Server-side 3D Graphics (image/Animated gif) Application - No GUI - command-line

I require guidance on how to set up a specific server-side application.
I have a linux server (preferably) which the application will reside in. I also have Maya running currently on Windows which will be used to create 3D environments and objects.
I have a good 3D modeller and character animator and would like to translate some of his work to server-side automated scripts by adding text or objects to the animated files.
The outcome should be a server-side application that can receive command-line arguments such as
application.exe object1 environment1 text1
or just an environement and text
application.sh environment1 text1
and will result in producing an image file or series of animated images that can be converted to an animated gif.
Alternatively, I am open to using other frameworks such as OpenGL, WebGL, HTML5 etc. to produce an image or series of animated still-images that will be initiated by a command-line call.
My goal is to produce something that can create 3D images without starting up any GUI, that can take models and environments from 3D programs such as Maya, Cinema4D, 3Dstudio Max etc and preferably something lightweight that can handle an output of 100 to 1000 images per minute.

Many render engines support command line render in standalone mode. For example: Mental Ray, V-Ray and so on. But they are pretty expensive. Instead you can use some free software like Blender it also supports command line renderer. In case of WebGL you can use something like SlimerJS
It should be pretty simple to set up.

Here is a partial list of renderers you might want to try out:
3Delight
Pixars Renderman
Gelato
Pixie
Aqsis
Yafaray
Mentalray
Mitsuba
LuxRender
VRay
Arnold
Maxwell
Octane
RedShift
Indigo
Indigo RT
Keyshot
Cycles
Corona
POV-Ray
Kerkythea
VirtualLight
Sunflow
jrMan
Radiance
Some free some not so free.

Related

How can I organize tiles in a tileset?

I am trying to follow the tutorial for a dungeon RPG, which involves creating a tileset.
As part of this (bookmark to exact time in video (edit: thanks, corrected)) in the video it's possible to move around tiles into separate folders. I am trying to re-create this on Unity 2022.2.0.a14.2406, and I don't seem to be able to do this: Whenever I move around tiles (from a tileset) to other folders in my assets, I end up moving the whole tileset (see image below, with the left-arrow linking to the tileset). This of course prevents me from splitting up tiles, e.g. into categories like players/walls/etc.
How would you do this? I also tried using tags, but they seem to have the same issue - they get applied to all tiles in a tileset.
Edit: Example with multiple tiles (showing the first few) extracted via 'sprite editor => slice/automatic'. It's 256 tiles, so to use them it'd important to have some way to group these tiles.
I bumped into a similar situation, and solved it rather naively by firing up Paint.NET to edit the gigantic sprite sheets I had found online into smaller similar ones for the different types of terrains, and making a distinct PNG for each character and game object.
Good naming is critical: use a short but descriptive name for each PNG, so it imports and breaks down into say Torch_0, Torch_1, etc. and Castle1_0, Castle1_1, BlueBlobBaddy_0, etc.; have all the sprites needed for a given terrain type in the same import file, import them into dedicated folders/subfolders, then splice them into tiles.
It's honestly quite a lot of work, but it's well worth it in the end.
I'm hoping this post will honor the age-old rule "if you want to learn how to do something, post the wrong way to go about it online" and will prompt a better, not-so-naive approach to this problem which I presume everyone working with 2D tilesets in Unity has encountered.

Previewing OpenGLES Render Buffers under Android

I've started to play a bit with the Frame Buffer Objects and Render Buffers in OpenGLES. One thing that bugs me out is that I'm not able to see what data is currently in my Render Buffer instance, or simply put - what I've drawn within. I know that I could possibly draw my data into the texture and then simply sample it onto the rectangle, but I don't want to do that. Maybe somebody already used or is aware of some sort of a plugin, preferably an Eclipse plugin, or eventually an application that would present me with the graphical data of the Render Buffer of my choice?
I will answer my question myself, there are some tools dedicated for NVIDIA Tegra chipsets which are really helpful when dealing with problems within the OpenGL scope (PerfHUD ES for example)

iPhone : 3d Objects with animation

What is the best format to use for 3D characters with the iPhone. I am looking to find free characters and did look at md2 (previous post), however there does not seem to be much free quality stuff about.
All I am after is to have a few normal 3D people walking around on my iPhone. I do have some animated 3ds / x animated characters. I am just trying to work out via what tools and format I should use for the iPhone.
Update:
Keeping this simple how do I get animated .x files or animated .3ds file on to the iPhone?
The md2 example seems like a dead end as can't convert 3ds / .x animated files to md2 successfully with jpg textures .
The choice of the file format does not depend on the target plattform but on the capabilities provided by it, the amount of thrid party libraries you want to use or the effort you want to put in writing a custom file loader.
There is no such thing like the "best file format".

