Ok, So you can make your own custom graphics. (Good) But if you don't know how to use a 3D modeler, or just can't make anything useful with it, you won't have anything nearly as good as what you start with. (Bad)

So, does anyone know any good easy-to-use 3D modelers? I've tried mechanisto (I'm not even going to post a link, but you can if you'd like) But all I could make are funny lathes made from spirals that look like clear circles in circles, I know how to make textures and use them, but I don't know much about making wireframes. (Bad)

I'm wiling to spend a little money, but not $300 like any good modeler costs, I'd rather have a free one like mechanisto, but only if I could make somthing with it (Good)

If I can't make my own 3D models, my dreams will be left looking like (Bad)

------------------
You don't have GameRanger? Get it! (url="http://"Http://www.GameRanger.com/")Http://www.GameRanger.com/(/url)

I know, Coldstone has some pretty good starting graphics as I can see in the previews, but It's not what I'm going for plus I don't want to have the same graphics as everyone else

------------------
You don't have GameRanger? Get it! (url="http://"Http://www.GameRanger.com/")Http://www.GameRanger.com/(/url)

First of all, I want to say that learning 3D modelling and animation requires a good chunk of talent and resources (time=money). You're also going to need some background as an aritst. If you've never drawn a human figure that you're happy with on paper, don't expect to start modelling characters that will astound everyone. When I started doing character modelling, I had to dig out some of my old anatomy reference books from art school, because I had forgotten a lot of the tricks for making people look right ("Drawing the Head and Figure" by Jack Hamm is still my most invaluable resource). Even then, some people simply will not be able to model well, just like I can't code in C or do Calculus, I just don't have the head for it.

At anyrate, for the persistent but poor (ok, "financially challenged") aritsts...

I'll go ahead and post the inevitable link to Strata ( (url="http://"http://www.strata.com")http://www.strata.com(/url) ). They have a free version, but expect limited features and support, and a very hard sell on the $500 or so full version. Also expect to be frustrated if you want to animate organic-looking things.

I'm assuming, of course, you want to animate your sprites. I could be wrong.

Now that MetaCreations is out of business, you can probably find copies of Ray Dream or Carrara for somewhat cheap. But remember that Carrara is still in Limbo and hasn't been picked up by another company yet. It may never be updated. Carrara has animation capabilities that are probably similar to what you would find in Strata free.

A quick search on versiontracker turned up the following (can you tell I can't get to sleep?):

Quote

Amapi 3D ( http://www.tgs.com/Amapi/index.html $399. Impressive stills, but animation seems limited to simple morph, rotate, and translate.

Amorphium ( http://cf.play.com/play/amorphium/ $49.95. "Real-Time Modelling and Sculpting" Their site talks about all their spiffy modelling gizmos, but the only reference to animation I could find was in reference to tweaking type for nifty animated web graphics.

Art*Lanties Render ( http://www.artlantis.com/ (I couldn't find pricing info) Most of the stills are of architecture. I don't know about you, but I find architecture much less interesting than people. It seems animation is limited to camera movement.

Autodessys formZ ( http://www.formz.com (email for price) Geared towards architecural uses. Includes a "Drafting" module, like a CAD program.

Hash's Animation Master ( http://www.hash.com $299. My program of choice. Much of this program's power lies in it's re-usability and library systems. More on that later.

Infinity Model Builder ( http://www.french-to...cts/editing.cfm Free. Oh wait, I take that back, it doesn't model, it only lets you edit DXF and 3DMF files for use with their Infinity 3D SDK game engine.

Meshwork ( http://codenautics.c...work/intro.html $30. Lo-res models for Quake and the like. Looks promising for the price, it even includes bones! Modeller only, you'll still need POV-Ray to render and animate (ouch!).

Microspot 3D World ( http://www.microspot.co.uk/ $349. Gallery consists of mechanical objects. I'm assuming it's aimed at the CAD crowd.

NewTek Inspire 3D ( http://www.newtek.com As of this writing, their website seems to be down.

NewTek Lightwave 3D ( http://www.newtek.com Somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000. I've played with it once in a computer lab, and didn't figure much out.

