Web-based PIE viewer

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aliswe
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Web-based PIE viewer

Post by aliswe »

Hello,

Yesterday I started a silly project for viewing PIE files in your browser: https://bjorn-ali-goransson.github.io/p ... ?wireframe

Just open this HTML page and drop your PIE file in there.

My vision for this tool would be the ability to drop either blender or PIE files, and then be able to download either blender or PIE files (essentially an importer/exporter/viewer).

If you have comments or feedback, or would like to discuss anything else, please join the WZ Discourse server at: https://discord.gg/xsYBe6Q
aliswe
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by aliswe »

UPDATE: Now, you can also drop blender files into the browser area.
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MaNGusT
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by MaNGusT »

we already have universal tool for converting pie files - WMIT
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Prot
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by Prot »

aliswe
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by aliswe »

MaNGusT: I don't really see WMIT as the ultimate solution because 1. it needs to be installed, 2. it doesn't handle .blender files.

No encouragement to be found from you I guess? This is part of what I don't like with this community. "We have this, we have that". Challenging of status quo is not encouraged at all, except in ways that are already in motion and "taken". Kinda harsh perhaps ... but that's the gist of it.

By the way, WMIT? Talk about user-unfriendly software. It doesn't even provide you with usage instructions OR error messages when converting. (talking about the CLI experience exclusively)

Thanks Prot, that looks really nice!! Can I go through the code and take some inspiration from this?
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Prot
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by Prot »

Thanks Prot, that looks really nice!! Can I go through the code and take some inspiration from this?
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Jorzi
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by Jorzi »

aliswe wrote: 19 Apr 2020, 08:10 No encouragement to be found from you I guess? This is part of what I don't like with this community. "We have this, we have that". Challenging of status quo is not encouraged at all, except in ways that are already in motion and "taken". Kinda harsh perhaps ... but that's the gist of it.

By the way, WMIT? Talk about user-unfriendly software. It doesn't even provide you with usage instructions OR error messages when converting. (talking about the CLI experience exclusively)
I don't want to be discouraging of new ideas, especially if it helps new people get onboard, however I understand MaNGusTs sentiment. I haven't actually used WMIT from the command line and I didn't even know that was possible, but as people who have been creating models for Warzone for quite some time, we have fairly deeply established pipelines for getting stuff done, and changing would be quite hard, especially since we are creating content with cutting-edge versions of the pie specification, including:
-Animation & multilevel pies
-Connectors
-Custom normals
-Normalmap/specularmap
So you can see how our threshold for change is a bit high.

For people who are new to warzone and just want to make a few new simple models, I can see the appeal of a web-app though. Also, I wouldn't mind if someone would make a browser-based WMIT, although I must say the current WMIT installation is quite simple (download exe, run app).
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aliswe
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by aliswe »

Thanks, this was a good contribution Jorzi. 👍

The thing that is missing for me is a good pipeline for exporting from Blender.

I don't want the likes of the following event happening more often than it already is: viewtopic.php?t=3125

So yes, "we have wmit" but really: WRT export from blender, i dunno but, I failed at installing the required extensions on Blender 2.8 anyway.

In any case, lowering the threshold of making art for the game is universally good.
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by Jorzi »

So far I have been exporting .obj-files from blender, which gives me most of what I need, with the exception of animation, for which I have made my own export script. I still do a little bit of hand-editing the pie files in notepad++, but most of it can be done either in WMIT or my export script. Not the most user-friendly thing, but that's how it goes when you build the tools for your own usage, while keeping up with the latest developments.
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aliswe
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Re: Web-based PIE viewer

Post by aliswe »

So WMIT is not the silver bullet after all MaNGusT :)

We should really have .blend support, who knows, maybe I will succeed some day.
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