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A

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

for designing interactivity in game creation

Jonathan van Wunnik

September 2001 - May 2002

TU team:

dr. P.J. Stappers (UHD) ir. A. Hoeben ir. J.C. Verlinden

Company mentor:

dr. ir. M.W. Gribnau

Company:

NaN Holding BV

summary 37 mm
III

September 2001 - May 2002

J.v.W.

The subject of this graduate report is the inter-

active creation part of the Blender application.

Blender, developed by Not a Number BV (NaN),

is an application with which users can model, ani- mate and do postproduction of 3D content. NaN has two ofÞ ces. One in Amsterdam and one in

Eindhoven. In Amsterdam, the headquarters are

located while the development and content teams are located in Eindhoven. The development team creates the Blender application while the content team creates actual content with Blender for promotional purpose and gives feedback to the development team.

In this project a new Graphical User Interface

(GUI) for the interactive creation part of Blender was designed. The interactive creation part allows the user to add, in a visually manner, 'life' (interactivity) to 3D objects and worlds.

The new GUI had to provide means for organizing

the networks of logic bricks (the building blocks for creating interactivity graphically), but also means for creating interactivity on a 'higher' level than the current logic bricks concept. Higher level means interactivity such as state engines, behav- ior and/or artiÞ cial intelligence (AI).

To become familiar with the interactive cre-

ation part of Blender an interactive 'game' was designed and built within Blender. Different types of 3D interactive content, the design process of the content team of NaN and other game develop- ment teams were analyzed. A game development process was extracted and the speciÞ cations for a new GUI were determined.

A list of criteria was

set up to use as guide for the concept creation.

After the analysis phase, the conceptual phase

started where (partial) solutions were created for the problems that were found. This resulted in a Þ nal concept that was evaluated by two members of the content creation team of NaN. The evalu- ation showed that the design solves the prob- lems determined and ful l lls the demands and wishes. The results were applied in a Þ nal design that offers a GUI for designing interactivity on the level of behavior without (less) coding and a means of organizing all logic used. The Þ nal design can be used as a blueprint for actual implementation in Blender. Although the

Summary

design has been evaluated with the content team a few times, it is inevitable that modiÞ cations will need to take place during and after actual imple- mentation. Besides, valuable insights for future additions to the logic system came up during the process. These include debugging, ordering of states, which kind of logic bricks are (really) needed etc.

Now the question is, will the design be imple-

mented in Blender? This is at the moment of writing uncertain (NaN went bankrupt halfway through the project). Currently NaN is undergo- ing a re-organization. The prospects are that one or two smaller companies will continue develop- ing and using Blender one way or another. One of those would beneÞ t picking up this project and implementing it.

T.O.C.

VII

September 2001 - May 2002

J.v.W.

37 mm
table of contents

Table of Contents1. Introduction

11

2. Company Profi le Not a Number (NaN)

11

3. Problem defi nition and assignment

12 I Analysis4. Using Blender for interactive 3D content 15

4.1 Introducing Blender (history) 15

4.2 Functionality overview 15

4.3 The user interface 16

5. A small interactive 3D production with Blender

19

5.1 The house 19

5.2 List of available logic bricks 21

5.2.1 Pulses (timing)

21

5.2.2 Sensors

21

5.2.3 Controllers

22

5.2.4 Actuators 22

5.3 Conclusion 23

6. Types of interactive content

24

6.1 Games 24

6.1.1 Skill-and-action games

24

6.1.2 Strategy games

25

6.1.3 Hybrids

26

6.2 Other interactive 3D content 26

6.2.1 Simulations

26

6.2.2 3D content (for internet)