Patchdance ( http://www.patchdance.com/ $25 - $55/70. Spline Modeller, still in Beta. Apparently can read/write Animation Master files. Very low system requirements. This one is also a modeller only, so you need POV-Ray or something to render with. Apparently uses the same modelling paradigm as Animation Master... so you could always upgrade later when you've outgrown it... I don't think it offers a bone system though...

Pixels 3D Studio ( http://www.pixels3d.com $499 - $899. Uses a patch-based (I'd assume spline, but the site also mentions NURBS...) modeller. It seems their shader unit and their particle system cost extra. Not much is mentioned about a Bones system or re-usable actions.

Poser ( http://www.curiousla...s/products.html $234.95 at Outpost.com. Once a Metacreations App. I've played with it, it's good for toying around with the stock characters, but the deformation mode seems counterintuitive and modelling your own clothes for characters requires another program, and even then it doesn't support dynamic cloth. Plenty of figures for download on the net, though...

POV-Ray ( http://www.povray.com Free. The eternal free renderer. You need something else to make models with, and I wouldn't exactly call this program intuitive.

Reelsmart Shade/Shape ( http://ww.revisionfx.com/rsshade.htm $89. Adds three-dee type effects to 2-D pictures. I think it's an AfterFX plugin, though.

Renderboy ( http://members.home.net/prybarczyk/ $25. Boolean Modeller. Whee. Great for Architecture and Spaceships.

SolidThinking ( http://www.gestel.co...ew/overview.htm $2495. Hefty price, but nice renderer, makes some pretty nature scenes, too. I wonder why I don't see any photorealistic people in their gallery...

Strata3D, I mentioned above.

Touch 3D ( http://www.algonet.s...ign/indexT.html $325. CopyPaste from website: "Touch-3D v2.1, a program for 3D-modelling, concept design, industrial design, quick prototyping, mock-ups, scale models, physical renderings, production preparation, and unfolding/unwrapping."

So, if I were you, I'd check out Patchdance or Meshwork.

I've already typed up the sales pitch for Animation Master (oh, I love editing), so here it is...

One of the things I like about the $300 Animation Master is that I can re-use actions on multiple characters. Say I decide to add a spell halfway into production, SuperDeathSmite, and I need sprites for ten characters casting it.... since the animation is 3 seconds long, that's 90 frames per direction, 8 directions per character, times 10 characters is 7200 sprites. Might be kinda tedious to do by hand, and perhaps even be enough of a hassle to forget about it. But...

With AM I only have to create the animation once, and then I can re-use it on my other characters (takes about ten seconds), because they have the same bone structure. To my knowledge (which comes from Strata's website, correct me if I'm wrong), Strata doesn't even have a bone system, so if you want to animate a walk cycle, you'd need to move each part individually, and I doubt that your animation motions would be reusable from character to character.

If you think I'm biased, read the MacAddict review ( (url="http://"http://www.macaddict.com/news/reviews/1999_05_07.shtml")http://www.macaddict...999_05_07.shtml(/url) ), for AM99 at that. "Serious character animation requires the kind of sophisticated tools that, on the Mac, you'll find only in Animation:Master 99. If character animation is what you do, this is the app to have... good news: Best Mac app available for character animation. Smart Skin, Pose Sliders, and five-point patches. New tools for layering Actions. Excellent tech support and rapid bug fixes. Ludicrously low price."

One of the things about 3-D programs, and modelling/texturing/rendering procedures in general, is that some things are good to render still frames with but suck at animation. Check out ( (url="http://"http://membres.tripod.fr/rimasson/3d/digidoll.htm")http://membres.tripo...3d/digidoll.htm(/url) ), for example. An extordinary example of photorealism in 3D, but the artist admits that you can't change the lighting setup or even really look at the model from a different angle, much less animate with it.

I personally also don't find NURBS modelling very intuitive, but then again, I'm severly right-brained. Splines make lots of sense to me, just as polygons don't.

If you're only aiming for SNES Final Fantasy III/VI type graphics, you could probably just get away with doing them by hand (paper and scanning, a drawing app like Illustrator or Freehand, etc), but you're still going to need some artistic abilities.

Whee... that was a little longer than it probably should have been.

