the jit-ogre project (aka animated 3D models in jitter)

Rob Ramirez

Hello all.
in the spirit of the holidays, i present to you the fruits of my master's thesis labor...

The jit-ogre project

This project is a jitter external which embeds the functionality of the open source Ogre3D rendering engine, and exposes it to the max environment. What this basically means is you can export models from several 3D modeling applications, with textures/materials and animations, and render them and control them in jitter using hardware buffer acceleration.

this is ogre, get to know him:
http://www.ogre3d.org

the wiki:
http://jitogre.org/

SAD TECHNICAL NOTE: This is currently intel-mac only. i apologize. porting to win and ppc is first priority and will hopefully happen before i take my holiday vacation, but please be patient if it doesn't.

First, the proof.
The link below is a recording of a patch, which utilizes the great jit.boids3D to control 250 animated fish. The fish mesh comes with the ogre3d distribution to use in their samples.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QViEumckqkk

The second link is a silly short movie demonstrating many of the features of the jit-ogre external (and dedicated to josh goldberg). The ninja mesh is also part of the ogre3d distribution. The music is Tomahawk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97eMB0RHR_8

Now, the question. "How do I take my awesome models I created in [insert your modeler of choice] and animate them with this external?"
The answer is, you don't. Just kidding. But seriously, it's not a simple process. I want to emphasize this without sounding condescending, but real time 3D modeling is a highly technical craft that people spend years honing their skills at and make lots of money doing. The reason being, there's a lot of voodoo involved, and its something i know very little about. So it will take you some time to get your model satisfactorily exported if real-time rendering is something you're new at. That being said, it's a relatively straight forward process. And there is only one place where you are going to learn much, the ogre3d artists and content creators forum.
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8

Please notice the first four topics are all stickys that will be very useful for you to look at.

In addition, you will want to go here to find the proper exporter for your modeler of choice.
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=133
PLEASE NOTE: The maya 8.5 exporter for the mac is broken. I have fixed it and you can download it here:
http://jitogre.org/ogreMayaExporter_maya8.5_OSX.zip

Lastly, if you really want to know what you're doing with your textures and shaders and such, you will want to familiarize yourself with the ogre material scripts, by reading the manual:
http://www.ogre3d.org/docs/manual/manual_14.html#SEC23

So on to the external. I have created some tutorial videos which will hopefully make learning this thing less painful. This is my first project for public consumption, and I have no idea if I have created this in a way that will make sense to others. I hope I have, but you'll see for yourself. here are the links to the vids in the order you should watch them:
http://jitogre.org/vids/intro.mov
http://jitogre.org/vids/resources.mov
http://jitogre.org/vids/materials.mov
http://jitogre.org/vids/animation.mov
http://jitogre.org/vids/all_else.mov

Below is the link to the files you need to install to use this. Please see the above videos and look at the README file for installation instructions.
(mac-intel only for now)
http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mactel.dmg

PLEASE NOTE: In case you don't actually want to listen to my raspy voice for 30 mins to learn how to use this, you MUST do the following steps to get this to work:
1. Bang the render context (or just turn on the metro). the window will go black.
2. Send the window to fullscreen (press escape). the ninja should appear.
3. You can now restore the screen size and do whatever you want.
you must do these steps every time you initialize the gl context.

Also, if you get a message in the max window complaining about "View Matrix not affine" or some such nonsense, reset the jit.gl.handle.

RoadMap (aka things that are broke)
capture: i have a strategy for this, but i didn't have time to implement it. hopefully it won't be too long to get capture working. this is first priority.
multiple texture units: currently, applying a jit.gl.texture to a jit-ogre object, requires a single texture unit. hope to get that fixed to allow for multi-texturing
jit.gl.shader: it's possible that this will never work correctly, but if enough people want it...
All the bugs that you find and report to me at support _at_ jitogre.org
Python / Lua script bindings.
Additional SceneManagers and environment rendering (skyboxes, particle systems, paging landscape, terrain, portal zone)

My last note. ogre is a beast. he is an incredibly well written, well documented and well supported beast, but he is a beast. also, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I will be open sourcing the entire project (still waiting on my SourceForge project approval) and my hope is that other developers will jump in and add functionality and fix bugs and do things i never thought of.

Also, Ogre likes good cards (ATI, NVIDIA). Ogre doesn't like dumb cards (Intel GMA aka the macbook card). he will do his best, but don't expect miracles.
Real-time rendering is voodoo, and dealing with different card vendors and drivers and vram and all this stuff tends to be a headache. so much patience is required.

have fun.

