3d Programming with AssimpNet in MonoGame - c#

I use Windows 8 and the Visual C# 2010 IDE and the latest release of MonoGame. Since MonoGame has limited support of 3d models and I want to import 3ds or Obj files, I have decided to try using AssimpNet. While importing the files I need should cause no problems(haven't tried it yet), I am at a loss of how to process the imported Scene object to render my mesh. Is there any XNA or MonoGame related site that will show how to do this and preferably deal with the matter in depth? I have search various terms in Google and failed it find any. AssimpNet's help files and file documentation either doesn't work or only will provide definitions. I am looking for a site that discusses in depth 3d programming info through C#, preferably Monogame or XNA. I cant simply use DrawModel for this. It has to be at the Matrix level.
Thanks in advance.

Related

C# CNC CONTROLLER

I am trying to create a C# software that can control the CNC machines, First I am trying to create a 3d Space area in the PictureBox (or Pannel), I have gone through the internet and reached about this and I got one video. He made a 3D place in the form space, and it was a good tutorial but I don't know how to create a coordinate system in that space as you see in the image that I have given below.
Pls, Help me to do this.
enter image description here
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If I get the proper solution for this, in the future I can develop this project.
Thank you, guys...
Update:
Actually, I have designed a C# program That controls the CNC machines,
For example, we can take UGS, There is much software out there but I need to create this in C#. The Only thing I am suffering here is the 3D coordinate system. How to create the Axis diagram in 3D.
Example: Planet Cnc's "Cnc USB Controller" I want to create this software in C#.
Thanks...
Build a CNC CAD programmer from skratch it's not a trivial activity.
You should be skilled in:
Math and Geometry in particular (vector/matrix calculus, base transformation, ...)
A language to comunicate with CNC (maybe G Code)
3D file formats
etc.
This is old, and you should have fixed the problem by now... but I hope to help someone in the future.
Have you seen Helix-toolkit? This library provides easy 3D camera and object controls for .Net Framework. I used this library in WPF C# for an application that generated G-Code for a CNC machine... this saved me in the simulation.
You can import 3D models (.3Ds or .obj) from your machine to 3D Panels (HelixViewport3D) and use them in the simulation or create meshes on demand in C#.
The documentation is simple, but on GitHub there are lots of examples.
Helix-toolkit on GitHub

Need to use Tiled Map editor with Unity 4.3.4

I shifted to unity few weeks ago. I am developing a 2D platformer. For creating the maps I am using Tiled map editor from www.mapeditor.org . I have created a basic map. Included the tileSheet png and the .tmx file (saved as XML) in the Assets of the project. I am able to read the XML , that is all the gid's. But I don't know how to access a particular portion(tile) from the tileSheet corresponding to a gid.
I think for this I need to load sprite in the memory and select a tile (by specifying Height and width and coords) from texture memory to display it on screen. As given here :http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/parsing-and-rendering-tiled-tmx-format-maps-in-your-own-game-engine--gamedev-3104
but its for flash , how I can achieve same thing in Unity using C#. Notice the copyPixel stuff in the flash code. I thought I could use ReadPixels but it is used for reading from screen only not the texture memory.
Thanks.
If you're working in Windows then the Tiled2Unity Utility sounds like it will fit your needs. It exports Object Layers and was made with Unity 4.3 features in mind.
(Full disclosure: I'm the author of Tiled2Unity)
EDIT: Tiled2Unity is available for Mac users as well now. There is a command-line version for Linux users. (all free)
If you can describe more carefully your problem and what you are trying to do, maybe myself or someone can help you better, for example what exactly do you mean by "load a sprite into memory"? Or "select a tile"? Copying pixel data is SLOWWW, and hopefully you don't mean to be doing this in real time.
Here is my real advice though:
Have you checked out UTiled? It does tiled maps in 2D in Unity so I think it already does what you want and it's free.
There is also UniTMX... free.
There is also 'Tiled Tilemaps'... which is like $2.
I also built a system that can also do what I think you are trying to do (your link is broken, so I can't be sure).
The system I built is called 'Tiled to Unity' (you can search it in youtube to see if it does what you want). It allows you to attach gameObjects to tiles and have tile variants, and can do 3D tiles.
Anyway, trying to roll your own pipeline from Tiled into Unity is a ton of work, and with these tools available, I think it is almost certainly unnecessary... That's just imo.

Import 3D model in Visual Studio 2010(WPF)

I work on a project in VS2010(WPF aplication) for 3D game, i use Visual C# with OpenGL and GLControl, and i need help about importing 3D models.
Google search didn't help much, i need more things to know about import 3D models in these technologies.
OpenGl is not a scene graph, and it will not load models for you. You need to load the model separately and then pass the vertex/normal/texture/index information to opengl using either vertex buffers/index buffers, or using the fixed function pipeline if that is the way you are going.
Other than that, we can not help you since this is such a general question, and each model format is loaded differently.
Check out ZAM3D and Microsoft Expression Designer, you can easily import and export models that you can directly use in xaml
Regarding rotate/translate transform, there is support built into WPF and you don't need open gl if you are using WPF, I would highly recommend you to install Expression Blend and use animation/camera-control to achieve the same.