OK, time for everyone to give the sales pitch on their favorite programs... I think I can go to sleep now.

------------------
"insert signature here"

(This message has been edited by sanehatter (edited 01-04-2001).)

Well that killed the conversation.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.armanus-zero.f2s.com")Armanus Zero(/url) Coming soon from Negative Influence Software
(url="http://"http://www.ohhla.com")The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive(/url)
Hip Hop Recomendation of the week: the Wu Tang - The W
------------------

(This message has been edited by the Necromicon (edited 01-04-2001).)

What? You're giving it five measly hours? Did I cover all the bases too well, or is no one going to read it all? Lazy bums...

I'm at least curious about what software others are using, and what they feel are their packages' strong points.

------------------
"insert signature here"

(This message has been edited by sanehatter (edited 01-04-2001).)

Sanehatter (should I capitalize it when I start a sentence with it? ), I think you have indeed covered the bases pretty thoroughly, but I'll try to answer your statement,

Quote

I'm at least curious about what software others are using, and what they feel are their packages' strong points.

For all of the graphics I've done so far for CS (mostly just parts of buildings for a town), I've used nothing but Photoshop. I find that its "Add Noise" filter is very useful for adding a bit of texture to things. Of course, my graphics are also looking currently to be about on the level of, say, FF2 (or 4, if you're Japanese). Main advantages of Photoshop for this sort of thing: I already have it, and I know how to use it. Probably not much else.

I haven't yet decided how I will do characters; I've thought about saving my pennies and buying Poser or Animation Master, but I'm just not sure if it's worth the investment to me. I've owned Bryce for some time now, and I've hardly made any finished work with it... but part of that may be due to the limitations and frustrations that are key to Bryce. I know I did a lot more during that brief, glorious time when I had access to a high-powered NT box (ok, maybe not so glorious) with 3d Studio Max R2. (ah, there's the glory!) But I ramble...

sanehatter (let's try it lowercase this time), can you tell me anything about userfriendliness of Animation Master? From everything I've read, it sounds to be very powerful indeed. But how much can it be used "out of the box"? I understand it includes a CD of free characters, actions, etc - how good are they? How easy is it to customize them? Tell us more about this program! Everything I've heard about it makes it seem almost too good to be true - what are its downsides or limitations?

Thanks!

------------------
“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” - T.H. Huxley

Animation Master...

Great program, on the Mac however, not so great.

Very buggy on the Mac, however, if you're persistant, you can still do awe inspiring things...

Now if you want the best for Mac, (and excellent on the PC as well) you'll pick up Cinema 4D XL Version 6 ($2200)

Or you can wait a little while for Maya ($6000) for OSX

------------------

Uppercase, lowercase, whatever. I switch between the two myself.

I use photoshop's noise filter a lot myself. It's great for adding some roughness to decals.

Yeah, AM is kinda buggy, but most people on the Animaster list agree there's a strange phenomenon in that the more you use it, the more stable it becomes. I've only been using it for the last two months, and while it would crash incessantly at first, it hardly ever crashes for me now unless I attempt to do something strange with the spring system. My guess is that I'm not using the spring system properly.

To quote someone from the animaster list:
(AM) is not a Jeep. It is a Formula 1 Racing Car. You wouldn't take an F-1 onto most city-streets, much less off-roading. Similarly, you don't get into an F-1 without much driving experience and proper training, because if you don't know how to drive it properly, it will crash.

I have a special extensions set just for AM, in which I've turned off just about everything but Quicktime.

I have played around with AM on the PC, and I'll say that it is much quicker to respond, and having a real two-button mouse interface (ie, you can click both buttons at once) helps quite a bit. I'm actually thinking of using my tax return to get an Athlon box soley for running AM. I also know that part of the reason for the instabilities on the Mac is that Hash is using Microsoft's MFC compilers, which I don't think even Microsoft uses for Mac coding anymore. I remember reading that they're switching to something more Mac-friendly, so hopefully this area will improve.

There are a bunch of characters on the CD, but it's mostly an assortment of things made by various people, so there's no consistency. Some of the characters aren't boned properly, if at all. I haven't played around with the actions on the CD, because most of them are meant for animating characters for motion video imagery, not game sprites.

