SWB update

Sytner

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It's been a while since my last update. Despite continuing to work on SWG, the past few years have been busy for me with completing university and moving into full-time work. However, working from home this year has afforded me some extra time to really start making a push on getting the new tools in a releasable state.

The state of tools

Since its release, SIE has become the de-facto tool for most client-side editing, but has remained mostly unchanged since 2015. I actually first made SIE over a decade ago when I was only starting to get into development. As such its design does not scale to support creating the remaining tools we need and I have since been working on the new tool, SWB.

This tool addresses the gaps in functionality in SIE, and also supports some non-client tools to help those running servers. There has been too much progress to fully detail here, but I wanted to show some highlights from the year:

FBX mesh tools

Adding new content to SWG has been limited for a long time due to incomplete mesh tools. In particular it has not been possible to export/import skeletal meshes with new animations. With the FBX tools I've been working on both are now possible - we can import entirely novel models or export an existing model to tweak/add to its animations. The tool using FBX means that all of the popular 3D software (Blender,Max,Maya) are supported.

Importing:



Exporting:



The remaining support gap in these tools is for portals (buildings and their interiors).

Terrain editing

Terrain editing is mostly complete. The remaining work is UI related and I also need to re-create the tool that enabled me to generate the satelitte maps. One area this part of the tool progressed this year is providing faster real-time previews:



Snapshot/buildout editing

Snapshots are the files which determine object placement in the scene. This tool can also generate buildout files or scripts for Core3 servers:



Region editor

This editor is for editing the Core3 region files:



Renderer progress



A key part to making the editor usable is having it able to render the various kinds of objects in-game accurately (and I have a bit of fun trying to make it look better than SWG too :)). This year I've improved the support for particles and added more complete skeletal mesh support (for the benefit of the FBX tools).

You can check out these improvements and more on Youtube:


Release when?

Some time this year.
 
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Sytner

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Working on this for the SWGEmu yearly update, but I'll post it as a thread here too.
 

Lasko

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You already know I'll have your babies for this! :p
 

Sytner

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I wrote this post a year ago then didn't actually post it - I was largely unable to work on SWG this year so it's still mostly accurate.
 
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pmobley

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Awesome job! I was working on exporting the animation ans files myself. Working from a tool that someone else had mostly completed but didn't finish the ans exporting.

But looks like that you have the fbx animation export working here. Any timeline of release or a beta release? Looking forward to exporting the meshes and the animation!
 

Sytner

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Awesome job! I was working on exporting the animation ans files myself. Working from a tool that someone else had mostly completed but didn't finish the ans exporting.

But looks like that you have the fbx animation export working here. Any timeline of release or a beta release? Looking forward to exporting the meshes and the animation!
Thanks, beta release some time in the next few months hopefully but I keep being unable to work on it at all due to real life commitments so I can't guarantee it.
 

pmobley

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Thanks, beta release some time in the next few months hopefully but I keep being unable to work on it at all due to real life commitments so I can't guarantee it.
I see, I understand, things are going crazy these days.

I ma currently working on implementing animation export for another tool that I downloaded. The tool has the models exporting, along with deformation. But the developer stopped about mid way through on coding the animation export. I am attempting to pick up where he last started. The file format is the FBX file.

I have been looking for resources on coding the animation export via FBX file format and understanding how the ANS files will relate to the FBX. However, this search has come up short. The big question that I have is how to relate the QCHN "files" to the bones for the model since there appears to be no identifier (or there is and I haven't found it). I know that each bone has their own name but that name is not referenced in the QCHN. The next question would be how to determine if the points that are in the QCHN are for rotational or for translational. I have a somewhat working knowledge of how the ans file is setup. Appears to have a list of Quaternion along with the frame number. Although, I am having a hard time understanding the header part of each QCHN. Do you mind if I send you some questions regarding the formatting of the ANS files?

Besides that, there is a general understanding of how to actually setup the animation within FBX. So far I have been following the examples but my results have not been yeilding much fruit. Do you have any good resources on how to setup the FBX animation?
 

Sytner

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Dr Synter.. time for the "any update" question .. :)
It's been a bad year for me unfortunately, I've had very little chance to work on anything SWG related so no real update :(
 

ryan404000

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I honestly have been looking forward to this tool for years, I hope you're able to get time to work on it and get it into a place where you feel ready to release it, it'll be game changing for the SWG Community, both Pre/Post NGE groups
 

AesirDoesMods

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Just saw this and see how life hasnt handed you the best of hands in being able to release this for the people but..This thing looks like such a nice modern tool and HUGE WIN for the future of SWG community and whether its next week are year or two or not at all. That is insane work and wish ya nada but the best.
 
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