OpenGL 2D editor?

I want to draw different 2D objects in OpenGL for example a path/Road ,is there any program i could draw them using a GUI then transfer them to points so i could use them in my program ?
I have personally used Inkscape to do this. If you save your data as SVG, then any standard XML parsing library should make it relatively easy to extract your data. Even better, you might even find an SVG parsing library that will make it even easier. I created one in Python, based on the work of Martin O'Leary of supereffective:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/svgbatch
It's very fragile and incomplete (it barfs on svg elements it doesn't recognise) but if you stick to the SVG elements it recognises (closed polygon paths, no curves) then it works, and it might help you put together one of your own.
Somewhat heavy handed, but you could use Inkscape to create SVG files, and then just parse out the path vertexes.

OpenGL - to use or not to use ? why - iPhone application dev

I have to develop an application "Behavior like an Tetris game".
I have never used "OpenGL" for the iPhone application developement.
Application is something like this
Red / green / blue square boxes drop from top
Red + Red + Red = Points & boxes disappears
same way user has to make combination & get points
Different levels are there.
There are three buttons Left, Right for movement & bottom for speedy fall
For this kind of application should I use open GL or NOT?
i.e. Is it possible to develop entire application with view & it's animation?
If yes then, will it be more complex as compare to open gl?
What is the advantage of using open GL?
(I know that it gives good 2d, 3d look )
(But here my question means - easy coding?)
(Or open gl is more complicated as compare to objective-c?)
(I am just asking because I am not aware of it)
Basically your options are:
Using OpenGL
Using Quartz
Using UIKit
OpenGL is a fairly complicated beast, but is by far the best way to squeeze performance out of the iPhone. Do you need it for a Tetris game, though? Almost certainly not.
Quartz is the toolkit used in Mac OS X and the iPhone to draw images and do image effects. Because I come from an OpenGL background in other languages, I find Quartz strange and frustrating. However, it is probably easier for someone who is new to both.
You can do everything here using UIKit, and it will definitely be much much easier than other options. The main disadvantage is that it's rather slow in comparison, but once again doing a Tetris-like game shouldn't matter at all.
Before you go with UIKit, though, I recommend just checking out something like Cocos 2D, which will give you the advantages of OpenGL without the headache of dealing with all of its inner workings.
From the tone of your question it looks like you're confusing what OpenGL is and isn't with regard to Objective-C.
OpenGL is a library written in the C programming language (to put it simplistically) that excels at rendering shapes (especially 3D shapes) for display on a screen. It doesn't replace Objective-C inside your program, it merely assists you in drawing the shapes. If you don't use OpenGL, you'll need to write some sort of drawing/rendering code in your NSView (or subclass) to render the blocks. By using OpenGL, you will be provided a lot of helpful C methods for drawing shapes, which otherwise you'll have to implement yourself. On top of that OpenGL has thousands of man hours worth of drawing optimizations that you can take advantage of if you use it rather than trying to implement shape rendering yourself.
Having said that, OpenGL isn't all sunshine and roses. It works like a state machine and has its own assumptions about the way it will be used (like any API). Just because you know C and Objective-C doesn't mean that using OpenGL will be trivial. If you've never written any OpenGL code, I suggest you look into a reference like the venerable Red Book.
The thing to keep in mind is that OpenGL is not a language until itself (ignoring the OpenGL shading language). Its merely a set of C functions to aid you in rendering graphics.
You may well want to ask as well on http://iphonegamedev.stackexchange.com/, the new Stack Overflow variant just for iPhone gaming.
To learn & understand what you need.
Please go through following link.
it includes all necessary links for all kind of resources that you needed.
http://maniacdev.com/2009/04/8-great-resources-for-learning-iphone-opengl-es/
Edit :
After reading your question properly ( actually my question - By r & d I found solution).
I think - you need to develop a 2d application.
Go for the following link. Best option for 2d animation.
http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/
Don't forget to visit following link, if you needed sample codes.
http://monoclestudios.com/cocos2d_whitepaper.html