AM, just like any other animation program, requires a great deal of forethought.

At the modelling level, it took me about three tries to model a face properly, so I knew how to avoid certain traps, like unclosable patches and spline creases. Heh, but for my game, I'm just making a very rough head and putting most of the details into the decal. Still, the more you use the modeller, the better you become at using it.

Boning is perhaps the easist thing to do logistically and the hardest thing to understand conceptually. It helps to have a conceptual understanding of anatomy, kinematics, puppetering, and "constraints," which prevent joints from moving backwards or setting up fake cloth. That marionette system I displayed on the image board is something I did after realizing that controlling each bone individually sucks because they all affect each other on the Kinematic Chain. I studied a number of different reference material and used about half of my advil supply and came out a few days later with that relatively simple system. I can explain it more in-depth, but a lot of what I'd say might go over your head if you don't already know have the understandings mentioned earlier in the paragraph. Feel free to email me.

Creating actions is relatively easy, providing your boning is setup properly. AM supports video rotoscopes, so if you have a way to get video into your mac, you can use video as a reference (I've been using this quite a bit). If you use the same boning system on all your characters, you can re-use the actions as well.

The Hash community is great. The mailing list is an awesome resource and there are plenty of tutorials online, a good place to start is here: (url="http://"http://www.hash.com/users/jsherwood/tutes/tutorials.html")http://www.hash.com/.../tutorials.html(/url)

The downsides I've encountered...

• Applying decals can be tricky, but again, this is probably something that gets easier with practice.

• No Hardware OpenGL acceleration. At least not yet.

• If you animate inside of the choreography window, you can't save it as an action and re-use it. Not really a problem if you're making game sprites.

• You've gotta have the CD in the drive when it launches. Dang Copy Protection.

• Pressing ` to join Control Points isn't as easy as it is on the PC and as it would be if the Mac had true two-button mouse support (that is, Right-Click is registered differently than Click by the OS), although I suppose they could support this with Input Sprocket.

• some people on the list complain that the Mac version is too resource intensive. It really depends on what you're doing. If you work on a 300 Meg Photoshop document, that can be resource intensive, too, and you need to bump the RAM allocation up.

If you're fence-sitting, I'd suggest subscribing to the mailing list, reading the online tutorials, downloading the PDF version of the manual, and then do lots of reading. I mean LOTS of reading. Three months ago, I had only a cursory understanding of how to do character animation properly, and that is now much improved.

------------------
"insert signature here"

Yeah, AM has a lot of limitations, and I don't agree with the "Formula racing car analogy at all." That's just a poor justification for weak programming. Many other programs are more feature intensive, better this, better that, and they are a lot more crash resistant.

Still for $300 it's hard to go wrong with AM, if it was crash free, and played more nicely with other programs, it'd be worth $1200.

------------------

Thanks for the info! Now, for a comparison, have either of you (sanehatter or Lt. Et'he) used Poser for character animation? I know it's much more limited in functionality than AM, but how does it compare for stability and ease of use?

PS: Lt. Et'he, I'd love to have my hands on a copy of Cinema 4D or Maya, but somehow, I don't seem to have $2000+ in spare change at the moment... (not that I have the $300 for AM or Poser either, but if I decide to get one of them, I'll search my pockets and under the sofa cushions until I do. )

------------------
“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” - T.H. Huxley

I've played with Poser, and IMHO, it's like going to the supermarket and buying a bunch of microwave dinners. There are a couple of things you can do to make them better, but for the most part you're stuck with the varities offered.

Poser does have a pretty large community, however. There are lots of characters you can download off the web, either for free or for $10-$100, usually depending on quality. Same deal with props, clothes, etc. Note that for the most part, if you want to make your own props, clothes, etc, rather than modifying existing ones you're going to need another 3D program and some proficiency with it.

One of Poser's greatest strengths or weaknesses, depending on how you look at it, is that it hides the bones system from you entirely. As I said earlier, "Boning is perhaps the easist thing to do logistically and the hardest thing to understand conceptually," because bones are what you animate with. In Poser, you can manipulate each little bone individually, or control them with sliders. Inverse Kinematics (IK) makes sure that the character looks right. Again, this can be a strength or weakness depending on how you look at it. I consider it a weakness because I don't want to worry control each individual bone, heck, I'm not even making proper hands on my figures because I don't need to.

