Flow3D Beta, Something for the holidays :-)

We had a tenative release date for Christmas, it’s been a bit of a rush but we have the Flow beta for windows ready for download.

For those new to Blitzmax and installing mods, there is a guide on the Wiki at:

Blitzmax demo and Flow3D install guide

For those coming from Blitz3D there is a basic guide to migrating to Flow/Ogre which outlines a few key principles that are different to Blitz3D.

Blitz3D to Ogre3D/Flow3D guide

This beta release does have some code examples, they were mostly designed to test features and aren’t supposed to impress visually.

There’s a page on the wiki with links to various exporters listed Here

Enjoy- You can grab it from our site HERE!!!

This Beta version has the same time limit of the Demo version- it will run for between around 5 minutes before shutting off.

>>Download Here.(soon)<<
Is this a joke?

Nope, just looks like the Wiki hasn't updated yet. head over to http://www.flow3d.org/category/uncategorized/. That was a bit silly of us!

Oh I fixed the link, I wrote the page yesterday when there wasn't a link.

ALSO don't forget FLOWED BETA http://www.flow3d.org/FlowED.exe



It's an editor we made for flow that makes things a lot easier. In the flow beta there are basic examples on how to use user defined properties and save .OSM scene files from your own apps.

check out the videos if you want a quick preview of the editor.


Heirarchy linking and rotation snaps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aGJaqSKyZI&fmt=18

Scale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzrr4wZtn_0&fmt=18

Snap to Grid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awmsY0_U2HU&fmt=18

with Flow, I can actually do programming as usual (no need to use editor and type scripting in there), while materials and everything i set up in editor??

no need to use the editor its just a convenient way to quickly lay out levels. you can hardcode everything yourself if you want and build your own formats from scratch.

The OSM format used is custom made to support the commercial Ofusion exporter we use for our projects. There is a free community edition for 3dsmax users, you don't have to use it you can build scenes from scratch by loading in regular ogre meshes and saving out scenes.

Ogre doesn't really have a official format that handles scenes, just individual meshes without heirarchy. so the editor can be very handy.

..mmm..this is interesting...may i know when its going to be out?? I mean, not demo but, commercial version?? Bmax will remain main programming development environment for Flow?

Last word from lina who does the lower level ogre side C++ coding, she put a tentative date for Feb 1st, with Mac and Linux soon after.

We do plan on sticking with Blitzmax. Early in the new year we will be upgrading flow to Ogre 1.6 and Newton 2 after which new features should start piling on quite fast.

Got to go eat and stuff. Hope you like whats there so far. The examples were originaly mostly for testing purposes and aren't that fancy. I hope there's enough there to spark your interest and get you started :)

For the most part the samples compile and run (OpenGL and DirectX, full-screen / windowed, debug / release), except they all display an error dialog upon termination:

MaxIDE
Compile Error
1.00 ZOrder: 0

BlitzMax SVN Revision 170. WinXP, GeForce 8800GTS (Driver 180.84 BETA).

Also noticed a couple of occasional errors in the output window:

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.


One last thing: RENDERING_ManualParticleSystems.bmx does not display correctly and does not terminate when ESCAPE is pressed, as the code suggests it should.

Will have an extended 'play' now… Looks like Flow3D could be quite capable indeed…

found that we had to put a dll back in to make for better compatibility on older systems or ones that havent been updated recently. Should have left it in since it does effect few computers.

Lina just said the crash at the end after running after closing an app is a blitz ide error when the std output window is overrun by the ogre log and debug info. We recommend using BLIDE if you aren't already, flow was developed with it and supports it's intellisense and autocomplete features plus it tends to be a lot more reliable. It's only the bmax ide that has this problem apparently.

You can try out the free version of blide and avoid those errors on closing from: http://www.blide.org/index.php?section=getfree


The material shader, I'm not sure about. I used shaderFX for 3dsmax to create it and lina converted it to CG for the walkies demo.

I put the missing polled input back in the manual particle system source so escape works now and changed the material to one that existed in the media folder so that works now.

If you want to grab the missing dll and test it you can grab it and stick it in the samples/ dir http://www.flow3d.org/d3dx9_36.dll

The main archives were updated so anyone else downloading won't need the extra .dll file.

Thanks for the feedback that let me try and address these problems quickly :)

Flow Beta! Outstanding...

I really, really think that annoying "1.00 Zorder:0" dialogue should simply be removed from MaxIDE's source- It's not really an error- You won't get it with your compiled EXEs. It's been in there since BlitzMAX was released and serves no purpose, so you have to question why the official release still does this.

[edit]

We did fix the particlesystems demo but somehow it seems to have regressed before release- here's the fixed source for that demo for those who can't wait for a fixed release.

