Soc project: verse-blender Linux/Mac/Win (2005/09/1)

Apollux · Post by **Apollux** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 4:14 pm

Man, I wish I could attend the Conference, but it is mid-terms exams week for me

I´ll keep testing Verse as soon as I finish a design project that I should present tomorrow. In the mean time, you can read some opinions of non-blender users about Verse here http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=286029

To summarize, a few quotes from the CGTalk thread:

That's pretty cool. I don't even want to think of all of the potential problems that this could cause in the app and in any workflow, but it's definitely nice to see it at least being attempted.

Really I think this is the future. Imagine the increase in workflow. A modeler creates a character's head...begins working on torso. And at the same time texturing begins on the head. Next modeling is completed. The animator begins to animate. Mid-animation the texturing is completed and added. A belt is modeled on the character and updated in realtime. If its done correctly and smoothly this could be very useful. But things like UV mapping, weight mapping, etc would have to blend in smoothly when the model is updated. I can see a lot of problems with it, along with a lot of potential.

Models take a long time to make, at least quality models do. You'd be better off investing in some other asset management software IMO. I applaud their efforts, but I think they're misdirected.

It'd be nice for 'real-life' learning, though, you could give lessons across the net and show people in real-time what they should do here and there imagine the teacher making something and telling the students: "Good, now make your own, here are your cubes."

jiri · Post by **jiri** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:06 am

Hi,
thanks for your bug track! I have known about most of problems, but problem of clear rotation is new for me ... good work!

I have several problems with modifiers like subsurf modifier ... it is reason, why it doesn't work in object mode.

Materials and modifiers aren't shared yet. I will solve it with some blender specific taggroups and tag. It means, that it will not be possible to share this information with other verse clients like Maya a 3ds max, becuase this apps don't do it in this way (I guess).

Jiri

Apollux · Post by **Apollux** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:18 am

Hey Jiri, what about the chances of adding the live updated text buffer? It doesn' t have to be anything fancy, just something that allows to talk without leaving Blender. It is possible to do it ?

jiri · Post by **jiri** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:54 am

Hi,
in theory it is possible to add support for some text communacation, becuase verse protocol supports text using text nodes. It will have to be discussed with blender ui masters

.

Jiri

Apollux · Post by **Apollux** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:15 am

jiri wrote:Hi,
in theory it is possible to add support for some text communacation, becuase verse protocol supports text using text nodes. It will have to be discussed with blender ui masters .

Jiri

Cool

Now the bad news, there is yet another bug.

On a subscribed mesh, try extruding single vertex.. so that they form edges but not faces.. the changes are lost as soon as you leave edit mode. When you get back into edit mode the vertex are still there, but the edges that should connect them are gone.

Apollux · Post by **Apollux** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 2:28 pm

Sorry to tell you, but there is one more bug, and quite drastic this time.

http://picserver.student.utwente.nl/vie ... H4643301B9

The Suzanne on the left is a regular one, the one on the right is Versed. To reproduce:

Get into edit mode
Select all vertext and set to smooth
Apply TWICE the Subdivide Smooth* command from the W specials menu.

* I´m talking about the usual subdivide smooth (tagged "old" on your built).

At first it seems like the versed Suzanne is been slowly updated to reach it´s non versed sister, but the process stops halfway and the update is left incompleted (the text output on the console stops, meaning it is not longer sending or receiving data, right?).

I call it a drastic error not just because of the mutated-deformed-Frankenstein look on the mesh (trust me, it looks worse in Edit Mode). It is a serious bug because if you try to UNDO the smooth command Blender crashes right there.

Sometimes it crashes as soon as you press Ctrl-Z, some other times the first or second Ctrl-Z doesn´t do nothing, but the third one kills Blender.

malCanDo · Post by **malCanDo** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 3:59 pm

Is there an IP address of a verse server set up somewhere, so that people who are working alone ( or who have no friends

) can connect up and try it out?

When the verse configuration gets more stable, it could be a great way to test it with a large number of people.

Regards...
Mal

Koba · Post by **Koba** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:30 pm

lol.

I agree with the above post. I don't know any blenderheads for miles around here....so an testing IP would be useful.

Koba

pinhead_66 · Post by **pinhead_66** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 4:32 pm

malCanDo

you can start up blender two times on your own pc, choose local for verse and split screen to see both blenders at the same time. should work

kidb · Post by **kidb** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:05 pm

malCanDo wrote:Is there an IP address of a verse server set up

Hmmm,
you can try this: verse.kidb.de.
Please do not expect that i keep running verse all the time. It is for testing purposes only.
Statuspage: http://verse.kidb.de

jiri · Post by **jiri** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 6:45 pm

Apollux wrote: Now the bad news, there is yet another bug.

On a subscribed mesh, try extruding single vertex.. so that they form edges but not faces.. the changes are lost as soon as you leave edit mode. When you get back into edit mode the vertex are still there, but the edges that should connect them are gone.

Yes, it is known bug and it is caused by gap in verse specification, because verse protocol doesn't allow to share edges. I don't think, that it is critical bug, because you can't render alone edge, but we disscusses about this in Amsterdam and we propably have soilution for it.

Jiri

PolygoneUK · Post by **PolygoneUK** » Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:41 pm

kidb wrote:
malCanDo wrote:Is there an IP address of a verse server set up
Hmmm,
you can try this: verse.kidb.de.
Please do not expect that i keep running verse all the time. It is for testing purposes only.
Statuspage: http://verse.kidb.de

Well on the times that I've been able to connect to the server, I must say there's quite a bit of potential here. I mean real potential.

I can imagine production studios working collaboratively across different continents with this type of tool implementation.

Obviously it's still rather buggy, but I think most can forgive it for what it represents.

Stunning stuff. Well done

malCanDo · Post by **malCanDo** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:42 pm

Connecting to the VERSE server, working on a model and seeing other people working on the same model ( and also moving other models around the area ) was one of those "You have to see it to believe it" moments!

Nice work, this is definitely going to be a GREAT feature for Blender. For colleges training students, they can now work in the same environment, and even learn from watching how the stronger students / lecturers model.

Of course there are communication issues etc, but it's a great start!!!

Keep up the great work!
Mal

Koba · Post by **Koba** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:23 pm

Amazing!

Just one issue - Blender crashed when I disconnected from the server.

Koba

PolygoneUK · Post by **PolygoneUK** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:53 pm

Okay, played with this a little more.

I had two blender instances running on my localhost. Verse server running naturally.

I loaded up a 27000 vertices sample file on blender-1 and pushed it to the verse server.

On blender-2 I subscribed.

The data transfer started between blender-1 and blender-2, but was taking ages even on localhost.

I could see each vertex being transmitted and thought all was going well. Then it bombed out.

Not sure if it's a verse thing, but I wonder if verse has issues transferring lots of vertex data around?

Also... I have a suggestion, query.

When a user first decides to push an object mesh to the verse server, would it not be possible for blender to save the desired object in a compressed .blend format first. Then have blender forward this compressed 'snapshot' of the object to the verse server for it to then transmit the highly-compressed vertex data to all subscribers.

Once a subscriber has the iniital snapshot of the object and blender has uncompressed the .blend file, THEN verse starts transmitting vertex and face change data?

It's just that sending vertex info, vertex by vertex could take ages on a high-poly mesh, when in fact the first time you connect you should be sent the entire object in one compressed burst. Afterall, it's only the changes after you subscribe that you want.

Just an idea