Move your arms around. What are you controlling, mentally? You tell your hands where to go, and in some cases your elbows, too. With IK, you have to worry about the forearm and such. Now try your legs. Again, you're basically telling your feet where to go, and you can rotate your thigh by twisting your foot.

That's one reason why I don't like Poser, is by simplifying the user experience, it makes controlling animation more complex than it needs to be.

In the same metaphoric spirit I described Poser, I would describe AM as a full kitchen and almost any ingredient you could possibly want. You can make some awesome food, but only if you learn how to cook.

I'm modelling clothes as part of the character. If you don't see it on the surface, it probably isn't underneath. So if they're wearing a dress/skirt/long robe, there are no legs underneath, I just have the leg bones controlling the geometry of whatever is covering the legs.

The image I have up on the imageboard (more will come) displays a marionette system I developped for my characters. All bones that control actual geometry (ie, what you control in Poser) are hidden and manipulated by these control bones that are visible. Here's an outline of my system, as I have documented it so far:

Sanehatter's Lo-Fi Hash Rig, aka SunsetStrings, v1.42
Bones Legend: Hidden (Geometry), Control (visible) , constriant modifiers ; + = child of above bone with one fewer plusses.
Constraint Legend: ## = percentage; OrL= "Orient Like"; Aim@= "Aim at"; Sph= "Spherical Limits"; Kin2= "Kinematic"; Trn2= "Translate To"

• Patriarch

• + PelvisGeo OrL "Pelvis"

• ++ TorsoGeo OrL "Torso"

• +++ ShoulderR OrL 50 "BicepR"

• +++ BicepR OrL "RBicep"

• ++++ BicepJR OrL 33 "ForearmR"

• +++++ ForeRTwister OrL 50 "ForearmR"

• ++++ ForearmR Aim@ "RHandT"

• +++++ HandR OrL "RHandT"

• +++++ ForeJR OrL 50 "RHandT"

• +++ Neck OrL 50 "Head"

• ++++ HeadGeo OrL "Head"

• +++ ShoulderL OrL 50 "BicepL"

• +++ BicepL OrL "LBicep"

• ++++ BicepJL OrL 33 "ForearmL"

• +++++ ForeLTwister OrL 50 "ForearmL"

• ++++ ForearmL Aim@ "LHandT"

• +++++ HandL OrL "LHandT"

• +++++ ForeJL OrL 50 "LHandT"

• ++ ThighR Aim@ "RKnee"

• +++ CalfR Kin2 "RFootT"

• ++++ FootR OrL "RFootT"

• ++ ThighL Aim@ "LKnee"

• +++ CalfL Kin2 "LFootT"

• ++++ FootL OrL "LFootT"

• ++ ThighD Aim@ "ThighDTgt" --The "D" bones are a fake cloth system

• +++ CalfD OrL 50 "CalfL" & 50 "CalfR"

• ++ ThighDR OrL 50 "ThighR" & 50 "ThighD"

• +++ CalfDR OrL 50 "CalfR" & 50 "CalfD"

• ++ ThighDL OrL 50 "ThighL" & 50 "ThighD"

• +++ CalfDL OrL 50 "CalfL" & 50 "CalfL"

• ++ ThighDTgt Trn2 50 "CalfL" & 50 "CalfR"

• + Pelvis

• + Torso

• + RFootT

• ++ RKnee

• + LFootT

• ++ LKnee

• + RBicep

• + RHandT

• + LBicep

• + LHandT

• + Head

I only have to see and deal with the bones that are in Bold, and I only had to setup the constraint system once, I can just drop that into any other character with the same bone names.

There may seem like a lot of stuff to keep track of, but once I put them into my characters, I only have to keep track of 10 bones, plus a few muscle poses I have set up. Therefore, it's extremely quick to animate with, especially since I only have to look at 11 channels of posing data in the timeline.

