Open Cobalt 1.0 alpha 22 released

[John Dougan]

After a very long hiatus, I have a new Open Cobalt built. 1.0 alpha 22 will be available at http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads  . 

Most of the updates are concentrated on asset import and rendering: The Wavefront OBJ/MTL importer is very much improved, there have been bugs fixed in the Collada DAE/KMZ import, the renderer now does textured specularity properly, and there are a several new avatar representations:  image-wedge, static OBJ meshes, and static KMZ meshes.

Look for new .ADST files in the contents directories to see sample avatars. There aere also a few added OBJ/MTL meshes to exercise the importer and renderer.

Cheers,

  --John

====================

Name: 3DTransform-jrd.27

Author: jrd

Time: 31 May 2015, 10:05:45 pm

UUID: 68d9bcd3-6a01-477a-8563-517e7b75d564

Ancestors: 3DTransform-mtf.26

Changed:

- Added asVector2 to Vector2  to return self. Makes the CoMeshGen happier

====================

Name: Collada-jrd.67

Author: jrd

Time: 31 May 2015, 11:22:30 pm

UUID: 1498bf90-0e93-44c6-9a77-070abc71797f

Ancestors: Collada-jrd.66

Changed:

- Updated CoDOMMaterial to handle all the specified tyopes of techniques as best as our renderer can: phong, blinn, lambert, constant. Also tries to handle the 1.5 version of the Collada spec w.r.t Blinn and shininess values in the range [0, 1] where it assume blinn-cook-torrance and rescales the shiniess.

- Added mechanism so an import that doesn't need ambient for a material (constant technique) can force ambient to black without the ambient fixup trying to fix up.

- deprecated some old methods and renamed some to avoid collisions in the future.

- A bunch of work to make it so the importer doesn't throw an error if there are vertex colors specified in the DAE. Eventually this can be turned into parsing the vertex colors accurately, but if we drop the vertex colors from the next renderer it won't be worth the effort. 

- If a material is missing from the file or the mesh doesn't have one specified (eg. if using vertex colors) then will sub in a default white material.

- Added an Avatar Representation for KMZ based avatars, not well tested,

====================

Name: CobaltMorph-jrd.227

Author: jrd

Time: 31 May 2015, 11:24:05 pm

UUID: 80e1dba5-3cd5-4d6c-b963-929e401ba6d7

Ancestors: CobaltMorph-jrd.226

Changed:

- SystemProgressMorph class>>setCobaltColors now properly handles setting up a default instance if not present.

====================

Name: Cobalt-Windows-jrd.36

Author: jrd

Time: 31 May 2015, 11:45:07 pm

UUID: fad7e5e8-c35f-44e5-b8b2-677ccad1d9a0

Ancestors: Cobalt-Windows-jrd.35

Changed:

- Gave all the materials used in a CobaltWindowFrame objectNames so debugging is easier.

- CoMeshGen wasn't working properly whn generating a TMesh with multiple faceGroups and quads. Fixed.

- CoMeshGen now has convenience methods for use when generating flat quads and tris where it will calculate the face normal for you.

====================

Name: Croquet-Harness-jrd.247

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 12:13:10 am

UUID: 715c8695-0322-40b5-b9c6-7181d512f0ff

Ancestors: Croquet-Harness-jrd.246

Changed:

- Error handler in dropping a model on the window was returning the wring thing.

- Logging OpenGl info at startup now shows the platform max shininess

- CroquetHarness>>materialForAvatarTextureContents now forces the specularity to nothing as the upstream change to the specularity rendering was sometimes showing specular highlights on image avatars.

====================

Name: Croquet-Import-jrd.18

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 12:24:03 am

UUID: 73b73ba8-3eb2-4201-a075-2b1894e5ed40

Ancestors: Croquet-Import-jrd.17

Changed:

- Many changes to  the OBJ/MTL importer. Refactored, better texture map support, expansion joints for new functionalty when the renderer gets upgraded, smoothing now works on partially pre-smoothed meshes,  portability options (Tr interpretation, flipping faces, flipping normals and flipping YZ), -ve indexing, slightly more optimized build process. 

- Minor change to ase material construction to use a value of 0.5 for default shininess instead of 50. This bug was probably a hangiver from the 3DS import.

====================

Name: Croquet-Objects-jrd.380

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 5:14:03 pm

UUID: eb7a65c6-527c-43c9-8b25-ba45d375ffa3

Ancestors: Croquet-Objects-jrd.379

Changed:

- TAvatarUser avatar costume loading changed to reflect the new supported types.

- Added a new method: setup: to the base TAvatarRepresentation. It's usage is subclass dependent but intended to be a way to add rarely used configuration for the various importers. 

- Added a new property to the base AvatarGraphicalRepresentation, colorId. This is intended to be an optional color that can be used to distinguish avatars without havint to make major changes to the assets.

- Addded a new avatar type, the image wedge. This is a vertically oriented triagular prism with a bright image on the forward sides and a tinted with the backColor image reversed on the back side. The front normals are set up to give the impresssion of a cylindrical curve, with the other sides being flat.