How should I start playing with 3D?

I'm a developer for just about 6 months now, and since I enjoy programming I've started little programs such as encripters, calculators, tools, stuff to play with DropBox (hehe), stuff that play with bitmaps, drawing graphics, and even a program to update the MSN display image according to the artwork of the music you're listening yo on iTunes.
One of my other hobbies is 3d modelling (completely amateur) and I'd like to mix these hobbies together! So I've read a little about it and figured I'd have to have good notions on geometry, math, point spacial position (which I do, from my 3d modelling experience), but I don't know how to use API's for it, so I've 'simulated' simple 3d with a simple program I've made (a spinning cube).
Here are some questions:
1) What would be a nice 3d development tool for a .NET programmer like me?
2) Is there a way of using 3d models made in 3DS Max ? (I intend on modelling characters)
3) What knowledge should I have in order to render it, and move it around ?
4) Which API should I use ?
NOTE: Not a dupe, I'm asking for directions specific for .NET development possibly using 3ds MAX, and there were no questions about it so far
EDIT:
I've got three answers that seem quite nice, so let me specify a little and maybe you can tell me what's the more appropriate tool.
What I'd like to build soon would be like:
portable (click'n'run, no need to install, and (hopefully) no need to send DLL's along)
"3D embedding" in winforms application, like a picturebox you could render in.
Real winforms application-like (having all System api's like IO, Drawing and etc)
The development enviroment would be nice if it:
Had the possibility to import existant 3D models (not a must, but a plus)
Had the ability to create 3d models programatically (a must)
Possibly has a tool for materials and textures (that would be a huge plus)
Is Well known (high availability of tutorials, questions in S.O., forums..)
And it would be really nice if I could use C# all the way :)
I'm going to provide another vote for XNA. The comment that it's too "game centric" is a non-starter - it provides a rendering loop with feedback on how fast everything is running so you can adjust your rendering to try to maintain a specific framerate (if you want). This isn't particularly game-centric as it's something that most 3D applications should worry about. The only thing that's really unusually game-centric about it is that it provides easy access to game controllers. Feel free to ignore that bit if you don't want to use it.
The only downside for you using XNA is your requirement that it be click'n'run, XNA has a redistributable that you have to worry about. Note that Win7 has this installed by default, but Vista and earlier don't.
EDIT:
XNA is made for applications that are strictly 3D. As such it doesn't natively support using typical windowing controls inside of an XNA project. But, there are ways around this...
A few useful links. Embedding XNA in a winform : http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/6471/34180.aspx#34180
WPF controls directly inside an XNA project : http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/iersoy/256/Default.aspx
Personally, I found XNA a little too "Game Centric" for my tastes. I was more interested in design/architecture type uses.
You may find SlimDX more to your liking.
Even though there are great suggestions in this post already(such as SlimDX and XNA), I'd just like to mention OpenTK.
OpenTK is closer to OpenGL than Direct3D, but it might be the best solution for cross-platform 3D .NET applications.
Since you are using C#.Net, the XNA library will be excellent for you. It is free off the Microsoft website and integrates into the VS IDE. A lot of available tutorials around to help get started.
Also, if I remember correctly. to use a 3d model in XNA, simply export the completed model as (.X). It can then be loaded into your work.
I vote you try Blender. www.blender.org
It's free, open source, and has a great community both on forums and IRC. Progress on the app is pushed forward by major community projects every year, some of which are movies and games and have won some awards. It is gaining industry acceptance as a way to model extremely fast.
Downsides: It's not considered as "pro" as Maya or ZBrush, and it has a very different brain about interface. Learning curve can be interesting, depending on how you learn and how much help you receive.
Upsides: It's free, great community, updated regularly, many tutorials and community projects to work on.
Community:
Blender channel on IRC
Blenderartists forums
Previous community Projects:
Elephant's Dream
Big Buck Bunny
My vote goes for Povray. It is a 3d renderer with a c-like syntax language. It doesn't satisfy your .net needs, but if cool non the less for 3d rendering. If you any kind of interactivity XNA is probably your best best. But I'm interested in your finds.
Re: "Has the ability to create 3d models programatically (a must)"
A few pointers:
Polygon Triangulation
(Dr. ?) Jonathan Richard Shewchuk's Triangle library
Dr. Hang Si's TetGen library
Constructive Solid Geometry
GNU Triangulated Surface Library
There are no .NET libraries I am aware of that allow you use the above mentioned libraries/techniques. You will have to use PInvoke or C++/CLI in order to make calls to these libraries from the managed world.

