How do most of you model your 3D models for your OpenGL games? Do you lay the model out on paper, or do you do the modelling in a modelling app such as WIngs3D or Blender, then export that file and then read it in your game application? I am only interested in static models right now that don't have animation qualities, although animation will be right around the corner.

Thanks for the help.

I use Wings3d or Meshwork, then use custom written Python scripts to convert the models to a simpler format of my own devising before Oolite imports them.

Parsing a Wavefront .obj file is fairly trivial for polygonal models.

If you've got a really fast machine http://ArtOfIllusion.org has a Java 3D tool I've been using for years now.

For Water Tower 3D, most of the models were done by typing vertices into a text file. For some of the more complex ones, I wrote a utiltity to write the files for me.

Now that I have my head on the right way, I've been using Wings 3D. I have code that can pasre a .obj and save as my own model file format, which is what I use in the final product.

- Alex Diener

Lightwave, .3D, .obj,, Coalesce, or Meshwork, models get converted to .WTF format, or we just model right inside iGame3D and save to WTF. For instance for dead days, the zombie came out of lightwave, with about 85% poly reduction from the original model, the cops were made in iGame3D, the police car came off some free model collection on the web somewhere, the zombie girl came from a really old Glut sample, the buildings and levels modeled in iGame3D, the trees were simple quads that billboard.

It probably helps in the modeling process to have a drawing, but I tend to do a create as i go approach. For the "Town Hall" in Dead Days I just started with a plane made up of some quads and went extruding until it looked like something.

For models of any complexity at all, you'll definitely want to create them in a 3D modeling app and then export the model into a format your program can read.

Wade

aegidian Wrote:Parsing a Wavefront .obj file is fairly trivial for polygonal models.

Seconded. I read the OBJ specification, and was able to write a parser -- that worked correctly the first time -- in about an hour.

OBJ isn't the cat's pajamas, but it *is* easy to grok.

I can't find coalesce, doesn anyone know where I can find it?

I have it Bob hasn't worked on it since UDG 2003 Not sure which version this is.

uhh... no you don't.

It was just a typo, it is "http://www.igame3d.com/Coalesce.sit" not "http://www.igame3d.com/Coalesce.sit/"

Sorry extra slash in that URL, try again.