- There is a TImageWedge class and an new avatar representation (TAvatarImageWedgeRepresentation), of which theere are .adst samples in the content/avatar/images folder.

- Added TAvatarObjStaticRepresentation, a repn set up to use the OBJ/MTL importer (TLoadOBJ) to get it's avatar mesh. Uses colorId:. Uses setup:.

- TButton changed to better strip offf the coloringfrom the button mesh that was causing buttons to look not so good. It was then refactored for clarity. Later I want to tie it into some kind of theme objects.

- TCobaltColorCube not loger will colorize. It's a debugging object and should stay constantr for comparisions.

- There was a great quest through TMaterial and it's specularity/shininess problems. There were 2 issues:

 1) because of the way the fixed function pipeline does specularity by defauIt, specular highlights were never visible on textured materials. This was fixed by putting a call in setupLights: to change the LightModel to render the specular highlight after texturing. This also made it more obvious that...

 2) the wrong form of the glMaterial call was being used for a single float argument and this was causing the specularity to not make sense. The specular hightlights should now match the various plates in the redbook.

- added additional methos to set the shininess: mtlShinieness:, aseShininess: and oglShininess:. Like the names suggest, they are used with shininess values taken from various sources and do conversion into the internal values.

- A bunch of should-be-obsolete methods in TMaterial were moved into a new category for later evaluation.

====================

Name: MenuUI-jrd.230

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 5:32:05 pm

UUID: 3af8a62f-fd3e-4c39-a28b-c80435909484

Ancestors: MenuUI-jrd.229

Changed:

- Refactoring of TCollaborativeButton to leverage the refactored TButton. Essentially means deleting almost all the methods.

====================

Name: MotionCapture-jrd.85

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 5:38 pm

UUID: d3ca34fd-e806-4b1c-8529-8dc6a4e9579b

Ancestors: MotionCapture-mtf.84

Changed:

- Gave TJoint more distinct material (Bright Yellow) for when rendered.

====================

Name: OpenGL-Core-jrd.21

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 5:41:33 pm

UUID: d60e6c61-be71-48b4-94c0-1d11864c46d6

Ancestors: OpenGL-Core-mtf.20

Changed:

- Added initialize code for the NV_light_max_exponent extension.

- Added debugging methods to report the max shininess and spot exponent

====================

Name: OpenGL-Pools-jrd.9

Author: jrd

Time: 1 June 2015, 5:44:08 pm

UUID: 497e7c84-0bcf-43b8-b9bd-09f872032818

Ancestors: OpenGL-Pools-jrd.8

Changed:

- Changes from rerunning the extension initialization after adding the NV_light_max_exponent extension.

--

John Dougan
jdo...@acm.org

[Kenneth Wyrick]

thank you for working on this. actually, evaluating virtual worlds for an
entrepreneurial business mall training and video production project
located at la trade tech college. how much do you charge per hour to work
on open cobalt projects?

On Fri, June 5, 2015 9:24 pm, John Dougan wrote:
After a very long hiatus, I have a new Open Cobalt built. 1.0 alpha 22
will

be available at *http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads
<http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads>* .

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--
I�m moderate on extroversion.
http://caltek.net

[Carlos Crosetti]

Nice to hear you are coming back John, I appreciate your contributins.

[Rich White]

Awesome work John ..... I will load the changes up on the lab computers and have my students work with it during camps this summer !

..... 

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============================
Richard L. White
:: Emerging Technologies Developer - Greenbush ESC

:: Director of iED:Midwest - Immersive Education Initiative

::  Graduate Adjunct Faculty - Kansas State University
http://www.twitter.com/richwhite

[Kenneth Wyrick]

Rich White,

Would you please send me information about the location, the students, the
setup and configuration of your lab computers.

On Sat, June 6, 2015 8:07 am, Rich White wrote:
Awesome work John ..... I will load the changes up on the lab computers
and
have my students work with it during camps this summer !


.....

On Friday, June 5, 2015, John Dougan <jdo...@acm.org> wrote:

> After a very long hiatus, I have a new Open Cobalt built. 1.0 alpha 22

> will be available at *http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads
> <http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads>* .

> jdo...@acm.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jdo...@acm.org');>

>
> --
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Open
> Cobalt"
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> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','openc...@googlegroups.com');>

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> opencobalt+...@googlegroups.com

> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','opencobalt%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com');>

> For more options, visit this group at
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>
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--
============================
Richard L. White
:: Emerging Technologies Developer - Greenbush ESC
:: Director of iED:Midwest - Immersive Education Initiative
:: Graduate Adjunct Faculty - Kansas State University
http://www.twitter.com/richwhite

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[Rich White]

We are in Southeast Kansas .... We have run an Immersive Education lab here at Greenbush - http://www.greenbush.org - for the past 8-9 years.... Our lab runs Macbooks and Ipad Minis with Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift headsets as well as Interactive Whiteboards/ displays.... We have leveaged several technologies through the years and led a fork of Croquet and later the Cobalt project for the past 6-7 years called Edusim http://edusim3d.com that encourages the leveraging of the classroom interactive whiteboard and other large screened interactive displays as a direct manipulation interface for virtual environments  ..... "Immersive Touch" If you will.

