Ancient Spaces Blog

So we finally got our long awaited plant software (Treemagik and Plantlife) that we could use to make all the plants we'd need for our scenes. Unfortunately, it turned out that Treemagik, while being able to make a variety of decent looking deciduous trees, is completely unable to make any coniferous ones.

Meanwhile, I got this nice list of trees to be modelled...Malus Fusca, Acer Glabrum, Western Fir, Alpine Fir, Western Yew, Juniper, Alder, Pine, Thuja Plicata, Chamaecyparis Nookatensis, Picea Sitchensis, Tsuga heterophylla. And of course most of them are coniferous trees.

So I've been modelling trees all day. I did manage to get a semi-decent looking cedar.

Besides that, it seems that most of the major structures for the Nisga village are done. A few smaller ones still need some moficications though. Here, for example, is a bathhouse frame that is supposed to be covered in hides/blankets. However, it's not known what kind of hides and blankets are supposed to be on it so it's just a frame for now.

I've also finished up a bunch of simple structures this last week, such as a Ganee'e (a fish drying structure) and a simple bridge/boardwalk. Here's a picture of the Ganee'e:

Anyways, back to tree modelling...

Sigh...

Serialization is being very annoying. I clear one obstacle only to slam directly into another. When will the pain ever end? It is finite I'm sure but it seems unnecessary and excessive. What's happening now is that property set tables for plain SceneElements works perfectly, but a very informative exception is thrown when attempting to serialize LightElements:

I looked at the Boost User mailing list for inspiration or instigation or something and came across a conversation over something similar. At least it confirmed that polymorphic serialization should actually work, meaning the system should be able to serialize a light without caring that it is a light. I suspect that the actual error could be caused by something like the fact that SceneElements have only one PropertySet whereas Lights happen to have two. I'll have to test this and other hypotheses with meticulous care.

All just for saving and loading! This is not even the hard part yet. :|