Help a newbie to start!

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1

Hello everyone!



Hi!

I'm new here so please, be patient



My idea:

  • build a simple terrain
  • import a model (a warrior)
  • animate model: run, jump, attack
  • let player move model using keyboard
  • set a third person camera



    can I do this with Jme ?



    Can anyone explain me with some examples, or just point me in right way? thanks!
2

Hi Marcus. I take it you’re planning to start out with the stable jME2, not jME3 alpha?



In that case, all you have to do is have a look through our wiki. Once you get started with the Starter Tutorials, you’ll notice that it covers most, if not all of what you say you want to do here. I can’t give you the very specific help that many others here can, but I’d strongly advise you to use the tutorials for what they’re worth, only turning to the forum when you’re completely stuck at a certain step, or experimenting outside of the wiki’s boundaries.

3

Hi and thanks  :smiley:

What I need is something to understand what can I do with Jme (jme3 could be best choice?).

In particular I need some guidance (a working project is best!) to not be lost in Jme to soon.

I see that wiki tutorial are focused on low-level part of Jme: what I need is something more; how to get all pieces working together:

  • build a scene (with an external editor, i guess): a terrain, few rocks
  • how to control with a third person camera a model and animate it
  • how to put all together with collisions



    I know that tutorial could help me, but sometimes feels too in deep in particular aspects of Jme that now (in prototyping phase) are not important for me.



    I don't know if I've explained, please let me know :d
4

Hi Marcus,

welcome to JME!



First of all, the flagrushtut demo, located in the jmetest package helped me a lot. More generally looking at the jmetest subpackages I found working demos for all the features I needed.

I suggest you to start looking at JME from that code.



When you start working out a few basic aspects of the API, you can start looking the forum for the answers to the more specific questions you will probably come out with (i.e.: "I can create white smoke, but how do I create a black smoke?").



For you list of request, I can only share with you my personal "way":

  1. build a scene. I don't know of any free "scene" editor for JME. I simply use the TerrainPage and load an hightmap file (a png greyscaled picture of the terrain). I created static objects like rocks or trees using Blender, exported to jme-xml format and imported to the world using a set of properties loaded from a file.
  2. control model 3rd person. You can place the camera where you prefer using a CameraNode. The CameraNode can be attached/detached to whatever scene element you prefer, obviously with the desired offset. To process the input from the player, look at the InputHandler implementations. You can also take a look at the ChaseCamera as it might already offer the features you are looking for.
  3. put together with collisions. Depends on what kind of world you are trying to reproduce: using a physics engine solved a lot of my problems (I used jme-physics library with the ODE implementation). It automatically handles objects position, rotation and scale according to a set of "hidden" physical variables. To create a Phisics scene, you have to "insert" the 3d model into a phisical wrapper node. A scene node, not wrapped by its phisical representation, will be shown but won't react with other nodes nor will be affected by gravity. However, remember the physics engine will require more resources and might drop the frame rate noticeably.



    A few words about shadows, as they might interest you soon or later.

    Stencil shadows don't implement ZFail, it means if the camera is inside a Shadow Volume, the shadows are inverted (dark all over the world and light in the shadows).

    Shadow maps are, generally speaking, ugly and the only implementation I am aware of, supports only distant lights, like the sun.

    If you are going to use 3d person view and no shadows are projected on the camera, go ahead with stencil!



    Ok, this is just my experience.

    Other developers might propose you with something else or add comments (or disagree) about what I just wrote.



    Good luck,

    Matteo
5

Thanks!

I'll try to follow your wise advices :smiley: