First fruits of contest winnings

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First fruits of contest winnings - stevejohnson - Mar 29, 2009 07:36 PM

I just spent the evening playing around with Cheetah3D. I don't like its modeling tools much, but it imports .obj files from Wings3D, so I can just make my models in Wings3D and texture/animate them in Cheetah3D.

As a first project, I made a simplistic verison Calvin's "gw0rp brain" unit and animated it in the program. I wasn't able to make materials animate - I would have liked to have the transparency of the sphere change over time - but I was able to get a satisfactory effect with simple scaling.

The results:
[Image: gw0rpcore.gif]

The gray parts need a better texture, and it could use some more detail, but it's a start. I can't wait to see what modo is capable of.

As far as I know, only Cheetah3D has actually been distributed by the sponsors, but when they do finally come in, you guys should let us know what you think.

Edit: Oh yeah, and Screenflick came in because Seth is awesome.

First fruits of contest winnings - FlamingHairball - Mar 29, 2009 07:47 PM

Hmm...

Last I checked, you can animate material properties. Make sure you have the little 'P' icon set to glow blue(lower left corner of window).

So far, I've received:
Videator
Screenflick

I plan to demo them both when I get a chance, and post a review then(can't really say much about it right now)

First fruits of contest winnings - stevejohnson - Mar 29, 2009 08:00 PM

Hairball183 Wrote:Last I checked, you can animate material properties. Make sure you have the little 'P' icon set to glow blue(lower left corner of window).

Thanks, Lincoln! I haven't been able to find any decent documentation yet, so this was a big help.

First fruits of contest winnings - stevejohnson - Mar 30, 2009 03:00 PM

Image updated with a few modifications.

Modo and Layout Center came in today.

First fruits of contest winnings - FlamingHairball - Mar 30, 2009 03:13 PM

That looks nice; can we get a sized-up version?

And I received Carrara(have yet to try it out

)

First fruits of contest winnings - mattness - Mar 30, 2009 04:59 PM

I got Cheetah yesterday and have played around with it some. It has a nice simple interface, but its missing a number of features that I'd like. Good news is the Dev is real responsive, and seems committed to expanding it. I emailed him about one feature (camera path import and export) because I saw it on the wish list forum and he emailed me back saying he'd look into it if I can send him some test files. Planning on doing that from work tomorrow.

First fruits of contest winnings - FlamingHairball - Mar 31, 2009 05:49 AM

@mattness: Did you get Cinema4D as well?

I demoed Carrara a bit this morning, and it looks really nice. It has tons of stuff that Cheetah doesn't(particle emitters, physics, terrains, hair etc), and the interface is actually quite a bit better than I expected.

Silo also looks great(got that this morning). Focusing on modeling rather than everything makes it a whole lot easier to pick up.

Power Game Factory also came in.

diordna Wrote:I can't wait to see what modo is capable of.

Be sure to post about it when you do; I'd like to see as well.

First fruits of contest winnings - mattness - Mar 31, 2009 07:02 PM

@Hairball Sadly no. I got bait and switched by the Unity mix up fallout. I think Ben Mildren ended up getting it. I hope he uses it to add a cool avatar to Chasm Bowling.

Also got my iphone dev ebook yesterday. It looks like what I need to start dipping my toes in the water of Objective C and iphone dev... Now I just need to find the time.

First fruits of contest winnings - stevejohnson - Mar 31, 2009 07:28 PM

Silo has turned out to be a fantastic modeling tool, but its UV tools seem completely screwy* and its .obj export makes Wings3D crash. Other than that, I love its interface, documentation (user-made tutorials), and active community.

Perhaps I'll do better with modo.

*Edit: I'm changing my verdict on Silo's UV tools from 'completely screwy' to 'completely awesome with some caveats.' My model was messed up.

First fruits of contest winnings - pinguoren - Apr 1, 2009 01:02 AM

mattness Wrote:I got bait and switched by the Unity mix up fallout. I think Ben Mildren ended up getting it.

It did end up on my list but I haven't heard from the company yet. I am hoping to get it soon and have already watched many of the tutorials that they have online. It is a bummer about the whole mix-up and that it effected other people.

I got Power Game Factory yesterday and spent some time using it with my kids today. My son is pretty excited about making stuff in it.

First fruits of contest winnings - mattness - Apr 1, 2009 03:36 PM

pinguoren Wrote:It is a bummer about the whole mix-up and that it effected other people.

No hard feelings. I'd probably use C4D more at work than for my personal game dev anyway, so if it turns out I need it for a project at work, I'll try to talk my boss into buying it. I am curious to hear about your experiences with it though. I hope you get it soon, and you choose to review it.

Cheers,

-Matt

First fruits of contest winnings - tcIgnatius - Apr 1, 2009 08:28 PM

I've received:
Guitar Hero 3 (totally rocks

)
The Apollo Symphony Orchestra Greatest Hits (I had to download every track individually off of their website in WAV format

, ugh... beautiful music though!

)
REALbasic Professional (very nice, although I've decided to port Syntropy over to C++, I still plan to use it for tool development and fast prototyping

)

I'm still waiting on InstallBuilder along with my subscription to MacTech.

First fruits of contest winnings - FlamingHairball - Apr 2, 2009 06:12 AM

Got OmniFocus yesterday; all that's left is an X-Arcade Trackball Controller, GamingBaboons, and Frogames.
Did I mention that Silo is awesome?

First fruits of contest winnings - stevejohnson - Apr 2, 2009 07:14 AM

I think Lincoln and I are pretty much Silo-smitten at this point.

Here is a taste of the upcoming "Steve's Spaxesheeps" public domain content pack:
[Image: ship_2.png]

See what I mean about the awesome UV tools? You just have to be careful your model is kosher. It's actually relatively easy to mess it up - if you extrude an edge loop instead of faces, you'll actually get a copy of the edges and it will mess with things. As long as you're careful about that one thing, there shouldn't be any problems.

First fruits of contest winnings - FlamingHairball - Apr 2, 2009 09:18 AM

Yup; I have already messed up several times trying to extrude and then doing something wrong, and leaving a polygon there that shouldn't be there.

Sweet ship. Did you have to map out the UV coords yourself or was that automatic?