AuroraFlex / DanglyMesh

[Legacy_TheOneBlackRider]

               Are modern PCs too fast for DanglyMeshes?

I managed to create a DanglyMesh (for a helmet) with the help of this great tutorial:

http://harvestmoonco...php?f=59&t=2194

...and it moves nicely in the toolset. But IG it's just a tiny quick move  - one direction and then a stop. This is on my "modern" i5 with win7 (+Gforce).
First I thought, I didn't handle the mesh in a right way. To be sure, I tested it on my "elderly" notebook (Core2 with XP and Gforce) and it dangles nicely, both in the toolset and IG...

Just to be sure, I tested an original NWN-helmet (helm_017) on my i5 and the same thing: No dangling, just that one move.

Am I missing something?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par TheOneBlackRider, 24 janvier 2014 - 04:59 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Part of the issue is that the dangly mesh and other bits, are reliant upon an old, now completely unsupported version of ...dang it... what was it called... Ahhh yeah, OpenGL 2.0,  Anyway, it is part of the video driver set, and has not been supported for at least 8 years, it was old when NWN was released.  The newer versions of OpenGL WILL RUN, but the speed is MUCH faster, and apparently very difficult to control with the aurora engine.  At least I think it is the opengl issue.  There may be other bits of the old drivers that are also no longer supported.

NWN Aurora Engine is OLD, it was written for Windows 95, Yes, I did say NINETY FIVE, not even written directly for Win98, much less XP, Vista, 7 or 8.  It was also written for DirectX 6 I think, but works with up to DirectX 8 I think.  After that, all promises are broken.

So... basically, you MIGHT try compatibility modes, but I don't think even Win 8.1 offers backwards compatibility modes that dated (read ancient).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Note:  I remember the NWN community chatting with NVidia back in the day, can't remember exactly what version of Vid updates broke it, but NVidia at that time suggested an older version of their drivers, but stated that the NEW version could not support the old OpenGL2.0 version and still support the newer generations as well... so, we could, at that point in time, use an older driver version, but nowadays, that option is no longer available, and the old drivers will not run the newer multi-gpu graphics cards.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               Dangleymesh seems to be OK on my system. I'm running an nVidia GT-260 with 2 gigs of VRAM on Windows 8.1 with an i3 processor. Trying setting you game to run in compatibility mode for XP SP3 and see if that makes a difference.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               This was issue in the past even before the driver updates, I found most model were weighting to high with way too much flex and with some minor changes came out fine. If I was you I grab some more models with DanglyMesh and do some in game testing and looking to see if it  model setting or drivers. I always found you have to do some in game testing to fine tune it to your liking.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               What about something big and squishy like this?  Should see lots of this sort of thing in game.  Do you?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 25 janvier 2014 - 06:41 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_TheOneBlackRider]

               Thanks to all!
OTR, that test dangle is a great thing. And it showed me, that dangle is beeing produced on my newer (i5) machine, but it also is very "jumpy" - verts don't move smoothly to a new position, but jump to it. So, I guess, it's a driver issue. I tried to find a place to tell my vid-card to use an "old time" setting, but didn't manage to find a fitting place to tweak it... Guess, I'll have to live with that.
Now, I check the dangling on my "older" notebook, so it should be ok for others, too.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Are you, by any chance, testing this out by changing your own appearance in-game though, say, scripting on a DM command or something?  The reason why I ask is that twice now I've seen some unexpected behavior on
my ATI card which was made in 2011 and my NVidia card which is a very old GeForce 3 Ti 200.  I can't remember what the first incident was, but the second time I came across strange behavior was with my Disfavored of Lolth creature model.

On the computer with the NVidia card, the legs and breasts dangled exactly as I'd set them up to do in both toolset and in-game, manually changing my appearance with the SetAppearance console command.  However, on my
ATI laptop, while it basically looked the same in the toolset, when I tried the same thing in-game it caused the dangly to get..."snappy", basically moving but being very rigid and stopping quickly.  Or, as you put it "just a tiny quick move  - one direction and then a stop". 

On a hunch, I set up an NPC with the creature's appearance in the toolset and in-game the NPC's motion was fine- just like on the NVidia machine- but for some reason the SetAppearance on my player caused it to behave unexpectedly.

I'm not sure how much this has to do with your situation, but it seemed similar-enough behavior I thought I'd bring it up.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 25 janvier 2014 - 05:08 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...

Are you, by any chance, testing this out by changing your own appearance in-game though, say, scripting on a DM command or something?  The reason why I ask is that twice now I've seen some unexpected behavior on
my ATI card which was made in 2011 and my NVidia card which is a very old GeForce 3 Ti 200.  I can't remember what the first incident was, but the second time I came across strange behavior was with my Disfavored of Lolth creature model.

On the computer with the NVidia card, the legs and breasts dangled exactly as I'd set them up to do in both toolset and in-game, manually changing my appearance with the SetAppearance console command.  However, on my
ATI laptop, while it basically looked the same in the toolset, when I tried the same thing in-game it caused the dangly to get..."snappy", basically moving but being very rigid and stopping quickly.  Or, as you put it "just a tiny quick move  - one direction and then a stop". 

On a hunch, I set up an NPC with the creature's appearance in the toolset and in-game the NPC's motion was fine- just like on the NVidia machine- but for some reason the SetAppearance on my player caused it to behave unexpectedly.

I'm not sure how much this has to do with your situation, but it seemed similar-enough behavior I thought I'd bring it up.

Interesting, you think this might be a engine not updating properly? I have noticed some issues in resizing creatures with my scripting system that changes appearance and does not recognize the size changes unless I do a pseudo polymorph real quick. Have you tried adding that to the end of your appearance change script? polymoph them for a .6 of a second or so and when they come back see if you danglemesh is still an issue.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I can't say for certain and I only used the console command SetAppearance.  Nothing more elaborate.  This was just so I could take in-game video to show off what I'd done.  I have not had the best luck switching from a dynamic (i.e. Player) to a non-dynamic one in the past.  The animations don't tend to all work right.  In this case it could be anything.  Including something rather obscure like the perspace of my character not updating because of the SetAppearance command and the dangly verts falling outside that invisible cylinder of influence, causing them to behave oddly.

I just don't know and don't plan on doing any kind of testing on that, at the moment.  Your pseudo-polymorph approach probably makes a cleaner, more thorough "switch" than SetAppearance does.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 25 janvier 2014 - 07:11 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...

NWN Aurora Engine is OLD, it was written for Windows 95, Yes, I did say NINETY FIVE, not even written directly for Win98, much less XP, Vista, 7 or 8. It was also written for DirectX 6 I think, but works with up to DirectX 8 I think. After that, all promises are broken.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PHoD:- For what it's worth, my system's far from modern, on XP, but I can say I've never had any graphics problems of this kind running under DirectX 9.0. So I think DirectX can probably be ruled out... unless it behaves differently under more recent debased Microsoft so-called Operating Systems.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par PLUSH HYENA of DOOM, 25 janvier 2014 - 09:07 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_TheOneBlackRider]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...

Are you, by any chance, testing this out by changing your own appearance in-game though, say, scripting on a DM command or something?  ...
I'm not sure how much this has to do with your situation, but it seemed similar-enough behavior I thought I'd bring it up.

No, OTR. Just a helmet with a dangly chainmail part. By now, I payed closer attention to all dangling parts - especially those, which come with NWN: All do behave the same way (cahinmails. flags, ...): Verts jump from starting position to the determined destination - no smooth "moving to".