Is it possible to make a short film using WebGL? I see tons of examples on animating an object or trigger based animation but nothing like film. I am new to this field.
WebGL is just a graphics library. You'll need an animation engine (or game engine that has animation built in) and you'll need an authoring program to make the animation.
You might try babylon.js
Theoretically you could make an animation in Blender or 3DSMax or Maya, export to FBX and import through the converters included in the engine. I suspect it's not setup to handle whole 3D scenes as is though.
Three.js might do it as well but I suspect it also doesn't handle full scenes directly out of the 3D program.
I suggest you start small. Make a simple animated scene using a few primitives and see if you can export it into one of those libraries.
Inka3D, which is a Maya to WebGL exporter, has been used to create so-called demos which are close to short films. These are called "Azathioprine", "Radiotherapy" and "70s". You can simply use maya as usual only with some limitations and make your short film. See www.inka3d.com for links to the demos.
Related
I have been searching for animating 3D objects via Sceneform. I am very new to AR.
Can anybody provide a sample for 3D animation like a moving human?
Sceneform does not support animated renderables (like support for the animated FBX file format) right now. You can only move or rotate objects but you can't get something like a walking human easily.
Sceneform SDK for Android v1.7.0 supports animation (15th February 2019).
Sceneform includes an optional animation library, com.google.ar.sceneform:animation which enables animation playback.
Added ModelAnimator and AnimationData classes. Sceneform now has the ability to play animated models.
Added SkeletonNode class which can be used to bind nodes to bones in a skinned renderable, making it possible to attach objects to bones, access the positions of bones, and manipulate the positions of bones directly.
Added AugmentedFaceNode to the UX library which can be used to render visuals with ARCore's Augmented Faces feature. See the new sample in the /samples/augmentedfaces/ directory.
Added Vector3.equals(Vector3) and Quaterion.equals(Quaterion).
Exposed Quaternion(Vector3 eulerAngles) and Quaternion.eulerAngles() publicly.
Sceneform lets you import models with animation. You can use Sceneform APIs to play back and control the animation, and attach nodes to a model's skeleton.
For instance, the Sceneform Animation sample includes files used to build models of Andy the android and a baseball hat. The Andy model contains animation data, while the baseball hat is a non-animated model. When you run the sample, Andy breakdances and waves his arms while the hat remains fixed to his head using a node.
It's important to differentiate between model animation in Sceneform versus property animation in Android.
Model animations are created ahead of time by artists using modeling and animation software. They contain Skeletal Animation Data. These animations must be exported as fbx files, then imported into a sfb file (binary asset) to be used in Sceneform.
Property animation is a fundamental Android concept and is not specific to Sceneform. This kind of animation can change any mutable value on a Java object that has a getter and a setter. The animated values can be set dynamically, but cannot be packaged into an sfb file.
Hope this helps.
I'm starting to teach myself Open GL. I'm learning it for a pretty large iOS project. From what I can see so far, the way I'd program the graphics in my app is just a ton of coordinate geometry and meticulously typing out numbers. I'd like to use a graphics generator such as Blender to make some of these images. Can I use Blender for something like this in order to minimize the amount of annoying math necessary or am I restricted to vaguely picturing something in my mind and hoping I'm good enough at math to draw it? If it's the ladder, what other alternatives to Open GL can I find that would work for iOS?
Yes, you can use a tool like Blender to create your models and then write code to load them in OpenGL. Here's some sample code and it even uses Blender. This was the first thing that came up when I did a web search for "loading obj files in OpenGL".
I created a really basic cylinder, added a material and a glow effect
can I export a model to include the glow effect so the model will look like the rendering ?
http://imgur.com/VaNJLj4
Clarification:
Can I export the model to .fbx or .x and have it contain the lightning information so that if I import it into unity or xna the model will look like the rendering ?
"glowing" is really a post-process kind of effect. Actually a blur. There are quite a few tutorials on how to do this in XNA, but I doubt that you can easily export this from you modeling software (as in not possible at all).
The reason is that doing it usually requires setting up multiple rendertargets, custom shader, etc, which you will have to do yourself.
The reason you need multiple rendertargets;
When you render a model, only the pixels WITHIN the (visibly) outer vertices are processed by the pixel-shader. Hence, you can't render a smooth "fade-out" outside the model itself as would be the case in your picture.
What you usually do is you use a shader that renders your object normally, but also renders a "glow-color" to an other rendertarget.
When all models have finished rendering, you do a blur-effect on this second RT.
Then you blend your main RT with the blurred glow-RT.
This is VERY superficial, and I havent done it in AGES, so please DO check out some tutorials. Also, this bloom-sample basicly does the same thing, but on the entire scene, I think: http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/bloom
Add the glow in 3dsmax with filters, then it wil render automaticly.
Minor notice, 3dsmax is a very big program with lots of possibilities, just take your time finding everything out. Believe me it will take time.
What is the best and most efficient way to add effects to a game built with cocos2d?
I mean effects like an explosion.
Are they just animation / sprits?
If not, then what should i receive from the designer?
You can run cocos2d project which comes with library and in the top left drop down list you can choose Particle System Test and build it. So you will able to see all basic particle effects cocos2d has.
Also there is a nice application ParticleDesigner, where you can make your nice looking particles and generate a file to add to cocos2d project, it also has a lot of samples, so it would be good for you to download it and see.
And cocos2d supports animations as well, so you can make animations from frames, but of course in the case of explosions particles would look much better
I would take a look at CCParticleSystem and or CCParticleSystemQuad. You or your designer can use tools like ParticleDesigner to create great looking particle effects.
I want to write something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S4KpCkHDqM I mean, I want to have 2D gaming space, but to have stylized as 3D, so my characters will move on the surface, but will have nice 3D effect. I wounder if Flash/ActionScript will do? Any other suggestions?
Flash and Actionscript can definitely accomplish this. There are at least 2 ways to accomplish the 3D look in 2D space.
The easiest is to do as #Blender said in the comments. Render some 3D images and bring them into flash. There are easy tools in flash to create animated sprites, including a native movieClip class, that has a timeline to play back frame-based animation.
But there is also full 3D in flash. You can bring low-polygon 3D models into flash easily using free and open source libraries such as Away3d (away3d.org) and papervision (papervision3d.org). Presently, flash player 10 has runs slowly when using these libraries.
But Adobe is about to release a new version of the player (version 11) that supports open GL for 3D and has significant performance improvements.
Away3D and papervision have already developed version of their libraries to support the new beta player and openGL.
So to summarize, yes - flash can make a game like that. It is currently the best way to develop games that are intended to be played in a browser. Because at least for the time being it has the most widespread support, and is stable between platforms and browsers.
Your example is pretty much entirely 2D: it just uses effects like shadows, animation and parallax scrolling between layers to achieve a (mildly) 3D effect.
As Plastic Sturgeon and Blender have pointed out, Blender might help for creating your assets - but it has a pretty steep learning curve, and you might be more comfortable 'faking it' in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop if you've used those before.
Once you've created your assets, you need a platform to put together your gameplay: Flash is one possibility, but you could also look at Unity3D, which has good support for 2D and 3D, and has a browser plug-in if you want to make your game web-based.
If you're looking for a java-based solution, you could try Processing, which is cross-platform, and can export to javascript for web deployment. It's not exactly designed as a gaming environment, but it might do the trick - and it's free.
Hope this helps.