Google Code Update

We have updated the code base on Google Code, the update includes the Avatar System Developer Tool that we use internally - starting with our next update we will post fixes to known art asset issues. The tool is used by the artists to verify assets before passing it along for integration, it is possible to load meshes and animations on run time for a smooth work flow.

We have started a documentation effort using the wiki on Google Code, it is possible to post comments on the wiki pages, let us know what you think!

A new forum for the CosmicEngine is up and running at http://groups.google.com/group/cosmicenginegroup

please feel free to post your questions and comments, we monitor this forum regularly.

Work has begun on the Cosmic Object Model! We will document on the wiki as this matures. We hope to use this model to ease the work on "Game Objects", separate the business logic from the reusable components and even make networking easier - stay tuned!

Cosmic Engine is posted!

I am proud to announce the entire Cosmic Engine code base is now up in SVN on the Google Code Cosmic engine site. The link again is:

cosmic-engine - Project Hosting on Google Code

Of course, it's not exactly user (or even developer friendly) but it's an important milestone. Docs and tutorials as well as regular development updates will now happen there and as open source!

It's been a long time coming. I hope we can grow a great community around this tech stack.

Hoo-ray!

This sprint I promise!

Delays, delays.

So we didn't make the release by last Friday as planned, but I promise, if I have to hand carry each bit, we'll push it all up during this mini-sprint.

We had an entire office move right ontop of this sprint, literally the move was the same day of the sprint closing and this got cut.

Google Code for hosting

We have decided to set up our code hosting at Google Code. The link is:

cosmic-engine - Project Hosting on Google Code

There is next to nothing there now, but the first official drop will go up at the end of this week(!), then followed by regular roll outs until it's all up and refactored for public consumption.

Cosmic Engine goes Open Source

I just wanted to make a quick announcement because I can't wait any longer.

We will be releasing the Cosmic Engine and related technologies as open source within the next few weeks.

To begin we will host it at Google Code and the team will be working out of that repository directly. Additionally, we are committed to making it as easy as possible to build out of the (SVN) box with a NetBeans project that will build and run with little to no configuring and by including all the underlying layers in our stack (JOGL, jMonkeyEngine, MTGame, Avatars and all our secret sauce that we have yet to release to the wild)

We are still in development so this is not an orphaned project, but we have reached the point where enough outside parties need and should have access to the source to grow and refine it's feature and capabilities.

Digging up old videos

I was going through some of the old snap shots and videos that were taken during the development of the avatar animation system and I found recordings of the experiments done with the ZCam prototype I brought with me from my vacation in Israel last year :). The ZCam is a special camera that captures depth (in addition to the normal color and sound), this is the same\similar technology that is utilized by project Natal (see Microsoft's XBox360).

Here is a video showing a networked prototype:




Here is a video showing avatar movement:

Freezing the Avatars project on the Sun SVN

As you might already know Wonderland is going through a period of bug fixing in which no new features are added, we evaluated what are the things we would like to touch up before freezing the avatars repository which are used for wonderland integration*. First is a fix to the hair placement issue, each head skeleton has a special joint called "HairAttach", this joint is used to properly transform the hair into position. We made sure that all the head skeletons are set up nice. Another issue we ironed out is color modulation for every clothing item and the skin, the system supported this feature for a very long time now but we made common use of alternative techniques (that often gave better results) such as using texture blending tools (avaiable in the avatars project, but can also be done with common industry tools) to compose a custom texture. The latest commit to the repository changed all the defaut textures that are used by all clothing and skin to black and white, this insures that color modulation will yield the desired results.

In the picture you can see two avatars with white color modulation on the clothes and skin tone color modulation applied on the skin, the shoes, pants, shirt and hair can each be individually color modulated.

* https://avatars.dev.java.net/svn/avatars