Acknowledgements
This project was made possible with the help of several people.
Carl Skelton - director of the IDMI program at Brooklyn Polytechnic University.
Wes Smith (aka the advisor)
Josh Goldberg (aka the instructor)
Anton Marini (aka vade)
Josh's Advanced Interactive class: Marius, Dan, Jeremy, Meng, David
Sen-I (aka the wife)
Lastly, the great Ogre3D project, it's creator Steve Streeting, and the entire Ogre community.

generalh

OUAOU!!!
God dam great!!!!
I'll follow!!!
cheers, man!
hubert

yair reshef

thank you, Robert.
will use, much much needed!

On Dec 18, 2007 10:59 AM, Robert Ramirez wrote:

>
> Hello all.
> in the spirit of the holidays, i present to you the fruits of my master's
> thesis labor...
>
> The jit-ogre project
>
> This project is a jitter external which embeds the functionality of the
> open source Ogre3D rendering engine, and exposes it to the max environment.
> What this basically means is you can export models from several 3D modeling
> applications, with textures/materials and animations, and render them and
> control them in jitter using hardware buffer acceleration.
>
> this is ogre, get to know him:
> http://www.ogre3d.org
>
> the wiki:
> http://jitogre.org/
>
> SAD TECHNICAL NOTE: This is currently intel-mac only. i apologize.
> porting to win and ppc is first priority and will hopefully happen before i
> take my holiday vacation, but please be patient if it doesn't.
>
> First, the proof.
> The link below is a recording of a patch, which utilizes the great
> jit.boids3D to control 250 animated fish. The fish mesh comes with the
> ogre3d distribution to use in their samples.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QViEumckqkk
>
> The second link is a silly short movie demonstrating many of the features
> of the jit-ogre external (and dedicated to josh goldberg). The ninja mesh
> is also part of the ogre3d distribution. The music is Tomahawk.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97eMB0RHR_8
>
> Now, the question. "How do I take my awesome models I created in [insert
> your modeler of choice] and animate them with this external?"
> The answer is, you don't. Just kidding. But seriously, it's not a simple
> process. I want to emphasize this without sounding condescending, but real
> time 3D modeling is a highly technical craft that people spend years honing
> their skills at and make lots of money doing. The reason being, there's a
> lot of voodoo involved, and its something i know very little about. So it
> will take you some time to get your model satisfactorily exported if
> real-time rendering is something you're new at. That being said, it's a
> relatively straight forward process. And there is only one place where you
> are going to learn much, the ogre3d artists and content creators forum.
> http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8
>
> Please notice the first four topics are all stickys that will be very
> useful for you to look at.
>
> In addition, you will want to go here to find the proper exporter for your
> modeler of choice.
>
> http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=133
> PLEASE NOTE: The maya 8.5 exporter for the mac is broken. I have fixed it
> and you can download it here:
> http://jitogre.org/ogreMayaExporter_maya8.5_OSX.zip
>
> Lastly, if you really want to know what you're doing with your textures
> and shaders and such, you will want to familiarize yourself with the ogre
> material scripts, by reading the manual:
> http://www.ogre3d.org/docs/manual/manual_14.html#SEC23
>
> So on to the external. I have created some tutorial videos which will
> hopefully make learning this thing less painful. This is my first project
> for public consumption, and I have no idea if I have created this in a way
> that will make sense to others. I hope I have, but you'll see for yourself.
> here are the links to the vids in the order you should watch them:
> http://jitogre.org/vids/intro.mov
> http://jitogre.org/vids/resources.mov
> http://jitogre.org/vids/materials.mov
> http://jitogre.org/vids/animation.mov
> http://jitogre.org/vids/all_else.mov
>
> Below is the link to the files you need to install to use this. Please see
> the above videos and look at the README file for installation instructions.
> (mac-intel only for now)
> http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mactel.dmg
>
> PLEASE NOTE: In case you don't actually want to listen to my raspy voice
> for 30 mins to learn how to use this, you MUST do the following steps to get
> this to work:
> 1. Bang the render context (or just turn on the metro). the window will
> go black.
> 2. Send the window to fullscreen (press escape). the ninja should appear.
> 3. You can now restore the screen size and do whatever you want.
> you must do these steps every time you initialize the gl context.
>
> Also, if you get a message in the max window complaining about "View
> Matrix not affine" or some such nonsense, reset the jit.gl.handle.
>
> RoadMap (aka things that are broke)
> capture: i have a strategy for this, but i didn't have time to implement
> it. hopefully it won't be too long to get capture working. this is first
> priority.
> multiple texture units: currently, applying a jit.gl.texture to a jit-ogre
> object, requires a single texture unit. hope to get that fixed to allow for
> multi-texturing
> jit.gl.shader: it's possible that this will never work correctly, but if
> enough people want it...
> All the bugs that you find and report to me at support _at_ jitogre.org
> Python / Lua script bindings.
> Additional SceneManagers and environment rendering (skyboxes, particle
> systems, paging landscape, terrain, portal zone)
>
>
> My last note. ogre is a beast. he is an incredibly well written, well
> documented and well supported beast, but he is a beast. also, this is just
> the tip of the iceberg. I will be open sourcing the entire project (still
> waiting on my SourceForge project approval) and my hope is that other
> developers will jump in and add functionality and fix bugs and do things i
> never thought of.
>
> Also, Ogre likes good cards (ATI, NVIDIA). Ogre doesn't like dumb cards
> (Intel GMA aka the macbook card). he will do his best, but don't expect
> miracles.
> Real-time rendering is voodoo, and dealing with different card vendors and
> drivers and vram and all this stuff tends to be a headache. so much
> patience is required.
>
> have fun.
>
> Acknowledgements
> This project was made possible with the help of several people.
> Carl Skelton - director of the IDMI program at Brooklyn Polytechnic
> University.
> Wes Smith (aka the advisor)
> Josh Goldberg (aka the instructor)
> Anton Marini (aka vade)
> Josh's Advanced Interactive class: Marius, Dan, Jeremy, Meng, David
> Sen-I (aka the wife)
> Lastly, the great Ogre3D project, it's creator Steve Streeting, and the
> entire Ogre community.
>

