Need Help on minimal project setup

Troubleshooting General Help
1

Hi,

I started with sdk and first steps work fine so far.

My plans may sound boring, as I don’t plan to create a game. Just want a canvas, where I can show some 3D-models created on my own and move that around.
No mesh import, just created on the fly.
First test were promising.

My real project is an eclipse-project, but I don’t want to include all libs from jme3. So I did not follow the setup-steps from jme-Wiki related to eclipse.

But I followed the hard steps for manual setup of commandline usage.
Which means, I copied “some” libs from jme3 into my projects lib directory and added them to the projects build-path (in projects properties). Additionally I exported the jme3 libs.

I started with the testCanvas tutorial.

Currently I have jme3-core.jar and jme3-desktop.jar attached to my eclipse project.

testCanvas import compiled without problems, but when I try to start it, I get NoClassDefFoundError for JmeFormatter.
I guess, that eclipse uses the attached libs for runtime-classpath too, so I have no idea, where to start searching.

A quick grep showed, that JmeFormatter is part of jme3-core.jar - so it should get found.

What have I overlooked?
Any hint is appreciated!

2

I can’t really comment on the specific way you’ve gone about it, but there are a lot easier ways. At a guess it’s classpath related. JME pulls in some transient dependencies that probably aren’t in your classpath.

You can create a project in any IDE - or none at all - though the latter will probably be annoyingly elaborate for most.

The easiest and quickest way is to create a new gradle project in any IDE and provide the required libraries in the build script. The link below shows the minimum required steps to get up and running.

3

Hi,

thank you for your attention!

May be. But I’m not interested in “easy”. Easy will bloat my harddisks and my mind …
I like to know what’s going on. Therefore I don’t use gradle. I’m stil an ant-user :slight_smile:

That was the hint, that helped my find the reason!
I added the jars from lwjgl and now the apps work as expected :slight_smile:

May I ask another question?
Is there a way to invert mouse controls?
The mouse it attached to the camera, but I’d like to simulate the object gripping and moving around …

And does this editor has a preview function?

4

The default camera controls use FlyCam - which is great for a lot of test cases, but you probably want a custom camera if you delve any further. I think what you’re describing is something like the FocusCamera I made.

First disable the flycam by either setting flyCam.setEnabled(false) in your simpleInit method or overriding the constructor to something like:

private MyMainClass {
    super(new StatsAppState())
}

And then add this camera controller instead - If I remember, it’s just a single class.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “preview” function, but for the SDK @Darkchaos is the man with the answers.

5

Hi,

thank you for the code-link!
Great stuff. Love it!
I love that verbose coding!

I inverted the mouse buttons and created a separate speed setting for translations …
… now its close to what I want :slight_smile:

Your code is great for learning about internals. So will stay at it to get to understand bit more about focussing and the like.

Is there a way to calculate initial zoom factor based on the models size? When I wonna show an elefant, I might need another zoom factor as on showing a fly.
My models are quite different in size and I only know the size after creating it …

LOL, I was talking about this forum editor (javascript at the bottom of the browser - not related to jme3).

6

Hi,

thanks for the preview :smiley:

… don’t know - your CameraSettings behave different in my app, than in your Main-class. I checked all twice - can’t see any difference - beside that I have only one geometry.
I changed the strings for Mouse_Move_Up and Mouse_Move_Down but it looks like none of the strings is used in my app. It works fine from your Main-class.
I realized, that the mapping is set up in function onEnable - looks like implicit calling does not work.
… but as the function is protected - I can’t call it on my own (without breaking your concept), and I don’t know enuf to break it.

7

Here’s some old code I have that positions the camera so it fully includes a bounding box in its view frustum. Not sure if it’s 100% correct but it should be a starting point.

private static final float s_camFov       = 30;
private static final float s_camElevation = 40 * FastMath.DEG_TO_RAD;

private void updateCamera()
{
    BoundingBox bbox = (BoundingBox)_rootNode.getWorldBound();
    if(bbox == null)
        return;
    
    float extent = bbox.getXExtent();
    if(bbox.getYExtent() > extent)
        extent = bbox.getYExtent();
    if(bbox.getZExtent() > extent)
        extent = bbox.getZExtent();

    // Calculate camera distance where BoundingBox is fully visible
    float dist = extent / (float)Math.tan(s_camFov*0.5 * FastMath.DEG_TO_RAD);
    _cam.setLocation(new Vector3f(0, dist * (float)Math.sin(s_camElevation), dist * (float)Math.cos(s_camElevation)));
    float y = bbox.getCenter().y * 0.666f;
    _cam.lookAt(new Vector3f(0, y, 0), Vector3f.UNIT_Y);
}
8

You’re supposed to add it to the appStateManager.

FocusCameraState focusCameraState = new FocusCameraState();
stateManager.attach(focusCameraState);

// set a spatial to focus on.
focusCameraState.setFocusPoint(mySpatial);
9

Hi,

@1000ml
Thank you for your help!

Of cause it is.
I did it following your sequence:

  • disable FlyCamera
  • create FocusCamera
  • attach it to stateManager
  • setFocusPoint to existing Geometry

The point is, the app behaves as if no settings have been changed. And it does not change anything, if I change the strings in FocusCamera class.

Could it be, that other settings have precedence?

Just to repeat it: my environment is like testCanvas from awt-package, which is not related to jme3 class tree, but uses another Class that itself extends SimpleApplication.
So I added the FocusCamera to that class, that extends SimpleApplication.
The “caller” application uses AppSettings …
I gonna strip that class down to the absolute minimum …
… but thats work in progress - or better said: I’m just stumbling around …