Retro Car Contest, discussion

how you did the nla animations

Hi,
here is your file. In the text editor you find the step by step guide.

My project uses a lot of NLA actions, and you only see the finished result, not the how to… but after you make one, u can study that.

shelbyMGT500.zip

-a strange thing that happens whenever I add an armature to an object. All the modifiers (mirror, subsurf) are not exported any more, at least I check the "apply modifiers" flag in the "export panel" but the armature's animation won't work, or I apply them via blender. That happened to other files I'm working on.

Hi!
In Blender applying the Armature modifier just deforms the mesh according to its pose before applying. The animation doesn't work after that. So, this is not the right way to animate objects. Blend4Web behaves similarly. That's why you shouldn't check the "apply modifiers" flag for animated objects. Also without this flag other modifiers will never be applied during the export because the Armature modifier is a blocker. The solution here is to manually apply other modifiers in Blender.

Reply to post of user Tamas Prepost
Hi,
here is your file. In the text editor you find the step by step guide.

My project uses a lot of NLA actions, and you only see the finished result, not the how to… but after you make one, u can study that.

shelbyMGT500.zip

Thank you Tami, very nice and clear explanation. I will immediately jump into testing

n Blender applying the Armature modifier just deforms the mesh according to its pose before applying. The animation doesn't work after that. So, this is not the right way to animate objects. Blend4Web behaves similarly. That's why you shouldn't check the "apply modifiers" flag for animated objects. Also without this flag other modifiers will never be applied during the export because the Armature modifier is a blocker. The solution here is to manually apply other modifiers in Blender.

Thank you Ivan for the clarification. Ok it isn't a big issue after all. It only slows the production process for me as I 'm not an expert. When working with animated characters and modifiers applied, it becomes laborious watching the model correctly in the preview of the b4w web-player. I'm never satisfied with some character joints or polygon deformations of the model during animation. So I apply the modifiers at the end of the world
But I might develop the animation outside b4w engine and at the end, switch it. Doing this you're giving up the possibility to use the webplayer preview and watch the animation progress.
By the way the possibility to click a button in blender and watch immediately the preview on the browser is fantastic.

Thank you Ivan for the clarification. Ok it isn't a big issue after all. It only slows the production process for me as I 'm not an expert. When working with animated characters and modifiers applied, it becomes laborious watching the model correctly in the preview of the b4w web-player.

Yes, it's a bit inconvenient as for now. We'll try to improve this situation to automatically apply all the needed modifiers during the export.

On the bottom of the Contest page you can now find the list of our judges! This time we invited our forum users, who participated in our contests in the past!

Aaand here go the results!

Hi Everyone!

Congratulations to the winners! - and of course to everyone else who made something to the contest!
In most of them i found very good ideas, so now i understand why the judges said, its hard to choose the best works.

But clearly my personal favourite scene is AngryArticFox's work. He did an amazing job! Professional modelling and overall look, but the really best part is the interaction with the camera.If he made a lower quality composition but with this type of interaction, i would be very sad if he not catch the 1st place.

My second fav is veti's Merecedes. A masterpiece in graphic quality but i missed the real interaction from the scene. The configurator better suited to a new car so what i imagine, when you first posted a wip image/html is an old garage with rusty barrels, god rays through dusty window or a streetside scene etc.
- somebody who can make this quality how to miss to use camera limits

The third and last favourite the second place winner. Good looking car, average graphics but i really like the originality of the contol panel, gas pedal etc. Nice work!

To the others, as a wrote above… in almost every work i found something special.

To judge my own work… really hard to remain objective. But i think i have no problems with the look and the idea to connect an average car to a tv series which made it memorable.

I understand the judges opinion with the dynamic reflections, and i am really angry to myself because the first try a made this with an env.map. But why i made with dynrefs? Because i am optimalizing.
In my opinion the optimalization already means small file size (mobile download), loading time, green light in scene viewer and naturally good running performance, minimum or zero glitches on any device (camera movement, unrendered objects, unstoppable anims)!

So when i first export - the finished - scene it was 35MB and the loading time is 18sec… terrible! What i reached is 8,1 MB the smallest in the contestants, and ~5sec loading time in hq mode on my - not a high end - mobile phone 4,1s on a 5yo pc. I used b4wquality node to change textures to simple colors (when the user switch between quality modes can reach better performance but with lower graphic), use rgb channels for bw images if(!) it results smaller file size etc.

I think i made a big mistake here, but changing between quality modes is a built in feature.
I learned from that so when i optimizing the scene i am not useing this option.

Finally B4W is a really good way to spread 3D, big thank for anybody who works on it, and yeah we want more contests!!!

Tamas, I'm glad to hear it. Thanks!
Also I want to tell about veti's Merecedes. It' really nice work!

In my opinion the optimalization already means small file size (mobile download), loading time, green light in scene viewer

Yes, I will rework and renew all the aspects of Optimization side. There are some things that can show you if the scene will work fast or slow on the devices. Also we added some changes to interface about Reflection settings

We really liked your work, it was really entertaining and unique! I personally loved the "broken" headlight

TO EVERY CONTESTANT!

If you want to get the contest's-themed key-fob, please send your address (with postal index!) and full name to my e-mail (pkotov@blend4web.com)!