Thijs Koerselman

Awesome! Thanks a lot. I love how flexible the animations are. Really
looking forward to start on this. Hope I can find some time in the near
future...

Best,
Thijs

vade

cap10subtext

Wow, great job. Ninja running backwards? I nearly choked on my coffee. Love it.

This gives me hope for our upcoming 3D projects.

Once again, great stuff!

(karrrlo)

Rob, r u santa claus ?

Wetterberg

You effin w00t? wow, great work!!! Can't wait to work with this on XP :)

Cheers,
A.

Mattijs

Wow, this is sweet.

It will take some time to get into this. I hope I'll have that time soon.

Mattijs

Nadav Assor

Thank you. Sharing is, indeed, fun... wow.

DonK

Awesome! Now I can bring Maya into the mix... :)

Any chance you'll be updating an exporter for Maya2008 OSX?

Rob Ramirez

don't have maya 2008, so no way for me to test, but the one i link to might actually work fine. try it out and let us know.

i would love to hear some success stories from folks exporting their models.

-rob

Wetterberg

Quote: robtherich wrote on Thu, 20 December 2007 06:02
----------------------------------------------------
> don't have maya 2008, so no way for me to test, but the one i link to might actually work fine. try it out and let us know.
>
> i would love to hear some success stories from folks exporting their models.
>
> -rob
>
I would really love to *see* some success stories, or even better; *download* some success stories ;)

hsienchiab

Hi Robert,

You have done a great job your thesis. You did a lot of efforts on it. The
thesis is really amazing. You are so talented.
Meng

On Dec 18, 2007 3:59 AM, Robert Ramirez wrote:

Rob Ramirez

greetings and happy 08 to everyone.

many thanks for everyones kind words regarding this external.

now that the holidays are over, i am ready to continue work on this. I expected to receive a lot of emails or forum posts from people with problems or questions, but there have been surprisingly few. i would love to know if people are getting the hang of the external or not, and see some screens, web-movies, or patches of what people have managed to do. else, please let me know if it's just too convoluted to get anything done.

if people request it, i can make another tutorial movie on how to export models and animations from maya (maya is the only modeling tool i know and use), which will hopefully clear up some of that mystery.

I have managed to build the external as a Universal Binary, and i tested it somewhat successfully on my old ass g4 with a crap card with 0 shader support. animations work fine on this machine, but not much else. also the following error is printed every draw call:
ob3d_draw_end popmatrix: GL Error: Invalid enumeration

unfortunately, i don't think i'll have the time or inclination to track that error down, but perhaps it's related to the crappy card and not to PPC in general. if any dev's have any ideas regarding this, please let me know.

PPC users, please test this out and post back your results.
here is the new link to the Universal Binary:
http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mac.dmg

windows users, your time is coming...

