[WIP] LayoutStudio - editor for NW4R layouts

[Treeki]

Working towards my second publicly released app - I figured I'd make a thread for it instead of posting more stuff about it in the Newer discussion thread!

LayoutStudio is (well, will be) a nice graphical editor for NW4R layouts (.brlyt/.brlan files). This includes the menus and interfaces in NSMBW, the Wii sysmenu channel banners (though these use a different version of the format which I don't quite support yet) and interface elements/menus in many, many other games.

What I've got down so far:
- Reading and writing for .brlyt files (no brlan yet)
- Loading and saving .arc files, and seeing the contents (interface for this still needs a bit of polish)
- Basic renderer for layouts that supports Pictures and Windows with some settings, and simple materials
- The start of an interface for editing layout data

And what's left (that I can think of right now):
- Layout Editor: Integrate the renderer so it can preview edited layouts; add/remove panes; pane search; editing of pane properties; editing of materials; editing of groups
- Animation editing
- Renderer: Windows with 8 frame components[needs testing]; textboxes (depends on Fonts); better material support
- Textures: Support for all texture formats; saving of tpl files; graphical interface for editing
- Fonts: Everything. Reading, writing, editing. I'm thinking about skipping on the latter two and just adding Import and Export brfnt files
- A way to load textures and fonts that aren't contained within the same arc as the layout - NSMBW uses this on textures for a couple of layouts, and ALL the fonts

Current screenshot as of.. a few minutes ago: http://treeki.rustedlogic.net/ls_scenegraph.png
Source code: http://www.github.com/Treeki/LayoutStudio

This app is fully open source - I push changes the day I write them - and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS (but is only regularly tested on Linux). You can compile it using Qt and try it out if you like... but it doesn't really do anything useful for editing yet!

[Andy Afro]

WOW will make editing those files alot easier

[JasonP27]

Can't wait for a working version of this to be released!

If and when you implement brlan editing, will you be all the frame/pane modes i.e. RLPA, RLTP etc?

This is really cool and can really make editing these much easier even if it only just helps with some of it.

Will LS support conversion of brlyt<->xmlyt and brlan<->xmlan as well? more or less either build the function into LS or be able to point LS to the location of Benzin.exe and LS does the work for you?

[Treeki]

Yes, I'd like to eventually support editing for everything in the format, and rendered previews for as much as possible.


Xmlyt/xmlan won't be supported, LS just reads and writes the brlyt/brlan files directly.

[JasonP27]

Yes, I'd like to eventually support editing for everything in the format, and rendered previews for as much as possible.


Xmlyt/xmlan won't be supported, LS just reads and writes the brlyt/brlan files directly.

OK I only asked because if there is some kind of edit that needs to be done to the files manually because it's not supported in LS then it would be easy to be able to save in that format... but then again I suppose you may just support manually editing the code inside LS?

[Treeki]

I'm going to make every available property editable through the interface, even if it can't be previewed. I'd like to avoid the mess surrounding xmlyt/xmlan files (different versions of Benzin sometimes use different formats IIRC, and it includes quite a few tags which are missing names or don't even map to actual properties and are just padding bytes).

[Mario64]

WOO!!! I can't wait to make awesome animations! P.S. How do you edit animations and things inside .bin files?

[Treeki]

It's been quite a while since I last posted here, but I've been working hard on it and pushing changes most days! What's new?

You can rearrange panes by dragging them around the tree - including those with child panes. You can't add new ones or delete existing ones yet, but that's coming.

I've done various fixes to the renderer, and I've made it display in a separate window when a layout is opened. And as from tonight, you can view and edit the generic Pane properties! I've still got to add the stuff specific to various types (Picture, TextBox, Window) and materials, so there's a way to go, but this is still some exciting progress. And you can't save yet... but that's just because I haven't added a save button to the layout window, but all the logic for creating brlyt files is in there. I'll add it eventually.

Here's a new screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4558613/LS_rotatedPauseMenu.png

And as always, the latest source is up for anyone who wants to give this a shot.

[JasonP27]

Treeki you are a LEGEND. This is gonna be so awesome!... it already is by the looks of it and it's not near finished yet

I might have to figure out how to compile this to check it out

[Treeki]

New today so far: Fixed a couple of bugs, added key shortcuts for the stuff in the File menu and started working on the editor for Picture properties.

The bulk of the work today has been on an editor for the texture coordinate sets... Now I can reuse that when I need to use them, though (I know I'll need them for windows as well)


And of course, a screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4558613/LS_pictureTexCoords.png

[Mario64]

Thanks, Treeki. This is gooonna be good. (gets evil look in face)

[max31]

That program can open animations for blocks?

[Treeki]

That program can open animations for blocks?

No, block animations have nothing to do with this...



Anyway, thought I'd post here. I know I've been slacking a bit but I've been busy and over the past few days I haven't really had enough time at my computer uninterrupted to work on this. That's hopefully over now...

Today's update brings editing of vertex colours (well, actually something I did the other day but didn't get around to pushing) and also proper rendering of them. Now to figure out if I can get QColorDialog to edit alpha values...

[max31]

Ok thank you

[Shane2100AD]

Will this be able to edit all .brylt files, like those in MKWii?

Thanks,
Shane.

[Adrian971226]

How do I compile this?

[JasonP27]

You can compile it using Qt

Did you bother reading the first post??

[Adrian971226]

Yes, I downloaded qt, but then??

[Mario64]

We're not all Python experts.

[JasonP27]

someone asks how to do it, I didn't know they expected a full fledged tutorial... I haven't compiled LayoutStudio or I'd give you the details. There is however, this thing called Google. It works wonders for stuff like this...