcuts including instancing, heirarchy linking and unlinking, rotation snaps etc.

Flow has a sceneloader with both XML and binary formats. Only saves in the XML format, the binary versions are compiled with a simple utility and are read only. This should reduce the amount of time coders have to spend constructing scenes with code.

Were planning a name change soon too since there is another existing product produced by another company called flow3d.

That are very good news!

Excellent news and thanks for the update!

Just a quick question, how will the editor work with oFusion?
Will we have to import oFusion files into FlowEd and export them before they will run in Blitz or can they be loaded directly?

You can load them directly into flow from Ofusion, The editor is quite a simple object placement editor but has quite powerfull transform controls, it's there for people that don't have or need 3dsmax or ofusion, or want to build a scene from scratch , sky, lights, cameras, fog, shadow type, choose a scene manager, set up using ogre meshes.

You don't have to use the scene editor at all and can create your own format, Flow will load meshes. The biggest difference between Ogre and B3D is that you don't interact with mesh transforms directly, instead you create a scenenode and attach the mesh to that and transform the scenenode. So an extra step if your coding, something that the editor conveniently does away with.

Keep it up. Looking forward to it.

We decided to release a beta version of our flowED object placement editor for testing purposes today. I don't think were going to make a proper thread about it just yet since the Flow demo shouldn't be far off and more worthy of a proper announcement.



You can download the demo from http://www.flow3d.org/ and post on the forums and news for updates.

It's quite a simple Editor with powerful controls for object placement. We didn't want to integrate the editor so heavily that your constrained to a certain way of working. It does make laying out a scene pretty easy and fun whilst not tying flow users to the editor since we know a lot of blitz people like coding everything themselves.

It does make the transition from B3D easier, and offers some shortcuts for laying out levels that we felt a lot of people would find useful.

Thanks for the release, truly excellent work.
My main suggestion at the mo would be that the contrast of the white text in the assets list is incredibly hard to read. Other than that it seems to be pretty solid on first impressions.

Seriously looking forward to the main demo!

We released the actual flow3d beta wrapper module now too :). Been a busy couple of weeks. I put a proper post up on the showcase forum.

Hi, this is really nice. Everything works, but i get this error after closing the screen (on every demo).


But note that the compiled exe works fine.

Here the log:

Building Skeletal Animation Demo using OSM
Compiling:Skeletal Animation Demo using OSM.bmx
flat assembler  version 1.66
3 passes, 8312 bytes.
Linking:Skeletal Animation Demo using OSM.exe
Executing:Skeletal Animation Demo using OSM.exe
Creating resource group General
Creating resource group Internal
Creating resource group Autodetect
SceneManagerFactory for type 'DefaultSceneManager' registered.
Registering ResourceManager for type Material
Registering ResourceManager for type Mesh
Registering ResourceManager for type Skeleton
MovableObjectFactory for type 'ParticleSystem' registered.
OverlayElementFactory for type Panel registered.
OverlayElementFactory for type BorderPanel registered.
OverlayElementFactory for type TextArea registered.
Registering ResourceManager for type Font
ArchiveFactory for archive type FileSystem registered.
ArchiveFactory for archive type Zip registered.
FreeImage version: 3.10.0
This program uses FreeImage, a free, open source image library supporting all common bitmap formats. See <a href="http://freeimage.sourceforge.net" target="_blank">http://freeimage.sourceforge.net</a> for details
Supported formats: bmp,ico,jpg,jif,jpeg,jpe,jng,koa,iff,lbm,mng,pbm,pbm,pcd,pcx,pgm,pgm,png,ppm,ppm,ras,tga,targa,tif,tiff,wap,wbmp,wbm,psd,cut,xbm,xpm,gif,hdr,g3,sgi,exr,j2k,j2c,jp2
DDS codec registering
Registering ResourceManager for type HighLevelGpuProgram
Registering ResourceManager for type Compositor
MovableObjectFactory for type 'Entity' registered.
MovableObjectFactory for type 'Light' registered.
MovableObjectFactory for type 'BillboardSet' registered.
MovableObjectFactory for type 'ManualObject' registered.
MovableObjectFactory for type 'BillboardChain' registered.
MovableObjectFactory for type 'RibbonTrail' registered.
Loading library .\RenderSystem_Direct3D9
Installing plugin: D3D9 RenderSystem
D3D9 : Direct3D9 Rendering Subsystem created.
D3D9: Driver Detection Starts
D3D9: Driver Detection Ends
Plugin successfully installed
Loading library .\RenderSystem_GL
Installing plugin: GL RenderSystem
OpenGL Rendering Subsystem created.
Plugin successfully installed
Loading library .\Plugin_ParticleFX
Installing plugin: ParticleFX
Particle Emitter Type 'Point' registered
Particle Emitter Type 'Box' registered
Particle Emitter Type 'Ellipsoid' registered
Particle Emitter Type 'Cylinder' registered
Particle Emitter Type 'Ring' registered
Particle Emitter Type 'HollowEllipsoid' registered
Particle Affector Type 'LinearForce' registered
Particle Affector Type 'ColourFader' registered
Particle Affector Type 'ColourFader2' registered
Particle Affector Type 'ColourImage' registered
Particle Affector Type 'ColourInterpolator' registered
Particle Affector Type 'Scaler' registered
Particle Affector Type 'Rotator' registered
Particle Affector Type 'DirectionRandomiser' registered
Particle Affector Type 'DeflectorPlane' registered
Plugin successfully installed
Loading library .\Plugin_OctreeSceneManager
Installing plugin: Octree & Terrain Scene Manager
Plugin successfully installed
Loading library .\Plugin_CgProgramManager
Installing plugin: Cg Program Manager
Plugin successfully installed
*-*-* OGRE Initialising
*-*-* Version 1.4.9 (Eihort)
Added resource location './media' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/meshes' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/materials' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/configs' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/fonts' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/imagesets' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/layouts' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/looknfeel' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/lua_scripts' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/GUI/schemes' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/OSM' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/Particles' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/UserDEF' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
Added resource location './media/Overlays' of type 'FileSystem' to resource group 'General'
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Allow NVPerfHUD = No
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Anti aliasing = None
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Floating-point mode = Fastest
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Full Screen = Yes
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Rendering Device = Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: VSync = No
D3D9 : RenderSystem Option: Video Mode = 1280 x 800 @ 32-bit colour
CPU Identifier & Features
-------------------------
 *   CPU ID: GenuineIntel: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual  CPU  T2330  @ 1.60GHz
 *      SSE: yes
 *     SSE2: yes
 *     SSE3: yes
 *      MMX: yes
 *   MMXEXT: yes
 *    3DNOW: no
 * 3DNOWEXT: no
 *     CMOV: yes
 *      TSC: yes
 *      FPU: yes
 *      PRO: yes
 *       HT: no
-------------------------
D3D9 : Subsystem Initialising
***************************************
*** D3D9 : Subsystem Initialised OK ***
***************************************
D3D9RenderSystem::createRenderWindow "renderwindow", 1280x800 windowed  miscParams: Anti aliasing=None depth=32 externalWindowHandle=198118 
D3D9 : Created D3D9 Rendering Window 'renderwindow' : 1280x800, 32bpp
