Brent Taylor

Ahhhh. Continue using the FBX exporter. In this case I don't think it's an issue with any of the software involved. Now I haven't done any animation work with Leadwerks yet, but I believe all animation in Leadwerks is bone driven. You can't just keyframe an object moving around.

Unfortunately the Blender exporters as a whole are fairly quirky. I've had fairly good success with FBX, but abysmal failure in regards to Blender collada importer/exporter. Perhapse you could tell us specifically what's wrong?

5700 poly's for a game character is just fine. However for the amount of detail you actually have on your low poly mesh...you can reduce your poly usage by at least half and get the same results. In addition you don't actually HAVE any detail in the low poly. The nose for example is at best a bit of a bump. For the poly count you have, you could create a very well defined head model.

I think you need to lower your poly count by a little over half. You've got a good start, but you're working with waaaay too many poly's. Work on your topology. http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/03/02/bundle-complete-head-modeling-series/ Start here. You don't need to purchase anything. Just grab a couple of reference files off of google (or take a couple pictures of your own head) and follow along. You'll still need to reduce the polycount, but you'll have an idea what the topology needs to look like. In addition, watch this: http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/01/28/topology-overview-the-head/ Have fun! Thats a pretty great site to learn from if you're using Blender. You should learn a lot.

Correct.

Which version of Cinema 4D? If you're using version 10, please make sure you upgrade to version 10.1 as version 10 shipped with a severely broken FBX exporter. 10.1 fixes a number of these issues, but not all of them. Please make sure you're using the older bone system rather than the joint system as the joint system is not saved properly via FBX. If you're using 11, make sure to upate to 11.5 as that supports the newest FBX format (though again, still with the occasional issue. Stick with bones over joints if possible). Supposedly the FBX exporter works properly under version 12.

Looks great man! Unfortunately I'm a little behind as well. That said, I should have a playable demo done by the end of the "competition". Worst case it'll be a couple of days late. Thankfully the MAGIAM rules are closer to guidelines.

Looks like you're mostly correct. I haven't attempted to compile with Bullet yet. I still can't find any post from Tom about bullet, but I'm sure thats partly due to the changeover on the garage games website. If no physics module is specified, it defaults to PhysX apparently (which is what has been happening in my projects). Glad to know Bullet has already been integrated. That reduces the amount of work I need to get this working on iOS.

I'm not sure that information is correct. I've been a Torque Game Engine license holder since roughly 2002/2003. I've recently purchased Torque 3D and I was given a TGEA license along with that. TGE has never used Bullet physics, nor has Torque 3D. Now it's possible TGEA at one point supported Bullet, but I can find no references to it on the forums or via Google. The only thing related I could find is a resource on adding Bullet physics and removing PhysX support for TGE, TGEA and Torque 3D. @Knocks, I'd really like to know where you found your info. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I couldn't find any info on it. I'm actually working on porting Torque 3D to Bullet, so if there was a problem, I'd reaaaaallly like to find out about it sooner rather than later.

It really depends on where you want Leadwerks to go. I personally prefer PhysX over Bullet in most cases. My issue would be the licensing. Even if the licenses for PhysX on iOS and Android are free (and I tend to think they are, seeing as the UDK uses PhysX and has an iOS release) for use, they certainly are not free for the Xbox 360 or PS3. On the consoles, it's my understanding that the licensing fee is fairly steep and per title. Anyone using the engine for consoles would have to pay that fee. In addition, as a middle ware developer, you also have to pay a fee for usage and redistribution which is several times the cost of a game title usage license. Is it a concern right now? Probably not. Especially if you intend to be able to swap out the physics system trivially.

Exaggerate much? The only current modeling package I'm aware of with broken exporters is Blender (Collada comes to mind).

I voted for Bullet for a few reasons. First and foremost, it works on mobile devices. PhysX does not. Havok, while apparently works on mobile devices, has rather restrictive licensing terms. Unless the license has changed since I last checked, Havok is only free on the PC if you're selling a game under $20 or $50 (I can't remember which, but believe it to be $20). I honestly have little to no experience with Newton, outside of Leadwerks. But I have used Bullet in the past and found it great to work with.

I'm not actually at my computer right now so I'm unable to check myself. According to the wiki, none of the 2D Drawing commands have a lua equivalent. Is this correct? Or is the documentation simply out of date now due to the server backup mishap? Just looking into doing a screen fade effect for my MAGIAM project and wanted to double check.