There are a ton more (sometime incohernt) notes to self here - http://www.greenbushlabs.com here

.... pardon the typos but im on my Iphone at the ballfields 😁

.........

[Patrick]

Awesomesauce! Downloading now.

[Francisco Lizarralde]

Hi John,

I'm so happy about these news !!!
Since Croquet times I am playing with in Virtual Worlds based in Smalltalk, and I was very disappointed because a great proyect like this was slowly dying.
But today I recovered new hope.
I really appreciate so much your work with Open Cobalt and I expect to contribute in some way to this proyect.

Best Regards,

Francisco

[Francisco Lizarralde]

Hi John,
I'm so happy about these news !!!
Since Croquet times I am playing with in Virtual Worlds based in Smalltalk, and I was very disappointed because a great proyect like this was slowly dying.

But today I have new hope.

I really appreciate so much your work with Open Cobalt and I expect to contribute in some way to this proyect.

Best Regards,

Francisco

El sábado, 6 de junio de 2015, 1:25:19 (UTC-3), John Dougan escribió:

[Kenneth Wyrick]

Thank you so very much for reminding me of edusim and for sharing your
operation with me. I'm curious to know more about your various
applications and their utilization in a classroom setting.

i'm charged with helping to come up with real-time or near real-time
environments primarily for k-20 education and general public stakeholder,
neighborhood council (nc), civic engagement, grouped by 12 LA voting
regions:
http://empowerla.org/neighborhood-council-maps/

Based on the LA Org Chart:
http://cao.lacity.org/misc/LAorgchart.pdf

NC's work in conjunction with the la city mayor's office who has a big
data initiative:
http://www.lamayor.org/garcetti_directs_city_departments_to_collect_data_for_open_data_initiative

some resources for this project include:
http://www.preservation.lacity.org/files/Map_SurveyLA%20Areas%20in%20HistoricPlacesLA.pdf

http://hackforchange.org/primer-civic-tech-glossary/

http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/103124

a challenge is to have some sort of data interoperability potential with
open source software and proprietary applications:
I'm particularly interested in using:
http://live.osgeo.org/
and this is where open colbalt may come in

in conjunction with:
http://streaming.e7studio.net/

e7studio uses:
http://www.bentley.com/
and
http://www.autodesk.com/solutions/building-information-modeling/overview

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

On Sat, June 6, 2015 10:19 am, Rich White wrote:
We are in Southeast Kansas .... We have run an Immersive Education lab
here at Greenbush -
http://www.greenbush.org - for the past 8-9 years....

Our lab runs Macbooks and Ipad Minis with Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift
headsets as well as Interactive Whiteboards/ displays....

We have leverage several technologies through the years and led a fork of

Croquet and later the Cobalt project for the past 6-7 years called Edusim
http://edusim3d.com that encourages the leveraging of the classroom
interactive whiteboard and other large screened interactive displays as a
direct manipulation interface for virtual environments .....
"Immersive Touch" If you will.

There are a ton more (sometime incoherent) notes to self here -

http://www.greenbushlabs.com here

.... pardon the typos but im on my Iphone at the ballfields 😁
.........

On Saturday, June 6, 2015, Kenneth Wyrick <k...@caltek.net> wrote:

Rich White,
>
Would you please send me information about the location, the students, the
setup and configuration of your lab computers.

On Sat, June 6, 2015 8:07 am, Rich White wrote:
Awesome work John ..... I will load the changes up on the lab computers
and have my students work with it during camps this summer !

> On Friday, June 5, 2015, John Dougan <jdo...@acm.org <javascript:;>>

> wrote:
>
> > After a very long hiatus, I have a new Open Cobalt built. 1.0 alpha 22

will be available at * http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads

<http://www.opencobalt.org/downloads>* .
> >
Most of the updates are concentrated on asset import and rendering:
The Wavefront OBJ/MTL importer is very much improved, there have been bugs
fixed in the Collada DAE/KMZ import, the renderer now does textured
specularity properly, and there are a several new avatar representations:
image-wedge, static OBJ meshes, and static KMZ meshes.
> >
Look for new .ADST files in the contents directories to see sample
avatars. There aere also a few added OBJ/MTL meshes to exercise the
importer and renderer.
> >
Cheers,
--John

--
I�m moderate on extroversion.

https://archive.org/details/e-dv040_01_kenneth_wyrick_002.ogg

[Eric Gillespie]

John Dougan (jdo...@acm.org) writes:

> After a very long hiatus, I have a new Open Cobalt built. ...

Wow, I really did miss out on this. That's what I get for not watching my email. I'll download it and give it a whirl.

Nice to see some more work from you, John. I was thinking about you and the team the other day.

Regards, BrickViking (Dr Smokey)

​