D3D9 : WARNING - disabling VSync in windowed mode can cause timing issues at lower frame rates, turn VSync on if you observe this problem.
Registering ResourceManager for type Texture
Registering ResourceManager for type GpuProgram
Multiple render targets with independent bit depths supported
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_L8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_L16
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A4L4
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_BYTE_LA
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_R5G6B5
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_B5G6R5
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A4R4G4B4
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A1R5G5B5
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A8R8G8B8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_B8G8R8A8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_A2R10G10B10
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DXT1
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DXT2
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DXT3
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DXT4
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DXT5
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT16_RGB
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT16_RGBA
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT32_RGB
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT32_RGBA
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_X8R8G8B8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_R8G8B8A8
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_DEPTH
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_SHORT_RGBA
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT16_R
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT32_R
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_SHORT_GR
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT16_GR
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_FLOAT32_GR
D3D9: Vertex texture format supported - PF_SHORT_RGB
RenderSystem capabilities
-------------------------
 * Hardware generation of mipmaps: no
 * Texture blending: yes
 * Anisotropic texture filtering: yes
 * Dot product texture operation: yes
 * Cube mapping: yes
 * Hardware stencil buffer: yes
   - Stencil depth: 8
   - Two sided stencil support: yes
   - Wrap stencil values: yes
 * Hardware vertex / index buffers: yes
 * Vertex programs: yes
   - Max vertex program version: vs_3_0
 * Fragment programs: yes
   - Max fragment program version: ps_3_0
 * Texture Compression: yes
   - DXT: yes
   - VTC: no
 * Scissor Rectangle: yes
 * Hardware Occlusion Query: yes
 * User clip planes: yes
 * VET_UBYTE4 vertex element type: yes
 * Infinite far plane projection: yes
 * Hardware render-to-texture: yes
 * Floating point textures: yes
 * Non-power-of-two textures: yes (limited)
 * Volume textures: yes
 * Multiple Render Targets: 4
 * Point Sprites: yes
 * Extended point parameters: yes
 * Max Point Size: 256
 * Vertex texture fetch: yes
   - Max vertex textures: 4
   - Vertex textures shared: no
ResourceBackgroundQueue - threading disabled
Particle Renderer Type 'billboard' registered
SceneManagerFactory for type 'OctreeSceneManager' registered.
SceneManagerFactory for type 'TerrainSceneManager' registered.
Parsing scripts for resource group Autodetect
Finished parsing scripts for resource group Autodetect
Parsing scripts for resource group General
Parsing script Explosion_material.material
Parsing script flowMaterials.material
Parsing script ground.material
Parsing script ParticleMaterials.material
Parsing script robot.material
Parsing script skybox.material
Parsing script walkie.material
Error at line 70 of walkie.material: Error in program OffsetMappingSample_ps parameter column_major_matrices is not valid.
Error at line 87 of walkie.material: Error in program OffsetMappingSample_vs parameter column_major_matrices is not valid.
Parsing script UserDEF.material
Parsing script explosion1.particle
Parsing script Flame1.particle
Parsing script jc_template_2.particle
Parsing script Jet.particle
Parsing script MMParticles.particle
Parsing script ParticleSystems.particle
Parsing script robogun.particle
Parsing script Smoke.particle
Parsing script Spark.particle
Finished parsing scripts for resource group General
Parsing scripts for resource group Internal
Finished parsing scripts for resource group Internal
Creating viewport on target 'renderwindow', rendering from camera '_camera', relative dimensions L: 0.00 T: 0.00 W: 1.00 H: 1.00 ZOrder: 0
********************************
**     oScene Loader Lib      **
********************************
oSceneLoader: Loading 'walkie.OSM' file
oSceneLoader: Creating scene on 'Root' node
Mesh: Loading Walkie.mesh.
Skeleton: Loading Walkie.skeleton
Mesh: Loading Box03.mesh.
Mesh: Loading RobRArms01.mesh.
Mesh: Loading RobRGGun01.mesh.
Mesh: Loading RobRGGunBarrel01.mesh.
Mesh: Loading RobRBeamLaser01.mesh.
********************************
** oSceneLoader: Scene loaded **
********************************
Mesh: Loading Plane01.mesh.
D3D9 : Loading 2D Texture, image name : 'rockwall.dds' with 2147483647 mip map levels
Texture: spot_shadow_fade.png: Loading 1 faces(PF_R8G8B8,128x128x1) with 7 generated mipmaps from Image. Internal format is PF_X8R8G8B8,128x128x1.