26

6.2.3 Product Presentations

26

6.2.4 Game prototyping

26

6.3 Conclusion 26

7. Game development teams

27

7.1 Content creation team NaN 27

7.2 Postmortems 28

7.2.1 Lionhead Studios' Black & White [4]

28

7.2.2 Lucas Arts' Star Wars Starfi ghter [5]

29

7.2.3 More postmortems

30

7.3 Conclusion 30

8. Development process

31

8.1 Game development process 31

8.2 Conclusion 32

9. Interactivity and Blender

33

9.1 Target group Blender 33

9.2 What kind of 3D content? 33

9.3 Example games 33

9.4 Game elements 35

9.5 Levels of interactivity 35

9.6 Conclusion 35

10. Blender compared to other applications

36

10.1 Overview 36

10.2 Other 3D interactive creation applications 36

10.2.1 MindAvenue's Axel

37

10.2.2 Act3D's Quest3D

37

10.2.3 Virtools' Virtools Dev

38

10.2.4 Alias|Wavefront's Maya RTA

39

10.3 Other graphical creation tools 40

10.3.1 Maya's Hypershade editor

40

10.3.2 Softimage XSI's Render tree

41
VIII

September 2001 - May 2002

J.v.W.

37 mm
table of contents

10.4 Overview of other interactive creation tools 41

10.5 Conclusion 42

11. Other GUI's

43

11.1 Criteria for a good GUI 43

11.2 Conclusion 44

12. Program of Requirements

45

II Synthesis13. Ideas

49

13.1 Result 49

13.1.1 Idea 1

49

13.1.2 Idea 2

50

13.1.3 Idea 3

50

13.2 Conclusion 50

14. Concepts

52

14.1 Concept A 52

14.1.1 State-editor

52

14.1.2 Logic editor

53

14.1.3 Example concept A

54

14.1.4 Evaluation concept A

55

14.2 Concept B 56

14.2.1 State editor

56

14.2.2 Action editor

58

14.2.3 Logic editor

58

14.2.4 Evaluation concept B

59

14.3 Concept C 60

14.3.1 Transition editor

60

14.3.2 Evaluation concept C

60

15. Final concept

62

15.1 Conceptualizing States 62

15.2 States 63

15.3 Transitions 64

15.4 Global States 64

15.5 Actions 65

15.6 Logic 65

15.7 Physics 66

15.8 Reusing 66

15.9 Properties 66

16. Evaluation fi nal concept

69

16.1 Approach 69

16.2 Process 69

16.3 Findings 70

16.4 Conclusion 72

17. Final design

72

18. Conclusions

80

18.1 Recommendations 80

18.2 Future development 80

19. Process evaluation

81
IX

September 2001 - May 2002

J.v.W.

37 mm
table of contents

Appendix

83

Appendix I: Blender features 85

Appendix II: Questionnaire 86

Appendix III: Evaluation concept A 87

Source listening 88

11

September 2001 - May 2002

J.v.W.

37 mm
introduction The starting points for this project existed of two main questions. What should a graphical user inteface for creating higher level interactivity (e.g. state engines, behavior and/or artifi cial intelligence) look like? And in what manner can logic (the building blocks for creating interactivity) be organized?

The process is divided into three main parts: the

analysis, synthesis and optimization. First a company profi le is given in section 2. In section 3 the problem defi nition and assignment are described, before the actual analysis.

The analysis started with building an interactive

3D game within Blender to get familiar with the

current interactive creation tools and to get an overview of Blender itself. This is described in sections 4 and 5. Secondly, a survey of differ- ent types of 3D interactive content was made, described in section 6. To get an overview of how the content creation team of NaN and other game creation studios do work and which problems they come along, a analysis of these teams was made in section 7 linked together with the develop- ment process in sections 8. To defi ne what kind of 3D interactive content should be created within

Blender, example games are defi ned and the

'levels' of interactivity are described in section 9.

In section 10 Blender is compared with other 3D

interactive creation applications to obtain infor- mation about how these applications make it possible to create interactive content. Also appli- cations that are not directly used for the creation of interactive content, but do have a graphical interface for the workfl ow of connecting differentquotesdbs_dbs26.pdfusesText_32

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