How toI run a game made with XNA on the iPhone/iTouch?

How could I run a game made with XNA on the iPhone/iTouch? Which steps/tools (existing ones or imaginary...) should be used?
Note: The goal is to avoid modifying existing C# code
UPDATE :
If I understand correctly, I must be able to:
Run my XNA code on Mono (monoxna or SilverSprite, promising?)
Run Mono on iPhone (MonoTouch)
Not only is it possible but here is a video of someone doing XnaTouch on MonoTouch: First game to IPhone build with XnaTouch (XNA for IPhone)
Here is the mono article about doing it http://www.mono-project.com/MonoTouch
I don't believe there is a good answer to your question. XNA doesn't target the iPhone, so the chances of being able to effectively port an XNA game without modifying the C# source code isn't likely to happen.
Instead, I'd recommend that you take a look at the various frameworks that exist to help you craft cross-platform games. Unity often comes up in these discussions, but it isn't free.
If cross-platform isn't your goal, but free iPhone development is, then I'd recommend looking at Cocos.
Edit: The MonoTouch project may be able to assist you in the future, but doesn't help you out right now. Still, it's something to keep an eye on.
Edit: The landscape has changed a lot in the ~5 years since this question was posted. If you have an XNA project that you want to get running on iOS, then Xamarin.iOS (formerly MonoTouch) plus MonoGame is a near-perfect fit. MonoGame is missing a huge chunk of the XNA content pipeline, which means you'll either have to abandon it or have a VS2010 instance somewhere compiling your assets.
The MonoTouch project may eventually help here, since it allows you to write C# targeting the iPhone (it is statically compiled to native code).
MonoGame is a free OpenGL implementation of the XNA 4.0 Framework. It is built upon the excellent range of Mono compilers and is compatible with MonoTouch (iOS), Mono for Android (Android), MonoMac (Mac OS X), Mono for Windows and now Linux!
A list of 12 games currently using MonoGame that are on the Apple iOS App Store can be found #
http://monogame.codeplex.com/
https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/wiki/Released-Games
I believe XNA depends on Direct3D 9 (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/aa937793.aspx), which may hint at the hurdles one might encounter in both porting to mono as well as having sufficient graphics horsepower on iPhone.
Everyone saying this is possible because there are CLR libraries for Mono, does not even think about the fact that XNA is a WHOLE DIFFERENT set of frameworks:
"The XNA Framework class library is a library of classes, interfaces, and value types that are included in XNA Game Studio."
As another responder noted, this is so far from happening it's not even funny. If you really want to write a game I'd check out Unity. It's commercial, but it looks utterly impressive and you can script your game logic in Javascript or (here's the funny part) C#!
Yes, instead of going through a ton of work to port a whole framework because you want to write a game in C#, why not just use a framework that lets you do that today?
From the horse's mouth:
MonoTouch + SilverSprite = XNA 2D
games on iPhone? :)
What Bill means is that it will eventually be feasible to write a 2D XNA game, then use SilverSprite to run it on Silverlight, then use MonoTouch to run it on the iPhone
This space is definitely heating up. There is now an XNA Touch project on codeplex that aims to bring the XNA API onto the iPhone/iPad platform:
http://xnatouch.codeplex.com/
'Maybe' you could just change XnaTouch's namespace to match those of existing Xna code (i.e. Microsoft.Xna.Framework.*), when developing a MonoTouch project? This could be done on a vendor fork (copy) of the XnaTouch code, easy to manage using Git, Mercurial or Piston etc.
I'm unsure as to whether the XnaTouch team would undertake such a change on its own codebase, so this is probably best done on your own, personal, code branches (interestingly, the Mono.xna project uses the original Microsoft.Xna.Framework.* namespaces, I'm unsure why XnaTouch chose not do so).
JFYI, the current XnaTouch (v1.0) follows Xna 4.0 quite faithfully. I've found a [small] few missing method calls, which I've 'implemented' to throw not implemented exceptions (?). The original-xna4-and-modified-xna-touch code does compile, now I need to implement iphone-specific gui and handling etc.
Hope this helps someone.
Cheers
Rich
For starters you would need a CLR implementation on the iPhone, which doesn't exist at the moment, but it seems someone is trying: MonoTouch.
A friend of mine is developing an architecture port of XNA 4.0 for the iOS platform. It's of course written in Objective-C, but it has the feel of XNA. He has published the source under LGPL at http://code.google.com/p/xni/.
Xna is not officially supported on iPhone; however, you could use ExEn (http://exen.codeplex.com/) or MonoGame (http://monogame.codeplex.com/) to port your Xna games. A bonus for using either of these is that they support Mono for Android.
If you're looking for a free cross-platform sort of thing, you could check out phonegap. I don't have any experience with it but it looks cool.
http://phonegap.com/

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