Also, since all the bones have the same names, I can re-use who animations on other characters, and then easily go in and tweak them to match the character as appropriate. Very handy.

Okay, that's today's lesson on Kinematics and Puppeteering.

------------------
"Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind." --Mark Harrold (not that I know who Mark Harrold is...)

(This message has been edited by sanehatter (edited 01-05-2001).)

Poser eh?

Heheh...

I have a grudge against Poser, mainly because novice artists abuse it and I have to view Poser rendered cr*p all over the place.

With game content creation, it's still pretty easy to see Poser created stuff, and thus be turned off, but then, it's also a lot easier for an artist to mask the fact that the created the stuff in Poser since the resolution is so low. All it takes is just a little more work.

Poser is interesting, but it creates content that is far too generic, and without character. A program like animation master allows you to build from the ground up, so you can create an excellent fat tax collector with a nice rolling gait, or you can create a sexy vixen who's sleek and enchanting.

I've yet to see a fat charcter in Poser, only a potbelly one.

Poser has no character, and you've got to be one heck of an artist to instill character into it.

Even if you have no skill, what you create from the ground up has character, it may be crp character, but crp character is several steps above no character at all in my book.

I'm going to urge you away from Poser on general principal, but I'm not going to go religious on you like I do many other 3D enthusiasts because you're thinking of using it for game creation, and it IS easier to pull off successfully.

My advice, plan on spending some quality time with your program of choice, despite AM's problems, I think you'll eventually be happier with your purchase.

------------------

BTW, what's this rating system for? Suddenly I'm a decent individual, (I got the email explaining why)... Is it so people know who to ask for help? Or is it so we can feel warm and fuzzy? Or something else?

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by Lt. Et'he:
**BTW, what's this rating system for? Suddenly I'm a decent individual, (I got the email explaining why)... Is it so people know who to ask for help? Or is it so we can feel warm and fuzzy? Or something else?
**

Click 'info' and scroll down for an explanation, OR YOU COULD READ THE WEB BOARD GUIDELINES.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.armanus-zero.f2s.com")Armanus Zero(/url) Coming soon from Negative Influence Software
(url="http://"http://www.ohhla.com")The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive(/url)
Hip Hop Recomendation of the week: the Wu Tang - The W
------------------

-29°

listens, as ears slowly bleed...

someone give this man a column...

------------------
"With an icy glare of indignity..."
"Lock it down"
--------------------------
(b)this week's hater:TheGlueBubble

Quote

Originally posted by chill_rx:
**-29°

listens, as ears slowly bleed...

someone give this man a column...

**

Your spam is not appreciated.

------------------
"Bond, GlueBubble Bond."
"To reach the Order I have attained, I traveled deeper into Chaos than I wanted. Now, as I stand upon my shelf of Order, and see the Chaos swirling around me, I realize I haven't come up at all."

In my opinion, the best free organic modeller is Pixels 3D. Suprisingly enough, Pixels has a practice of releasing the most recently out-dated version of their software for free. Pretty cool, no?

Also, sanehatter, Pixels' shader program is not sold seperately. What is sold seperately is the advanced version of the Shader. The particle creation program is not released free, however. (sigh.)

-Andrew out.

------------------
"Question boldly even the very existance of a God, for if there is one he must surely apreciate the homage of Reason rather than a blindfolded fear." -Thomas Jefferson

Yes, Photoshops add noise filter is a great utility, as well as some of the other effects like lighting/dodge/burn.

When I was in college learning printing, I took a few classes on photography, and learned how to alter negatives, and make photographs look much, much better.

Photoshop can do basicly the same thing, as I've learned by playing with it for a while (I've had it and have been updating it for years but haven't used it for much)

While Claris/Appleworks is good for making 2D sprites from scratch, photoshop can add lighting effects, lens flares, (those weird circles/hexagons of light you get from pointing a camera at a bright light) and even quick shadows, simply darkened on with a simple brush tool.

I'd like to explain more about it, but I've only been playing with it for a few hours, and I don't know that much about it. If anyone has more info, links, or other great 2D Programs, please post. I'd like to make a lot of 2D RPGs like old SNES games, just easier to get into a small simple game

------------------
Man who laugh last not get joke