Assignment 9 - Maya Exporter - PIX Instrumentation - Basic User Settings
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Write-Up
The basics of this assignment required three specific tasks to complete.
First was to set up a Maya Exporter, and allow Maya to convert to a mesh format our game engine supports. Second, was to include PIX instrumentation for debugging. Finally, we used a basic ".ini" file to allow the user to alter the size of the window, up to full screen.
Technical Write-Up
Maya Exporter
The first setup for the Maya exporter required implementing my mesh type. This required reading in the mesh file from Maya, and converting it to my format of meshes. A particular mesh I created in Maya was called "pyramidMesh.lua". The name of the mesh must include "Mesh.lua" as the type, because this is how my pipeline recognizes the mesh.
If a new mesh was generated and renamed as "pyramidMesh.lua" it would replace the current mesh used in game. This mesh is placed on two objects in the game. You would need to replace the mesh file in the Assets folder, but as long as the name is still "pyramidMesh.lua", you will have no further changes to make.
The game currently is rendering five objects. Two pyramids, one fish humanoid, one floor plane, and one sphere. The pyramids are using the same mesh, but one is using a blue ray material, and the other is using a sun material. The sphere is also using the same sun material as one of the pyramids. The fish humanoid initially uses a scales material, but if you press the "E" key it will switch to the sun material. The floor plane is using a stainless steel material.
The keys to move the fish humanoid are:
Up Arrow - Moves Fish Humanoid away from the camera
Down Arrow - Moves Fish Humanoid towards the camera
Left Arrow - Moves the Fish Humanoid left of the camera
Right Arrow - Moves the Fish Humanoid right of the camera
The keys to move the camera are:
W Key - Moves the camera upwards
S Key - Moves the camera downwards
A Key - Moves the camera leftwards
D Key - Moves the camera rightwards
This allows you to see that the material and mesh components of the in-game object can be altered with a simple pointer movement. This is shown in the image below:
Overall in the scene, the pyramid on the left has the sun material, while the one on the right has the blue rays material. The sphere, with the sun material, is above the fish humanoid. The fish humanoid is floating above the floor plane with the stainless steel material.
A key point to recognize is that if the material is going to show appropriately with the UVs, the UVs must be adjusted in Maya. I do not know how to adjust the UVs in Maya for the meshes being exported, so they do not look correct in game.
PIX Instrumentation
The second setup is for PIX instrumentation, which allows the engineer to generate the scene, capture a frame of rendering, and see what function calls are being made. It also allows the viewer to see what objects are being rendered, view the vertices, indices, and UVs of each object.
The instrumentation added to the current engine code allows the creation of your own custom events to wrap the engine code for easier visibility in PIX. This is currently being used in Debug mode only, as you wouldn't want to generate these calls in Release mode.
The two key pieces of information that is currently grouping function calls is the setup of new materials, and the drawing of new meshes. The material setups and the draw calls can happen every frame, and will show up in PIX. See the image below:
The left section of the image shows PIX using Debug mode and shows the "Set Material" event which is capturing each function in that event. The image also shows the "Draw Mesh" event, capturing the Draw Primitive function call. The right section of the image shows PIX using Release mode, and shows no events being called.
These events can be used throughout your code to help you more easily view specific function calls, group code that is important, or ignore function calls you do not want to see.
User Settings
Finally, the last implementation is the use of basic user settings for the engine. This allows the user to alter the "gameSettings.ini" file, in the Game directory, to change the screen size, or set it to full screen for their current resolution.
This required some additional code for the user settings to be altered. After implementing the included code, some reformatting was required. This happened in the Windows Program class and the Graphics class.
If the user sets the width and height to values less than zero, it sets them to default "800 x 600" (width x height). If the full screen variable is set to true, the width and height are ignored and the game is set to be at the current full screen resolution.
This file is generated in the game folder after the game is built. This allows the user to alter the .ini file that exists for that build, but still saves the original file in the original folder. This was done by a custom build tool for the in the .ini file. This prevents anyone, including myself from altering the original file from it's initial setup.
Realized Learning Moments
With the Maya materials I realized I had to save pointers to all of the meshes and materials, and this would allow my entities to change meshes and materials when needed. This required some reformatting of my mesh, material, and graphics classes. It is more robust now, but will require additional reformatting for the game to handle the entities in a more isolated manner.
The PIX implementation helped remove extraneous statements in Debug mode. You were able to find the needed functions or calls more quickly than hunting through "IDirect3DDevice9::..." descriptions. I was going to try and use more of this in my build for other parts of code, but would require using Direct3D code in those sections. This is for rendering purposes, and we'll leave that focus there.
The user settings was a fairly simple setup. There is an odd issue when using Alt-Tab to change to another window, but this causes the game to crash. If you use the "X" in the top right corner, or hit the escape button it will cleanly exit from the program.
This homework provided a stronger understanding of weak points in my architecture. I have realized points in my graphics code that needs to be isolated in another class, and will make it easier to read, and more difficult to alter by accident.
I need to change the ".lua" extension of the mesh and material files to appropriately fit ".mesh", ".material", or something more easily readable and usable.
I was also really happy to include this old fish humanoid model I made in Maya. It was my first attempt, and I thought it was fun to see in my game engine.
Time Used
Reading: 3 hours
Write-Up: 0.5 hours
Technical Write-Up: 1.5 hours
Coding: 9 hours
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