is vertical sync set to be on in your graphics card config? this would freeze the fps to your monitor's refresh rate (or less).

Yup.

http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=xith3d;action=display;num=1074907427

Sorry to continue off topic, but it particularly irritated me when I was trying to jar my files up and it said Class-Path line was too long!! I had to shorten up all the paths just to be able to use all the jars!  

Still works fine with newest Xith and JOGL. Java 1.5 broke my program though... doh.

I can't remember the last version I used, but I know it was in early-mid May using the newest (at the time) JOGL and a CVS Xith3D. I'll try out some newer versions a little later tonight and see if it still works okay.  

Odd.... the demo used to work...

The collision system does work, at least it did when I was working with Xith (I've been busy with other things and haven't used it for a couple months).

I might write a simple tutorial on using some simple geometry in the collision system. I am by no means an expert on any of it, but I feel like it could help people find a starting point. Would this be helpful to anyone?

As has already been discussed in another thread, a list of features not implemented [yet] on the xith.org page would be useful for things like this.

I don't see it around in any of the tut directories, so you may want to contact William Denniss and see if he has it.

link to his profile for contact info:
http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=xith3d;action=viewprofile;username=divzero

Edit: fixed link...

As far as I know, you can't import .ase files, you'll need the .max file.

I will have a look at it, thanks.

I was just letting the ASE loader load in the model/textures using whatever default way it generates everything.

Occasionally, when I import my ASE model (created with 3DS Max) and load it in, I'll get these artifacts on textures (the mipmaps?) when looking at the geometry from an angle.

For instance, look at the light blue things on the brick wall texture:



On this shot I moved the view up a little bit and you can see the same wall looks okay, but on the other side is the same effect:



Right now any time I run my program I'll get something like this. But, the model was working fine just a while ago before I made a few trivial changes to it. Sometimes the "artifacts" will be blue, yellow, black, whatever color. I've experienced this occasionally in the past, but somehow it has fixed itself. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out wtf is causing it, yet. Anyone else ever see this? I'm on WinXP, geforce4 ti4200 btw.

EDIT1: It's gotta have SOMETHING to do with the model because I just loaded in a slightly older version that looked fine.

EDIT2: Ok.. I just took out the textured quads I had added and now it looks fine. I still wonder why they would affect the other ones...

EDIT3: Problem solved. I just created some new planes and dragged the old material and Unwrap UVW modifiers to them and now it works fine. I guess when I had originally created the other quads, I had cloned something else I had. Perhaps trying to add a new material or mapping coords to the cloned quad screwed with something. Whatever  

You might want to take a look at the source code for David Yazel's Quake 3 level loader demo:

http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=xith3d;action=display;num=1074907427;start=11#11

It uses the collider package with a dummy avatar node used for movement of the camera and collisions with other geometry in the system. You'll have to pick through the code to figure out exactly what you need, which may be a little confusing, but it should make sense after you get it sorted out.

Exactly what I do  . It makes everything damn simple. No matter how many times I install Java, Java3D, Xith, whatever environment, I always seem to run into problems setting it up (usually stuff I've encountered before  ). Just setting up some folders and relative paths and some batch files (or shell scripts) to compile, run, jar, sign, etc. makes it nice and easy -- no "install" necessary.

I do, however, use JWS for distribution.

Xith3D requires OpenGL version 1.2 or greater (see the faq). So, if it's possible, you'll need to update your video card drivers.

Sounds good, thanks

You need to specify where it needs to look for textures, which is in the TextureLoader class.

TextureLoader.tf.registerPath("./");
TextureLoader.tf.registerPath("data/");
. . .

I had been getting that exception sometimes before when building my models but I hadn't figured out why until last night. It was due to a stray vertex that I guess was left over when I had deleted something. It was tough to find in 3ds Max because, well, it's nearly invisible, even when selected. I only encountered that exception with the 3ds loader, and not the ase loader.

With that said, my problems are usually self-inflicted  , due to my lack of work/experience with some stuffs. Gotta learn somehow I guess.

edit: I think that exception is fine, it was just nearly impossible for me to figure out wtf it was going wrong... though I knew it had to be in my model somewhere.

