I know that there’s the asset manager, but perhaps an online database for individual assets would encourage more users to put those up? Just individual ones/stuff. Something allowing for comments?..or even for people to share other compatible jmonkey models (with credit given)? (or does anyone have any suggestions as to where to find assets?)
Code snippet database or contributions
there’s the plugin manager but there seems like some right little gem code snippets laying around the forum that luck has be stumble upon. There’s been a couple of times i’ve been looking for specific things and not come across it, only to come across when looking for something else a a week later hehe.
Anyways, just suggestions…and i’m sure they’e probably been given before but I couldn’t find them by searching
@avpeacock said:
1. Online assets database
- I know that there's the asset manager, but perhaps an online database for individual assets would encourage more users to put those up? Just individual ones/stuff. Something allowing for comments?...or even for people to share other compatible jmonkey models (with credit given)? (or does anyone have any suggestions as to where to find assets?)
2. Code snippet database or contributions
- there's the plugin manager but there seems like some right little gem code snippets laying around the forum that luck has be stumble upon. There's been a couple of times i've been looking for specific things and not come across it, only to come across when looking for something else a a week later hehe.
Anyways, just suggestions…and i’m sure they’e probably been given before but I couldn’t find them by searching
@nehon said:
1. exists and is called AssetPacks. that's very useful IMO, idk why it's not very popular (surely because most of the monkeys around are batetr devloppers than artists)
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/sdk:asset_packs?s[]=asset&s[]=packs
Exists too but all gems are not contributed to it. Also I don’t know how to access it anymore with the new site layout. @erlend_sh?
Sorry there Nehon, I meant asset packs =).
But, for example, i’d be quite happy to contribute a model or asset - but I wouldn’t make a whole asset pack to do so. Could other users feel the same perhaps, and could that be a reason why? (also users, correct me if i’m wrong cannot get feedback on the asset packs)
@avpeacock said:
Sorry there Nehon, I meant asset packs =).
But, for example, i’d be quite happy to contribute a model or asset - but I wouldn’t make a whole asset pack to do so. Could other users feel the same perhaps, and could that be a reason why? (also users, correct me if i’m wrong cannot get feedback on the asset packs)
yeah I guess a community driven rating system would be nice.
Also , why not make your own assetPack? I mean at least things would get naturally ordered, instead of being just stacked in a “global” asset pack. Idk…
We need a way to browse the assets online too…would be so great.
@nehon said:
yeah I guess a community driven rating system would be nice.
Also , why not make your own assetPack? I mean at least things would get naturally ordered, instead of being just stacked in a “global” asset pack. Idk…
We need a way to browse the assets online too…would be so great.
I guess to me it didn’t seem efficient to publish just one model in a ‘pack’. And if many users contributed many single models in a pack it would clog up the system and make it hard to find stuff.
Correct me if i’m wrong (I could just be blind haha) but there are only three packs and the system has been available for more than 2 years so maybe other users feel the same way? An online system where people can get more feedback and credit may encourage more contributions. I’m not sure, it’s just a suggestion.
I’d more than happily donate to building such a thing although will be donating anyway.
Why would it not be efficient? They end up in one database anyway and are searchable globally. You can do it either way, update one pack with all models you make over time or release multiple small ones. I guess not having to download 500MB each time does make sense
The problem of sorting the overview is the smallest issue and I’d love to have and solve it due to lots of people sharing their models, sadly… they don’t
@normen said:
Why would it not be efficient? They end up in one database anyway and are searchable globally. You can do it either way, update one pack with all models you make over time or release multiple small ones. I guess not having to download 500MB each time does make sense :)
The problem of sorting the overview is the smallest issue and I’d love to have and solve it due to lots of people sharing their models, sadly… they don’t
Heheh… yeah, “There’s just too many models to find what I want” would be a great problem to have.
Still, eventually it would be nice to have an “asset store”.
The plan to extend this to a whole web store etc. system is there, partially this has been begun even (BP plugin etc.), its just that this needs a lot of work and we simply don’t have content, its not like having one html overview makes the sharing part hard
Re code snippets, we used to have a plugin for this but we’ve since started recommending GitHub’s Gist service. We can easily support gist embeds and more in the future.
For an improved asset database, the main thing holding us back is manpower. @destroflyer has been helping us out tons with web development, but these days he’s too busy for larger tasks like this one. We could always use more PHP developers on board (WordPress is easy to pick up). So if you’re reading this and think you could help, do get in touch!
not found any way to browse content after downloading. I had to manually insert each asset into an empty scene to see what it looks like… crashing JDK a few times in the process. (But that was in the early release of RC2…)
Comparatively, a site like blendswap is much more user-friendly. But models are not game-ready…
@yang71 said:
I found assetsPacks very difficult to use.
1) very large => so long to download :((
2) no idea what's in before downloading
3) not found any way to browse content after downloading. I had to manually insert each asset into an empty scene to see what it looks like... crashing JDK a few times in the process. (But that was in the early release of RC2...)
