Ben | Meshplorer DirectX Work

[giftfish]

Ben, go ahead and port whatever content to this thread that you need to. I figured you'd know best where things are at, and what you want to be able to easily reference on this new forum

[benji]

Summary:

I'm working on bringing the toolkit's legacy DirectX code up to date by completely reimplementing how 3d previews work as a reusable control. This includes hopefully eventually removing the Managed DirectX libraries, which were abandoned in 2005, and replacing them with SharpDX, as well as upgrading from fixed-function Direct3D9 to Direct3D11.

This alone doesn't mean much for the average user - but wait, there's more! I'm also going to see if I can add some new features to the viewport, such as rotating & panning & zooming & optional wireframe & optional grid & optional view axes, as well as maybe accurately supporting more material types (there is a *lot* of variation between materials and not much consistency). Then perhaps material editing and reassigning, probably OBJ export, and whatever else I have the time for.

EDIT November 18 2016: Change of plans: keeping a super low profile with this project. Adding minimal new features. Trying not to change any UI.

EDIT January 15 2017: Test the latest release by downloading it from the Releases section of my GitHub fork here: github.com/epicabsol/ME3Explorer/releases/


At the moment, Meshplorer is the only tool I'm working on, but once this new viewport control is satisfactory, I plan to replace all the old viewports.

I should probably release testing builds. I really feel like I don't want to release half-finished code, even if it's stable, but on the other hand, I don't actually use the modding tools for modding, so I'm sure to break a few things unintentionally and need people to test my code out.

There's a ton of work to be done and, let's be realistic, it might not even get finished. I will be leaving for college this summer, so I'll try to get in as much work before then as possible. With this in mind, I have a TODO list (in maybe priority order).

TODO List:

Viewport Rewrite:
[X] Fix material switching
[X] Persist viewport prefs in registry via Properties.Settings
[X] Remove Alt key requirement for camera movement
[X] Viewport first person support (for level editor consistency)
[X] Use new viewport in Meshplorer2
[X] Fix depth buffer issues
[ ] Implement correct import load precedence

Beyond:
[ ] Skeletalmesh material list add / remove entries
[ ] Investigate FBX export for external use of rigged skeletal meshes?
[ ] optionally render origin / coordinate axes?
[ ] optionally render grid?
[ ] bring back those AABB things from the old viewport (?)
[ ] Investigate rendering skeletal meshes... with actual bone deformation!
[ ] Investigate shadercache.


Feel free to offer suggestions! Or give it a test by compiling from my GitHub fork, branch New3DView github.com/epicabsol/ME3Explorer/tree/New3DView

[giftfish]

benji - Thought I'd pop up some of the screengrabs from the old thread, just to remind people what this is looking like

[ottemis]

You know, I'm actually decently giddy about potentially getting texture previews in level editor. But I can wait, I am patient.

[benji]

Jan 14, 2017 21:52:24 GMT ottemis said:

You know, I'm actually decently giddy about potentially getting texture previews in level editor. But I can wait, I am patient.

I would definitely love to do some work on the level editor. However, I want to wrap up my Meshplorer work and get it integrated into the stable branch before I move on to anything more. I think I have a stable Meshplorer release to share, so once that is verified to be how we want it then I could look into level editor.

[benji]

I just updated the first post (or really the second post) for the release of another testing build of my project. I did away with the texture scan altogether, and now it just looks for texture exports in a few locations. Also, DLC should be supported because it looks for TFCs in DLC folders as well as the base game.

Testing with mods, both DLC and otherwise, would be much appreciated!

(side node: only download the first zip, don't download the source code for the release because I forgot to push my changes to GitHub)

[giftfish]

Jan 15, 2017 23:51:33 GMT benji said:

I just updated the first post (or really the second post) for the release of another testing build of my project. I did away with the texture scan altogether, and now it just looks for texture exports in a few locations.

Do you mean texture imports? When a mesh points to an export, the export is always in the same file as the mesh.

[benji]

Jan 16, 2017 0:31:44 GMT giftfish said:

Jan 15, 2017 23:51:33 GMT benji said:

I just updated the first post (or really the second post) for the release of another testing build of my project. I did away with the texture scan altogether, and now it just looks for texture exports in a few locations.

Do you mean texture imports? When a mesh points to an export, the export is always in the same file as the mesh.

No, I'm talking about the other way. I'm talking about when a mesh refers to a texture defined in another PCC, for example when a mesh in bioa_nor_210cic.pcc points to an import texture in the same PCC with matching export in biop_nor.pcc . It's hard to explain but I think we agree.

[giftfish]

Jan 16, 2017 1:12:27 GMT benji said:

Jan 16, 2017 0:31:44 GMT giftfish said:

Do you mean texture imports? When a mesh points to an export, the export is always in the same file as the mesh.

No, I'm talking about the other way. I'm talking about when a mesh refers to a texture defined in another PCC, for example when a mesh in bioa_nor_210cic.pcc points to an import texture in the same PCC with matching export in biop_nor.pcc . It's hard to explain but I think we agree.

Yes, that's -- by definition -- an import.

Every texture *must* be an export in some file. Not every texture is imported by other files, however.

[benji]

Yes, that is an import - but I am talking about how to find the correct export to match up with the import, so I stand by my explanation.

[benji]

Just for closure, this project is complete (for the time being) and has been merged into the ME3Tweaks fork of ME3Explorer. (https://github.com/Mgamerz/ME3Explorer/releases)

I merged it in after about a year of not touching it, and suddenly I feel the urge to rewrite the code more elegantly, to support a potential level editor...

[giftfish]

Okie doke. Locking thread.