Hi all.

This is really a 'any ideas?' sort of post .....

What's the best approach would be for synching an audio track to an animatio?  A use case here would be lip synching an avatar to dialog.

The audio is WAV format, being played with Paul's SoundSystemJPCT, and the game loop and timing is derived from from the Slick2D libraries, and uses LWJGL's Sys class to generate deltas as milliseconds. It all works OK, but various latencies and system loads mean the audio and animation can get out of synch very easily.

If it helps, I'm using Acid Pro 7 to sequence and create the audio.

My thoughts at the moment are to create time markers, then

• at runtime calculate the number of bytes to be played until the next marker,
  
• count bytes
• call a listener method

or to do the audio as MIDI, which would entail

• implement a custom MIDI sequencer
• intercept 'Wire' protocol data
• call listeners for 'note on' and 'note off' messages

Does anyone have an other ideas?


On a slightly different topic, anyone interested in using a Wiimote for game input? If there's interest I'll post my sample code and details of setting it all up.

--Tim.

A few more questions for the day ....

• What are the units in world space?
• What are they related to?
• Is there a notion of scale or size .... how many units would be considered 'close,' 'far,' 'small,' and so on?

I download and started using jPCT only yesterday morning, and this is my first foray into 3D, so please forgive all the beginners questions all in a row.

TIA.

--Tim.

Hi all.

Completely new to 3D here .... I used to be a middleware product engineer (BEA was probably my best known employer), but am really rusty after a few years as a stay-at-home-dad! And this 3D geometry has really got me messed up!! Most likely it's because of the perspective projection .... I just can't get out of the 2D x,y type of thinking.

I'm trying to move a group of objects along the Z axis. The camera view should be fixed so that the objects appear to move under the camera and out of the view. The goal is to have a group of objects with co-ordinated movement, all time synched to midi events .... think of a row of pineapples zig-zagging over a terrain while they 'bob' to a beat.

This is my 1st hacked-up experiment at translating objects, just to get the basics of movement figured out. With 1 box, the box appeared to move along the Z axis as expected. Then I changed the code to an array of boxes, and now the boxes appear to zoom off into space, not moving along the Z axis at all.  Can anyone tell me why?

Thanks.
--Tim.

import com.threed.jpct.*;

public class MyTest {

private static float PI = (float) Math.PI;

private World world;
private FrameBuffer buffer;
private Object3D [] box = new Object3D[3];
private Object3D plane = null;

int counter = 0;
boolean right = true;

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
new MyTest().loop();
}

public MyTest() throws Exception {
world = new World();
world.setAmbientLight(255, 255, 255);

TextureManager.getInstance().addTexture("box", new Texture("box.jpg"));
TextureManager.getInstance().addTexture("ground", new Texture("cobblestones.jpg"));

for (int i=0;i<3;i++) {
box[i] = Primitives.getBox(13f, 2f);
box[i].setTexture("box");
box[i].setEnvmapped(Object3D.ENVMAP_ENABLED);
box[i].build();
world.addObject(box[i]);
box[i].setOrigin(SimpleVector.ORIGIN);
}
box[0].translate(-40,-1,0);
box[1].translate(0,-1,0);
box[2].translate(40,-1,0);

box[0].setAdditionalColor(java.awt.Color.RED);
box[1].setAdditionalColor(java.awt.Color.GREEN);
box[2].setAdditionalColor(java.awt.Color.BLUE);

plane = Primitives.getPlane(20, 30);
plane.rotateX(PI / 2f);
plane.setSpecularLighting(true);
plane.setTexture("ground");


world.addObject(plane);

plane.build();


plane.compileAndStrip();

world.getCamera().setPosition(0, -150, -500);
world.getCamera().lookAt(box[1].getTransformedCenter());
}

private void loop() throws Exception {
buffer = new FrameBuffer(800, 600, FrameBuffer.SAMPLINGMODE_NORMAL);
buffer.disableRenderer(IRenderer.RENDERER_SOFTWARE);
buffer.enableRenderer(IRenderer.RENDERER_OPENGL);

SimpleVector tm = null;

while (!org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.isCloseRequested()) {
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
tm = box[i].getTranslation();
if (tm.z < -200) {
tm.z = 200;
box[i].translate(tm);
box[i].setOrigin(SimpleVector.ORIGIN);
System.out.println("RESET ORIGIN");
} else {
tm.z -= 0.1f;
box[i].translate(tm);
}
}
buffer.clear(java.awt.Color.BLUE);
world.renderScene(buffer);
world.draw(buffer);
buffer.update();
buffer.displayGLOnly();
Thread.sleep(300);
}
buffer.disableRenderer(IRenderer.RENDERER_OPENGL);
buffer.dispose();
System.exit(0);
}
}