-rob

Joshua Kit Clayton

On Jan 6, 2008, at 11:47 AM, Robert Ramirez wrote:

> I have managed to build the external as a Universal Binary, and i
> tested it somewhat successfully on my old ass g4 with a crap card
> with 0 shader support. animations work fine on this machine, but
> not much else. also the following error is printed every draw call:
> ob3d_draw_end popmatrix: GL Error: Invalid enumeration
>
> unfortunately, i don't think i'll have the time or inclination to
> track that error down, but perhaps it's related to the crappy card
> and not to PPC in general. if any dev's have any ideas regarding
> this, please let me know.

Not sure off the top of my head, other than some potentially newer
things you're trying to do on HW which doesn't support it. The
invalid enumeration might happen inside your object's draw code
rather than inside ob3d_draw_end, and we're simply reporting the
error there. You can try adding jit_gl_report_error("doing some thing
in my object") to various places in your object's code, which is
essentially a wrapper for glGetError() and post(), to see if it's
happening elsewhere.

Another thing that you might find useful is that even on Intel, you
should be able to test the PPC portion of your UB object by selecting
"Open Using Rosetta" for MaxMSP 4.6.3 in the GetInfo window. This
should load Max and any externals as PPC.

Good luck, and thanks for sharing such an excellent object with the
community.

-Joshua

keithmanlove

> PPC users, please test this out and post back your results.
> here is the new link to the Universal Binary:
> http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mac.dmg

Everything in the help patch works fine... without error. I'll post
back if I find anything while I'm working with it.

Powerbook G4 1.67 Ghz PowerPC, 2 GB RAM
10.5.1, Max 4.6.3, Jitter 1.6.3
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700

> windows users, your time is coming...

That would be amazing... I have a Windows project coming up... eck.

Thanks again for this... seems to be really great.

Keith

yair reshef

yes, waiting for windows (at least till macworld...)

On Jan 6, 2008 11:18 PM, keith manlove wrote:

> > PPC users, please test this out and post back your results.
> > here is the new link to the Universal Binary:
> > http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mac.dmg
>
> Everything in the help patch works fine... without error. I'll post
> back if I find anything while I'm working with it.
>
> Powerbook G4 1.67 Ghz PowerPC, 2 GB RAM
> 10.5.1, Max 4.6.3, Jitter 1.6.3
> ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
>
> > windows users, your time is coming...
>
> That would be amazing... I have a Windows project coming up... eck.
>
> Thanks again for this... seems to be really great.
>
> Keith
>

yair reshef

hi Robert, can you shed some light on the current state of jit.ogre?
i can only imagine the scale of the project. really impressive.
i'm still macless so i can only ask (you or other users), is it possible to
apply different animations simultaneously to a model? blending, different
weights, blend between animations, etc.
in the animation.mov demo you touch on this subject briefly but it isn't
clear if the weight is global or per animation sequence.
thanks again.
On Sun, Jan 6, 2008 at 11:26 PM, yair reshef wrote:

> yes, waiting for windows (at least till macworld...)
>
>
> On Jan 6, 2008 11:18 PM, keith manlove wrote:
>
> > > PPC users, please test this out and post back your results.
> > > here is the new link to the Universal Binary:
> > > http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mac.dmg
> >
> > Everything in the help patch works fine... without error. I'll post
> > back if I find anything while I'm working with it.
> >
> > Powerbook G4 1.67 Ghz PowerPC, 2 GB RAM
> > 10.5.1, Max 4.6.3, Jitter 1.6.3
> > ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
> >
> > > windows users, your time is coming...
> >
> > That would be amazing... I have a Windows project coming up... eck.
> >
> > Thanks again for this... seems to be really great.
> >
> > Keith
> >
>
>

marius.schebella

hey,
rob will answer better, but just a quick shot:
you export your model with different animations and in jitter you can
use all these actions separately or also together. you can set the
weight of each animation and the speed independently, and that gives you
the possibility to mix/blend several animations together.
using "walk" and "jump" together will result in some jumpwalk.
regarding the state of jit.ogre, I would say it takes a while until you
figure out how the object is working, there is a little learning process
involved before you can actually use it. also you need to find (or
create) models that are exported with skeleton animations that can be
used, which can also be not so easy (btw I was using blender), but
besides that, I think the object is running stable and has - as you
already said, an impressive scale.
marius.

