Via an entry over on Clickable Culture comes word of an update of sorts to the HijackGL tool I used earlier to capture data from a videostream and convert it to solid data (Link). It appears that the folks at Eyebeam OpenLab, inspired by HijackGL, have created their own opensource videostream ripper called OpenGLExtractor (Link). Nice.
From the sample images they show taken from the virtual world Second Life (picLink), it appears as if they’ve corrected some issues HijackGL had with capturing prim geometry. I’ll have to give this a try. I’ve been hoping someone would finish off what the guys behind HijackGL started, so this is a nice development.
Also happy to read they intend to release a Maya plug-in for Google Earth’s format. I happened to go looking for one yesterday and was disappointed at the current options available.
And one last thing, given this news, I should probably point to a recent entry (Link) outlining a next-gen solution we might see that builds on this (maybe from these guys). If they can pull the normal map out of the videocard’s cache, with the right tools, you’ve got some nicely detailed models.
Mike Frumin here, author of OGLE. It does currently does allow for the capture of the vertex normals, so you might want to try giving it a shot and seeing if it works for you. I fear it may be buggy so it comes turned off by default, but if you put the CaptureNormals flag to True it will at least attempt to do something.
I am _not_ a graphics/3D expert here so I need all the feedback I can get. More positive feedback will inspire eyebeam’s 3D/Maya junkies to keep working on the Maya->GEarth plugin.
thanks,
mike
Excellent. I’ll install Doom3 then and see if I can reverse engineer something close to an original high-resolution model.
Nice job. With enough buzz, perhaps some early adopters will be willing to start the ball rolling and get some objects they’ve created RP’d. I’ve already chatted with a few and intend to make some inquiries as to the current options/costs for something they might be willing to have fabricated.
Additionally, since I have some experience porting data over to CAD where I can sometimes optimize the model to lower RP costs, maybe I can help things along.
(and btw, a kmz file exporter for Maya 5 would be incentive! haha)
I just recently discovered that some games don’t actually require Vertex Programs for positioning. Using GLIntercept to disable Vertex Programs actually allows for a much better capture (i.e. positioning as you see in the game), as I have just added to the FAQ:
http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/readme#faq
as someone indicated in the OGLE forums:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1427740&forum_id=529065
lemme know,
mike
Interesting.
I’ve just now loaded Doom3 and going to install your tools. I’ll post my results… somewhere.
Thanks for the update.
Okay, I’m getting the Frame folder inside C:\Doom3, and a couple of sub-folders (Images and Shaders) and a 700kb gliInterceptLog text file, but no “ogle” .obj file… so far. This may be an issue with Vertex Programs. But could easily be something simple I’m screwing up, so I’m going to do a simple check as to whether it’s D3, and try it with Second Life since that apparently works.
And btw, I noticed the normalmaps in that Images folder. That was too easy. If I get the .obj data out of D3, I’m definitely heading straight for those.
Second Life: no problem.