Yeah. The ase does seem to be much friendlier in loading stuff. Sometimes if i change the littlest thing then my model will fail to load with the 3ds loader. In fact, that's what I'm workin on now. If I see another Exception in thread "main" com.xith3d.scenegraph.IllegalSceneGraphOperation: Attempt to set the parent of a Node which already has one. I think I'll go nuts.  

Well I finally figured out the problem: my textures were, for the most part, not powers of 2. It was just getting choked up on loading the textures because of this. Now it all loads fast.

I know you're "supposed" to use power of 2 textures, but...  . Anyhow, in case anyone has these issues, check your texture image dimensions.

I don't think xith.jar is in your classpath. Try doing "java -cp <pathtoxith.jar> HelloXith3D" or org.xith3d.gsg.HelloXith3D, whichever it is.

edit: or put xith.jar in the CLASSPATH variable in the system.

Yeah, I realize it compresses way down from its original file size... I failed to note that. I guess I meant relative to the 3ds, but since they are different storage formats, of course there are differences between the two -- I have not looked at the details of either format too much. Unfortunately, if the model is pretty (arbitrarily) big, it still sucks up a nice chunk of memory when loaded in from its compressed format.

I'm using kev's nice 3ds loader to load in a (non-simple) model and here are some approximate load times for different textured configurations of it:

- untextured: 0.4 seconds
- whole model 1 texture: 1.2 seconds
- half model 1 texture, half another texture: 2.2 seconds
- whole model with 9 different materials: 39 seconds

I'm doing all the texturing and uvw mapping in 3ds Max before I export the model. Is this possibly due to the way I'm mapping materials in 3ds Max? Is this because I'm mapping everything in 3ds Max? Is there any way I can speed this up? Are there any other (free, preferably) tools out there that could improve this? Is this just because the loader doesn't load them that fast? Should I be loading them in separately? Should I map everything by hand? (If the answer is yes to the last question, I think I'd have to kill myself  )

I noticed a significantly better loading time (though still unacceptably slow) when using the ASE loader, but the ASE just consumes a lot more memory than the equivalent 3ds file when loaded in (in addition to huge file size for larger model). Oh yea, for both loaders, I'm simply using the one-call .load() (or .getModel() for the ASE) method to load in the model.

I know it may not be possible to deduce the exact answers to my questions above from the information provided (and I don't expect answers to all of them), but perhaps someone has a general idea of something else I can try. Any suggestions?

Actually, Bombadil, I get that funked up screen with my geforce 4 when I maximize the window, as well.

Screenshot:

Same here, with gf4 ti4200.

if i just connect edges to edges and not edges to faces it seems to work fine. i guess that's the problem.

I'm not sure if this is something I need to fix in 3DS Max or Xith. When I load in the following .3ds model, I have two aligned objects, but one will show through the other. See picture below:



I'm guessing that when I align two planes, they share the same space, so the renderer does not know which one to show. It basically flickers between the blue and red textures when I move the view around. If this is the case, how do I get the edges lined up one against the other but not overlapping? I tried moving the objects away from each other just a tiny bit but I still get the same effect.

I do not have much experience with 3DS Max, I'm just familiar with the basics.

Any help is appreciated, thx. Sorry to dirty the Xith forum if this thread is unrelated, I wasn't sure where to put it  .

Me and my newbie self are having trouble getting the lighting/shading to work in the ASE geometry loader from the tutorial. The demo works fine, but compiling the source on my own doesn't (for me).

When I use all the source code from the tut, it loads the model and textures fine, but there's no shading as it rotates. Am I wrong to assume I need to add a directional light for it to work (as well as shadows enabled in RenderOptions [or lighting?])? I tried that but had no success. Or does it happen automagically?

Maybe I've been staring at the screen too long. I have a headache.    

I'm not sure about usage of assertions in Java (only used them in C), but you can just comment them out to compile the code (which is what I've done) or, according to sun's page on assertions (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/lang/assert.html), compile with the -source flag, i.e. "javac -source 1.4 MyClass.java", although I haven't tried that. They are just there to enforce error checking, data, pre/post conditions, etc. Check out the link above for more info on assertions.

EDIT: A little more info from that page:

i'd like to see an example please  

Yes!! That was it, thanks. Works fine now. I didn't even think about that  . Silly me.