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Welcome to the Virtools Garage, the place where I store all the Virtools files that end up sitting on my hard drive.

Most of the stuff that you'll find here is unfinished or undocumented work that I did as a hobby using Virtools, during evening and weekends.

I believe these files show interesting aspects of Virtools, illustrating tips and techniques for scripting interactivity. Feel free to look into those scripts, and give me feedback.

François Dujardin

PS: don't e-mail to tell me how bad the graphics are. I already know.

What's New

05/23/00 - Portals for rendering interior scenes

I've just finished documenting my Portal System scripts for Virtools 1.0.1. These scripts allow you to dramatically increase rendering speed for interior scenes. The idea is that if you can split your large scenes in a serie of smaller connected 'rooms', then you can improve the framerate by only rendering the room you are in, and the rooms that you see through an opening (like a window or a door). Download the Portal System to try it out and implement it in your own scenes. Thanks for sending feedback on reusability. Models come from Konstantin, at the Media Art Group (check out his website for details about radioisity maps).

04/27/00 - Play Animation Part

As requested by Ed on the Virtools User Group, I added a small example of how to play animation parts in Virtools. David Polcino gave another hint (which is splitting the animation when creating it, and export separate sequences to Virtools). Each solution has its advantages. This one offers better control of how animations are played (using bezier curves for 'accelleration', for instance), but it doesn't support smooth transitions, David's might give you less control, but it's probably easier to implement, and more effective if you have lots on animations.

04/26/00 - Mario style gameplay

I just posted an unfinished example that some users have asked for. It's a small mario-style prototype, with a character walking around, sliding on walls, jumping and platform. It shows a way to have smooth collision detection and things like 'jumping'. It's not very clean but I thought it might help a bit.

04/25/00 - Splitting 'big' objects

Added a new optimization tip: an example about splitting 'big' objects to improve the framerate. Imagine you have to render a huge landscape (say 100k polygons). Splitting it in smaller objects will help rendering it fast (check out the tips section for an example).

04/18/00 - High polygon models in Virtools

People always ask "how many polygons can Virtools render?" That question is a tricky one, since polygon count is not a signisicant measure if you don't consider average polygon size and other factors. So, as the best solution is often to experiment, here is a 50k-poly truck that renders fine on a Pentium III. This is just to show that yes, Virtools can render that many polygons. The important question is: "What am I using that many polygons for?"

04/17/00 - Bluescreen FX

Just added a demo of the 'Use Z Information' behavior at work. It's a rather iunusual way to use 3D objects as masks for creating flash-like interactive 2D. It can also be used for mixing real-time models with pre-rendred backgrounds.

Make sure to click on the 'Virtools Files' link in the menu to browse the complete list of available files.