Good Geometry editors for Xith3D?

Engines, Libraries and Tools Xith3D Forums
#1

This is just a quick request for any recommendations on editors for creating xith3d content. Preferably Free!

I’ll start the ball rolling with some of my experience:

Art of Illusion (Free)

Seems great, though you have to render to see materials. You can export as Obj (and use newdawn objloader to load into Xith3D). However, loads as a BranchGroup - and I don’t know how to change the Appearance :slight_smile:
–Also saves as vrml - but haven’t tried this yet.

GMax (Freeish)

Seems very good - but doesn’t export to a format I can load in Xith3d.
–Anyone know of a suitable loader?

MilkShape 3D (30 day shareware)

Haven’t tried this yet. Quite cheap (only 17 pounds).
–anyone have success with this?

#2

== 3d modelers

Maya Unlimated with Polytrans
– realy costly!!! woooo!!! but saves as every formate
there is with the use of Ploytrans.
– Polytrans bakes the Animation (not good for file sizes).
– Maya is the bolocks when it comes ot makeing models.

3DsMax 7
– saves 3ds (as u would exspect)- can load into xith3d.
– Also a very cool modeler but not cheap.

Note Pad
– saves as txt but u can rename the file extention.
– gets abit tricky remembering all the vertex coords in
your head.

== shader editors…

RTshader Ginza
– best sharder application i have seen to date.
– u dont need to no how to code shaders.
– full on compiler and live editor of shaders.
– to expensive!!!

RenderMonkey 1.5
– cant use it once u have played with RTShader :frowning:
– FREE!

ShaderWorks X
– very very very nice indeed! FREE.
– cant save anything! shame the dude didnt finish it.

Anyone no of any other shader apps out there? cool
ones like ShaderWorks and RTShader???

#3

The hawk lives and dies with art of illusion. This is such a cool tool once you know it.

I will be writing a tut on this soon for the group.

Main coolness

Execution of bsh scripts to extend tool:
operates on objects etc… Large number of scripts exist including, join obj’s, add fur, thicken mesh, etc. Write a script, add to scripts dir, run from AOI menus and away you go. bsh is the bean shell script, the java language, for the most part, in a script.

plugins support:
Write a plugiin, add text file, build jar, add to plugins dir, restart ide…BOOM you have a tool executable from AOI menus.

Briefly I am using AOI to design rooms, walls, tables, etc. I have added a plugin to associated a descriptive text file with certain objects, text file is generated using a simple Bouy (swing extension) UI dialog that I can display within AOI… I can state an object is

  • a lock
  • requires key-5
  • is pickable
  • is animated
    :

I write this data out along with the export obj files . Read the obj and descriptive files in during startup to configure aspects of a room. If ispickable is set I add the obj to my pick group, if animated I inform my animation manager, etc.

AOI takes care of serializing the text out to disk during saves and reading it back in during edits…

In my game I can now say this shape is a lock and it requires a key, if you click on the shape and have the key, a series of lights are enabled, the animation manager slides the door open, an associated sound file is run (door opening) and I can enter the room.

Because all of the game info is in the same tool I can rearrange and reconfigure independent of my java game code.

Life is good…

#4

Blender is a very good modelisation/texturing/animation/rendering tool… It has it one format ( .blender ) and can export to MD2, MD3, MD5, OBJ, 3DS, DXF, and more…

More information : http://www.blender3d.org

#5

Wow !! It looks good !!

I think I’m going to try it - even if I’ve got 3dsmax5

#6

Thanks for the info everyone. Thought it might be useful to summarize what I found out.

I should point out that I am a Java expert (web professional-technical architect) but not a 3d person or games person (yet:). So please excuse my 3d ignorance…

My choice of editor is now going to be Art of Illusion. Basically I had it working with the obj loader (from newdawn) before I got anywhere with anything else.

From what I could see, blender looks excellent, but requires a big investment in learning it’s unique interface. Plus it depends on python for ase export (and other scripts). I gave up very quickly after failing to get it to recognise python. This was purely impatience on my behalf.

I will be following up with some questions about some of the issues with aoi - but they need to be in a new thread.

Cheers
Andy Stratton

#7

Hello

Blender has a bigger learningcourve but it is simply amazing what you can do with this completely free tool. Now as it integrates Yafray as render engine, I’m sure it gets more important and we’ll hear more from Blender in the future.

There is an Java3D Export script. It uses XMLDecoder from jdk < 1.4 to load the objects. So you don’t need any specific object loader after the export.
Since Xith3D is “similar” to Java3D, I’m sure it would be possible to make the definitive Xith3D exporter with Blender.

Cheers

Bössu

#8

definitely give fragmotion a shot