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You didn't specify if she was interested in learning how to program graphics, or just make pretty pictures. Personally, I would rather program them rather than just make them in a program like Lightwave or other 3D package.

First, if she wants to learn to program graphics, I suggest she visit my site, openglforums.com. I think its a pretty good resource on OpenGL programming.

However, if your wife just wants to make pretty graphics, there are a few free or inexpensive programs available. For example, there is Blender 3D (for Linux), or MilkShape 3D (for Windows). The latter is about $25-30USD, and well worth the money.

Hope this helps.

-Vic

Now that the Blender Foundation have collected all the money (100k.. wow) to buy the blender source from NaN, they will be releasing the source under the GPL very soon (paid members pre-release due tomorrow).

Blender is a full fledged 3d program with some animation capabilities. Maybe looking at their design will give you some good ideas.

A PS3 cluster would be great as Maya/Blender render farm.

If Sony is going to ship PS3 machines in 1U/2U 19" rack, I know my company would be interested in a PS3 cluster for rendering and other heavy stuff.

Now, go away to www.blender3d.com [blender3d.com] and read that page... and then come back and continue to read.

Yes, Blender is closed sourced, but it will be GPLed or get a similar license, with all old and new development released, hopefully this will happen soon, I long for a new dose of blender...

That is indeed good news (and I've quoted you so that those reading at +2 will see a portion of your comment and perhaps click on 'parent' to read more).

I've been periodically checking out http://blender.nl/ for news, but thus far haven't seen anything at all promising. Is there any news on how close the Free Blender Fund is to reaching its 100,000 Euro target for purchasing the sources and releasing it under a Free License?

In any event, thanks for the very informative link (and you are right, truevision is cool as well).

You still will probably get render times > 10 hours now. CPUs get faster, true, but so do monitors and povray itself. A 320x200 image looked big 10 years ago, but now is takes up about 1/20th of your desktop. And the simpler renders in old povray are boring now; using the new primitives/textures/radiosity/etc. will take longer.
I tried MORAY once, but sort of stopped because it scared me and was to shareware-ish. Sometimes i exported a dxf from blender and converted that to pov. blender also no longer exists. The other problem is that modellers don't always keep up with povray.

At least that's what I've found to be true. If I can get all the software I want in freeware versions, why pay for a shareware version? Sometimes it takes some searching to find a great freeware product, but it is always more satisfying to me to find something free and usefull rather than simply shelling out for the ubiquitous version that does the same thing (although sometimes is actually inferior). When I install a new Windows OS for someone, I always download Filzip for them, rather than Winzip with its anoying nag screen. I also try to teach people about the Gimp and they are always amazed that they can have a Photoshop equivalent for free.
Also, the great HTML-Kit, VirtualDub, Blender, and many others are great, professional apps that happen to be free.
You can even run a portal like Slashdot on freeware (using Slash or MaxWebPortal).

The plugin isn't released to enable to view Blender 3D models. The plugin is released to enable games in web browsers. VRML has never been intended as a development platform for games.

It's the next step in the strategy of Not a Number to develop Blender as game development platform. I think it has never been discussed an Slashot before but since a while game creation is an integral part of Blender. The "realtime" part of Blender gives the opportunity to add sensors, controllers and actuators to every object in a Blender scene. This way user toobject as well as object to object interaction is possible without the need to do any programming. Even for Blender haters, the realtime part is very simple, and in my opinion very intuitive.
More on gameblender can be found in the onlione gameblender manual [blender.nl]. Gameblender demo files can be found at the blender community website. The skategirl demo for example is very impressive, at least if you have 3D accelerator card (GF2).

Now that game creation is possible the next step is the ability to publish the games. Games can always be published as a blender native file. This requires that the person who wants to play the game, has to install Blender and play the game within the Blender program. He can play the game and he can even modify the game.
The Blender player and Blender plugin are ment for game developers who want to publish their games to people who aren't interested in the Blender program but only in the game. The player makes it possible to publish on CD-ROM, the plugin to publish on the web.