REM
** RENDERING_ManualParticleSystems.bmx for Flow3D Samples
** Description: This sample file will show you how to load particle systems quickly using particle template files.
**
** Author: Lina Adkins
** Date Started: December 17, 2008
ENDREM

Import flow.main
fG.init()

EnablePolledInput()

'Create our empty particle system and give it a mask texture
Global ps:TParticleSystem = fG.createEmptyParticleSystem("ps")
ps.setMaterialName("Particles/lensflare")

'Call to renderWorld to init the created particle system
fG.renderWorld()

'Spawn four particles in a cross shape
'fG.createParticle( TParticleSystem , Direction , Size )
fG.createParticle(ps, Vec3(0, 2, 0) , 1.0)
fG.createParticle(ps, Vec3(0, - 2, 0) , 1.0)
fG.createParticle(ps, Vec3(- 2, 0, 0) , 1.0)
fG.createParticle(ps, Vec3(2, 0, 0) , 1.0)


'Basic renderloop
Repeat
	fG.renderWorld()
	Delay 1000 / 60
Until KeyDown(KEY_ESCAPE) Or fG.appTerminated()

Cygnus, the files were all fixed and new flow beta archives uploaded to the web server lastnight. I just didn't commit them to the SVN till now.

"puki" clutches his Blitz3D and runs for the hills.

oops

Aww! Puki, it's not so bad. the particle example above with the vec3 stuff is like blitz3d components x,y,z whilst flow has it in a data structure some would argue that the data structure allows you to manipulate the data more freely. The Stig told me this in morse code whilst racing around the top gear track last weekend.

haha, we should be thankful he's not making Half life 3: the Doom4 of Halo with our media X-D

Hi,

Works fine here, although I had to find a copy of d3dx9_36.dll first. I wonder why windows update doesn't take care of this stuff - it's a problem that's been around for ages.

Apart from that, nice work!


I can't find anything like that in the IDE source. My guess, flow or ogre is writing to stderr and the IDE is treating it as an error.

hi mark we added the d3dx9_36.dll to the download files now after a couple of computers had the same problem :).

I recon you are right here. What can be done to clean this up? Blide doesn't throw this dialogue but MaxIDE does.

I wrote the above stating it was the IDE because I thought I had seen this error with a different 3D engine, but in fact it was another Ogre engine wrap, so I'll retract it. :-)

"puki" super-glues his copy of Blitz3D to his forehead.

Works fine here Cygnus.

Well done on the release, nice to see some team work behind it.

It's worth checking that it's OK to include this file in your download. I can't find the reference, but I seem to remember seeing somewhere that it's not allowed to be distributed outside the official DX installer. Hopefully I am wrong (as it's a truly daft restriction), but I thought I would mention it 'just in case'.

I already have that file, it must have come with a more recent DX9 installer, the creation date was 29th September.

Thanks for the tip GrahamK. That would be a pain if true. We tried to do everything to make sure flow worked on systems, possibly win98, XP without SP1, doesn't need VC++ redistro pack installed, or have to be updated to the latest D3D. Hence all the dll's.

Compatibility seems to be really good, but that won't be the case with d3dx9_36.dll removed. I wondered why so many games come with extra d3d and other redistro installers :(

We reccommend BLIDE because of its excellent intellisense features that we made use of in the flow source.

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.

Hi,
Any free or low cost tools to generate ogre meshes? any b3d to mesh conversor or something?

its not exhaustive but includes.

3dsmax
Blender
Maya
XSI
Lightwave
Truespace
Ciinema4d
Wings
Milkshape
Sketchup
Ac3D
Ultimate unwraap 3d
Giles
Blitz 2 ogre

I use the commercial 3dsmax exporter and havent tested the others. Some of which export to .XML and have to be converted to binary with the XML converter tool.

There is a direct .B3D to Ogre .mesh tool listed thats also in the showcase.

Anyway the wiki page is up at:
http://flow3d.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Ogre_Exporters

and a link to a few exporters on the ogre site at
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=133

Litobyte made a direct .B3D to Ogre XML converter
http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=81548

some exporters provide ogre material editors integrated into the 3dapp.
Ofusion (commercial exporter) which I use does this and also converts .fx hlsl and has WYSIWYG interface with the shaderfx node based shader editor. I've never actually written a material script or shader myself.


otherwise you have to script them yourself in a test editor. You can use Blide ;P

The Ogre wiki has some material script examples to help get you started:
http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/Materials

And there's an ogre manual that explains much of the engine and takes you through all the various scripts.

http://www.ogre3d.org/docs/manual/manual_toc.html#SEC_Contents

..when Flow going to be available for purchase..i mean..REALLY ?

Here's what Lina said about the release date on the forums last week. She's chiefly responsible for the C++ side of things.



Since her work largely dictates the progress of flow, thats the best insight we can offer regarding flow being made available for purchase.