Dusty:
Basically you could create the contents even in MED. Blender works fine and so does Lightwave (with the exporter) or any other big tool. Believe me, your artwork will not automatically get better with a 1000 $ software. Painting, knowing how to create several details, experience and many tutorials are the key. And good models can even created with very cheap modellers.

Additionally it is important to know how to create normalmaps, height maps, alpha channels and to add that into the appropriate images. Since this is not mentioned in the txt file I could imagine that many people need more info's about that.

@ Frank_G:

Yes you are right. I have seen what some people can do with MED although it takes them much more time and stress I guess. Anyways it's true, buying a expensive modeling suite doesn't make anyone an artist. That is something which should already be inside the indivdual. But, I like being creative and was actualy saving money to buy A6 Pro. However, due to the fact I bought and have options to purchase third party softwares for the features, I don't need to anymore.

Perhaps if I figure out howto model inside Blender from the tutorials I do not need to buy any commercial 3d modeling software and save the money for something important. Also I don't make a living out of this like many other people, just want to learn and understand how 'they' do it and try doing it myself for fun (but seriously) in my free time.

About the normalmaps, height maps, alpha channels. This is indeed very important. I have had many many problems before understanding howto apply model based level with A6 & Sphere 1.1 addon in the past and still make mistakes, because I have learned the most from reading tutorials or just doing stupid things until they worked and documented everything what I was doing.

My most common trouble was with:

1: saving textures formats .tga/.dds
3: create normal, height, diffuse, maps, alpha channels
3: create, tile textures and apply them on 3d objects
4: 3d models size, the grid, quant and real world
5: lighting everthing the right way

Dusty

Matt-
what is the easiest way to turn off the main menu? Its so deeply integrated into the system, I dont want a menu...
Also, I cant seem to get Bloom working in the inside level...looks like its on in the outdoor. Where do i turn it on?

Thanks

Bloom does work in the inside, its just no tas noticeable because it has a brightness cutoff, the inside is darker than the outside. Look at the brightest spot on a wall and then turn it off, you will see it.

I'm not sure why you dont want a menu, but you could hack it so it doesnt appear and it just loads a level.

Matt,

I'm getting at best 4 fps. I have a GeForce FX 5500. Is that good enough? What do you recomend?

Thanks,

lucidman

lucidman: The FX series does a quite bad job with rendering shader 2.0.

Just downloaded and installed the acknex engine update 6.50.2 on my computer. Then I tried to build and run the Indoor demo from WED. Only it gives the following error message:



And every time I press the OK button it trows another similar error message. The Outdoor demo runs fine.

Dusty

And there is a problem with the latest Beta 6.53. I get only a black screen.

But it works fine in the public 6.4 version of Gamestudio.

Finally it worked on my pc too! So, I'm happy and impressed! It is wonderful!

BUT:

From the Readme:

Quote:

---

****IMPORTANT*****

you MUST have installed the latest DirectX dll called 'd3d9x_26.dll'. Sphere wil fail without this.
If you have downloaded and installed the very latest DirectX update it should be installed already.

---

"d3d9x_26.dll" doesn't help you anything! "d3d9x_28.dll" doesn't do the job, too.

It was mentioned that one needs the "d3d9x_30.dll" somewhere in this thread, but I relied on the authority of the readme!


At the moment the shadows have hard edges, but maybe it is because I don't have the latest drivers of my videocard "Radeon X300"!?

@ Pappenheimer:

You need d3d9x_30.dll or just download the latest DirectX update and it will be fine.

Dusty