I think this page gives some good insight into their business model. Basically, Publisher (not free) pays for developement, and thus gets all the new features first. Once development is paid for the features get rolled into Creator (free). I think this sort of model is an excellent way to run a project like this, as long as no one gets greedy. The developers are paid, and therefore more motivated to do the "less sexy" jobs, and all the hardware and software necessary to develope a truely cross-platform package are acquired without relying on donations.

I think this page gives some good insight into their business model. Basically, Publisher (not free) pays for developement, and thus gets all the new features first. Once development is paid for the features get rolled into Creator (free). I think this sort of model is an excellent way to run a project like this, as long as no one gets greedy. The developers are paid, and therefore more motivated to do the "less sexy" jobs, and all the hardware and software necessary to develope a truely cross-platform package are acquired without relying on donations.

I just bought an old Indigo2 with a 250MHZ R4400 MIPS CPU with 160MB MEM , 2 SCSI-2 Disks and a High Impact Video Card.

And yes it runs IRIX 6.2 and i am playing with Blender on it and it runs like an charm.

I Compiled this box out of 3 Indigo2's and took
the best parts and i dont really think its slow for the time it was created and i even think IRIX is pretty oke in speed running X, Netscape even starts faster then on my Linux box which is a AMDK62/550 with 256MB MEM and IDE Disks. (starts in about 5 seconds on my SGI. Prolly the SCSI disks being faster here though)

But i love the 20" screen ;P

Quazion.

Choices are getting slightly better with some free and/or inexpensive modeling tools.

The top of my list has to be Blender Creator which is a free (as in beer but not speech) and sports a very impressive features list.

OpenGL Renderer
Standard Polygon Primitive modeling (w/lattices etc)
Bez Curves
Nurbs
Multi texturing (up to 16 per object)
Texture UV Mapping
Environment Mapping
Bump Mapping
Spec Mapping
Catmull Clark Surfaces for nicely subdivding meshes
Bones and Armature system for character animation
Particle Effects
Global Illumination with radiosity capabilities
Super fast renderer
Very very low system requirements and compact size
Python Plugin Interface for extending Blender
Large and enthusiastic user base eager to answer questions
...and lots of other stuff I'm forgetting

speed bumps for Blender are as follows:

Absolutely bizarre (but incredibly efficient once you learn it) user interface
Limited import and export capabilities (import/export of DXF and VRML) although I hear that improving this area is their 'top priority' to fix

So if after trying a few of the tutorials you decide you like Blender do yourself a favor and pick up the Official Blender Guide. Chances are your local "mega mart type book store" has a copy and you'll save yourself tons of aggravation and time.

Course if you're just into mods for quake type games etc then you should try Milkshape ($20 last time I checked) but its windows only and I didn't particularly like the interface. One the bright side it can import/export just about any kind of format you can come up with.

Discreet has some freebie as well called Gmax which I've never tried mostly cos I despise 3DS' UI. Its supposedly a character designer / level editor for the mod community to play around with.

In my opinion, if you get a cheap dual CPU system just because it has two CPU's, then it's not worth it. Other aspects are far more important than having two CPU's. CPU cache is extremely important with SMP, because cache its used to coordinate operations between the CPUs. That's why cheap dual-Celeron systems perform so poorly.
SMP with two AthlonMps is prabably the best value system, (at least according to the linked article). The AthlonMP has a lot of cache, and doesn't cost that much. But IMHO a single AthlonXP would probably would be even better, because then you could afford more Mhz and RAM (which is what you want). Most also overclock easily :)

Commercial software packages (3dstudio etc) would not be of much use of a very cheap system because of the harsh requirements. There are lots of excellent free software packages that do the job just as good. Blender and Moonlight3d are free, and they run on Linux! (Blender runs on almost anthing Python runs on).

My experience with running Moonlight 3d in Linux is that there is not much performance difference with SMP. There is simply too much overhead when coordinating two CPUs, so it's a waste of money.

cheap software:

Blender

Rob.

Although they are using Maya character studio on 40-50 linux boxes (by no means the majority of the machines used by the 225 person workforce) thats not what is doing the rendering.