yair reshef wrote:
> hi Robert, can you shed some light on the current state of jit.ogre?
> i can only imagine the scale of the project. really impressive.
> i'm still macless so i can only ask (you or other users), is it possible to
> apply different animations simultaneously to a model? blending, different
> weights, blend between animations, etc.
> in the animation.mov demo you touch on this subject briefly but it isn't
> clear if the weight is global or per animation sequence.
> thanks again.
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2008 at 11:26 PM, yair reshef wrote:
>
>> yes, waiting for windows (at least till macworld...)
>>
>>
>> On Jan 6, 2008 11:18 PM, keith manlove wrote:
>>
>>>> PPC users, please test this out and post back your results.
>>>> here is the new link to the Universal Binary:
>>>> http://jitogre.org/jit_ogre_mac.dmg
>>> Everything in the help patch works fine... without error. I'll post
>>> back if I find anything while I'm working with it.
>>>
>>> Powerbook G4 1.67 Ghz PowerPC, 2 GB RAM
>>> 10.5.1, Max 4.6.3, Jitter 1.6.3
>>> ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
>>>
>>>> windows users, your time is coming...
>>> That would be amazing... I have a Windows project coming up... eck.
>>>
>>> Thanks again for this... seems to be really great.
>>>
>>> Keith
>>>
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Rob Ramirez

hey yair and all.
unfortunately the windows port has not happened yet. there are several bizarre errors which i have not tracked down yet.
can't really say for sure when this will get fixed.

however, jit-ogre is an open source sourceforge project, so if any windows developers want to jump in and help, they would be welcome. the windows build currently compiles and runs, and actually renders to screen, but is crippled by the errors.

regarding your questions, marius pretty much nailed it. all animations have their own weight, and you can blend between as many as you want.

-rob

dev.simulacra

hey rob, I found your ogreExporter for Maya2008 build in the ogre forums, installed it and it seems to work fine in 2008 under OSX 10.5.2.

(the maya exporter on your wiki will only work under the 8.5 API)

For those who haven't dug through the forums the link is here:
http://www.robtherich.org/files/ogreExporter2008.zip

As for jit-ogre in max5... :) seems like the only bug is the render context thing that you seemed to be having problems with, I get "error retrieving window pointer" every time I bang the context.

Good luck!
- Dev

Rob Ramirez

hey, thanks for the update.
don't know why i forgot to alert the max community regarding the 2008 exporter. must of got lost in the shuffle. glad it's working for ya.

regarding max 5. can't say much, but we'll see...

-rob

james

Hey i was wondering if you had any more improvement with it working in max 5 my problem is i cant seem to get max to see any of the materials or mesh files the umenu is blank for each one and i've tried pointing the umenu at the ogre folder but to no avail

Rob Ramirez

ok, you are right. i've been sitting on this for awhile, but it is well past time for a release.

the long delay was the result of many problems with the windows port of jit-ogre. there is currently a bug that i am completely at a loss with, which causes optimized Release builds of the external to crash. Debug builds work fine, although much much slower than a Release build.

i hope this will eventually resolve itself. in the meantime windows users can have a go at the external in its current un-optimized form.

mac version seems to be working great.

check the wiki and read the readme.txt for more details.http://www.jitogre.org

i will be using this object in an ongoing project, so updates *should* be coming more frequently.

always welcome bug-reports and feature requests.
and very interested to see what can be done with this.

good luck.
-rob

surests

hi there.. great work guys..

I am trying to develop a realtime simulation of a moving human using max/jitter.

Ideally I would like to map my blog xy coordinates with the IK handles of the two legs of a 3d model.

There are many questions in this regard.
1. Can I import a 3d model with IK handles ? (FBX from maya 2010)
2. If I import it, can I control it from max/jitter?

Thanks a million in advance.
Sures

Rob Ramirez

Ogre does not currently support IK, although searching the ogre forums will yield some various projects attempting this. i don't believe a direct export of IK handles from maya is possible.

the best option is probably to use a ragdoll simulation from a physics engine, that is bound to the ogre animated model's skeleton.

you could either run the physics engine as a separate application, and pass controller values to jit-ogre over a network, or modify the jit-ogre source to embed the physics engine with the external. the latter route is something i've planned to do for a while, using the bullet physics engine.

astraphl

Hi,
I have finally got to the stage where I have some animated models in Maya that I want to test with jit-orge.. only problem is that I have Maya 2009 .. the 8.5 exporter does not work with it..( when I try to bring up the exporter plug-in ,I get an error message in Maya that the plug in is for an older version) It seems as though the 2009 version has a different plug-in system then the previous versions.. Does anyone have a solution or a work around.

Thanks so much

astraphl

I would like to be specific that a 2009 exporter is needed for the mac platform.. I did find a pc one someone had compiled through my search but of course it does not work on mac.. any help would be appreciated.

astraphl

Is anyone using maya 2009 on mac or later with jit-orge?