Comparatively, a site like blendswap is much more user-friendly. But models are not game-ready…
Old post. However i’d be willing to contribute/get something started on this in a few months(need to clear two charity related projects first). Ruby on rails however is my main web dev(although only a years of experience) so integrating with word-press might be a bit of a pain. But willing. I think something like this could seriously benefit the community in the long term and i’d happily donate models i’ve been using for my jmonkey projects/money to possibly kick start a modelling competition.
Great initiative, I would really see this as beneficial too. It could have simple rest API for searching and downloading assets. I am not that keen on asset store as there are plenty of asset stores out there. I would rather contribute to creative commons / public domain asset database with respect as reward :). I have male and female MakeHuman based characters with walk animations. They are already available in Github project but asset database would make them more accessible and it would be possible to update them as well.
My development platform is Java but I could also throw together working site in day or two. This framework I usually use for these kinds of projects provides user management and existing administrator asset management user interface:
You can upload these sites to Heroku for free development tier when you have less than 10k rows in database.
The only thing to add would be to figure out proper REST API and contributor user interfaces for uploading and searching. You can already download assets / zips with ID as URL parameter but searching / listing is not possible with REST.
Not saying this is the best / right approach how to implement the asset database but it would be really cool to have :). We could rate the assets and cross use assets in the database like upload a model which refers to material already in the database.
Not SDK friendy, but creating a SDK plugin to browse bintray (and convert remote lib into netbeans’ library is far to impossible, it’s low priority on my todolist, because the are workaround see below)
If you want to try this approach today, it’s possible but manual :
Publication :
create an archive myasset.jar (please no asset at root)
create a myasset.pom file (I can share a template)
create a bintray account
create a bintray repository (type : maven)
upload your package (via web interface) into your repository (use tags : jmonkeyengine assets …) (the button near the search input box)
for SDK user : user browse the web interface, download .jar (tab Files of the package) and import it like for other lib
for maven/gradle user : add repository http://dl.bintray.com/davidb/jme3stuff, add the package like other dependencies (to find the groupId, artifactId, …, move the mouse over the info icon in the tab ‘Files’ of the web interface)
EDIT:
for publication, 5.5 add a small screenshot of the assets
One minor correction: Bintray does support storing of private content with permissions, inclusing generating expirable, signed URLs for anonymous downloads of private data. For that, however, you’d need a premium plan.
The REST API also allows you to get full download logs for your content if you need it.
Great initiative, I would really see this as beneficial too. It could have simple rest API for searching and downloading assets. I am not that keen on asset store as there are plenty of asset stores out there. I would rather contribute to creative commons / public domain asset database with respect as reward :). I have male and female MakeHuman based characters with walk animations. They are already available in Github project but asset database would make them more accessible and it would be possible to update them as well.
My development platform is Java but I could also throw together working site in day or two. This framework I usually use for these kinds of projects provides user management and existing administrator asset management user interface:
You can upload these sites to Heroku for free development tier when you have less than 10k rows in database.
The only thing to add would be to figure out proper REST API and contributor user interfaces for uploading and searching. You can already download assets / zips with ID as URL parameter but searching / listing is not possible with REST.
Not saying this is the best / right approach how to implement the asset database but it would be really cool to have :). We could rate the assets and cross use assets in the database like upload a model which refers to material already in the database.
Cheers,
Tommi
Hi Tommy.
Wow, completely just saw your animations and they are awesome!! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while and you’ve just saved me a load of work! The fact I missed that signals even more that we should be doing this!
I completely agree and would be going for open contributions and agree with your suggestions. Was debating putting google ads on there and after paying the running of the site(which will be 0 in the first year), put it towards 1. modelling competitions and 2. JMonkey dev team…i.e reinvesting the money back into the community. I really feel that with an awesome modelling repositry, more people will flood to this as an engine because development of games will be ludacrously quick :D. Personally I found modelling/importing to be the bottleneck for me although over a year got far better and it became less of a problem(because support here is so fantastic)…but it was enough that on a few occasions I considered moving to something else. Glad I stuck it out though :).
I wonder if in the meantime therefore, github would be a great way to build a bulk of models ready? I guess one could start with Heroku, although hopefully next month I should have a dedicated. And have a free year for AWS I might as well use up.
Thank you for encouragement. I am hoping to do some community collaboration to add some more animations and poses to the characters. The walks could use some more fine tuning as well.
I agree that sharing quality assets for free and collaboratively developing them further would be great for JME3 community. Competitions and ratings would be very interesting and would propel things further.
I feel that there is two ways of running this. Basically you could spin your own JME3 asset site but I would be more comfortable and believe in better success if the JME3 dev team would arrange hosting and organize the competitions or nominate you to do it :). Adds on the site would not be that profitable as the audience is quite limited and adds tend to be a bit annoying to look at all the time.
To create constructive energy in community it is important to do things together and courageously foster all ideas. Some will bloom and there will be some happy chaos. In the end good things will fly and rest can be reiterated. Even if some of the ideas do not immediately seem to have merit it is worth still prodding them forward and see what the community can make of them.