Process complete

I use the comIde (Beta4)

bye

Must be a variation of the MaxIDE error. We all use BLIDE and havent tried anything else other than MaxIDE so not sure what to suggest at this point. It seems to be related to the stdoutput window being overrun with too much log data from Ogre all at once.

We figured it was just a MaxIDE problem before and recommend BLIDE, mainly because BLIDE intellisense grabs a ton of data we incorporated in flow source commenta making flow much easier to use with BLIDE.

examples of Flow with BLIDE intellisense





autocomplete



Makes things a lot easier to learn, and you don't have to check the docs so much.

We will definately look into it, now that other ide's have the problem.see if anything can be done.

This is caused by Flow sending lots of data to the standard error pipe and to the standard output pipe. Any IDE should hold this properly, but given the amount of data, it is easy to get them overloaded unles the pipes are flushed properly and often. I managed to sort this on BLIde by using different threads to read the standard error pipe and the standard output pipe. I would recommend this on any other IDE wishing to support Flow of any other engine that uses extensivelly pipes.

By the way, THE DEMO RULES A LOT!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
it runs on intel crap cards and on nvidia decent ones, without changing a single line of source code... incredible.

hi, guys. Thanks 4 the infos.



Yes, that is awesome. As you can see i have compiled on a (crap) X3100. ;)

bye

that thing even runs on an Asus eeePC 901 ;)

Hey Dreamora, thats a name I havent seen on here in a while. Cool that flow worked on that tiny thing :)

The team is warming up to another Flow update soon. Lina today upgraded Flow to Ogre 1.6 shoggoth and if all goes well, Newton 2 will make the next release too.

There are a couple of new examples on top of the Ogre overlays recently posted in the forums.

Newton Physics ball and socket joints example (required for ragdolls)
Softshadow example using PCF shadows (Percentage Closer Filtering)
Compositors (post FX) which have been in for ages but no one did an example.
A example app that demonstrates some of the things needed to make a basic shooting game.


Lina wrapped all of ogres 2D drawing commands and started with helpers that will emulate Max2D more closely which is good for those that don't like using CEGUI or overlay scripts etc.

I wonder why you chose that name. Don't you fear a lawsuit from creators of Flow-3D once they find about your product? I guess you asked and they said it was ok?

Yeah, I've been more or less focused on Blitz3D and BlitzPlus, as I'm handling the RC Standard source work.
But I've recently SVN updated my BM and thought I would drop in on the flow3d page again as it is, beside Xors3D, the only engine I see as a real solution for BM. (MiniB3D naturally is nice as well but pure opengl is too less, then I prefer pure DX actually)

Great to see the progress on it actually :)

Were planning a name change soon too since there is another existing product produced by another company called flow3d.

that's incredible GOOD news!!!!!

tonyg,

Thanks for pointing that out.

heh, yeah we worked under the name flow3d for 2 years and didn't want to waste time coming up with a new name, not when we agreed to release the beta version for Christmas. we will eventually change it and keep the domain so people can still get there through flow3d.org

Great news on the 2D thing :)

And pretty sad that after knowing how to find it for 2 years forces me to learn a new name soon but great to see that it is finally reaching "get it, get it" status :)

BTW:

the downloaded installer "FlowED.exe" suggests an install path of Firefox ;D

So if one just clicks "next" "next" ... it will install into the directory of your browser.

System: xp sp2 german

Dunno if it has to do with some locales (only german clients avaiable here) but suggested directory was the one of Firefox on 3 tested clients.


bye MB

hmm, thanks for pointing that out MichaelB. I have firefox, IE and iron browsers and didn't have that problem. We mostly used the winrar self extracting installer features. the installer just installs to whichever folder the exe is located if you don't specify a path.

I suppose we should just use zip. was trying the simplest method to install it in a folder with good compression to keep the DL size down. The next update will revert to a regular zip file. Your the first to mention this. I guess firfox default state is to save in its own folder?

I have FF it set to a d:/ download path which is probbaly why I didn't notice

Nope... Within my tests it DLs to the Desktop... But it doesn't matter where I stored because it wants to install it into the FF-directory everytime ;D

And... other rar-self-extractors didnt have this problem (at least the ones I remember ;D)

bye MB

no idea, its supposed to just install to the same dir the installer is in. thats all it did for us and no one else complained. We just won't bother with an installer next time and let people unzip it. Zip is about over 1mb larger so we tried the rar last time

7zip.org self extracters potentially get you even smaller than rar :)
installers are a bad idea anyway. they often suggest program files folder which is a dead end on vista for the common noob dev