Most likely, the server render farm is running a completely proprietary software that was developed in house. Most graphics houses the size of Weta have their own proprietary software. After all, thats how Blender came to be, in house software for a Dutch graphics company that they decided to release to the general public. I know that Rythm and Hues (everything from Tron to you name it) in Los Angeles run SGI boxes with their own proprietary software that seems similar to Maya.

Cryptnotic

Blender is, amongst other, an official PS/PS2 developement tool, is one of the most sophisticated 3D Tools around and a yields serious realtime 'Oomph' - simular to Virtools NeMo (Halflife, anyone?), now also known as the o-so-brand-new Macromedia Shockwave3D (which is, in fact, the oldest Web 3D Technology around...so much for the marketing gibberish). Anyway, Blender is faster, easyer to use, is completely written with OpenGL and thus fitts on a floppy, has a Web Plugin, exports (amongst other) to Renderman / BMRT (for your cutscenes), uses Python as the internal realtime/rendercontrol programming language, runs on every OS apart from Mac (OS X Version coming this fall)... (*draw breath*) and it's freeware (as in beer).
A slight drawback could be the steeper learning curve for anybody who isn't used to OOP - but that shouldn't be a problem for a /.ter, and the not yet available set of ready-to-release players/projectors for interactive Blender. There's are player for various plattforms (*nix, Windoze, MacOSX, PS2, etc.) coming up this year, so porting should be somewhat easyer than with other 3D IDEs. I'd definitly take a closer look at it - I consider it the best 3D package available. And that's not just because Maya costs 20.000$.

Blender has a game engine, is free, and supposedly has a PS2 port or NaN, people who make Blender, have a PS2 toolkit. Try them. Also Blender has ports to just about every platform there is. Linux, BeOS, Windows, etc. That would at least give you a toolkit to start with and there is a huge Blender community.

Blender has a game engine, is free, and supposedly has a PS2 port or NaN, people who make Blender, have a PS2 toolkit. Try them. Also Blender has ports to just about every platform there is. Linux, BeOS, Windows, etc. That would at least give you a toolkit to start with and there is a huge Blender community.

Sounds like you need the (superior IMO) Blender Web Plugin. So far a beta is available for Linux and Windows, with SGI and MacOSX support on its way.

Not to mention the Blender creator software being available for Windows, Sun, Linux Alpha, Linux x86, PPC Linux, BSD x86, SGI and MacOSX soon to come. Oh and it's absolutely free.

Which shell do you use ? bash (both on Unix and Windows) is pretty decent.

Shells make you guess if you have enough characters for the completion, and force you to hit the tab key to trigger it.

Remember that 10-15 keystrokes are worth a click. I often double-tab right at the beginning to see the list of files. I hate clicking to select, especially since I run usually in maximal resolution (1600x1200) and mouse control is harder.

Browsers bring up a most likely choice (which could be based on a variety of factors - alphabetic order, frequency of use, explicit preference, etc. as you like)

You need to separate file display and file selection. First issue a ls command: "ls -lS" sorted by decreasing size, "ls -ltr" sorted by inverse time, "find . -cmin -10", ...

A bash expert can do "Ctrl-r" in bash allow to search a string in a previous command in the history, then cut with "Ctrl-k", then "Esc->" and paste with "Ctrl-y" at the end of the line, all this with an amazing speed.

BTW, it is almost unthinkable to use bash without using the Ctrl-r feature, which is a search in your previous history.

Also a classic is to use "find . -cmin -10", for finding the files that were changed less than 10 minutes ago ; handy when you extracted an archive in the wrong directory, and everything is messed: "find . -cmin -10 | xargs rm -rf".

The filters such as "*.c", "*.h" are useful, also.

In some rare cases, I need to select manually many files, in a non-obvious way: then it's easy: "ls > /tmp/s && emacs /tmp/s", and the right amount of "Ctrl-k" does the job, faster than clicks. Then I can directly do a "tar czvpf //mybackupmachine/backup/another.tar.gz $(cat /tmp/s)", instead of clicking a billion of aggravating times on menus, buttons, confirmations, etc...

The key of shells is first that you can combine commands, second that you have full history (with the mandatory Ctrl-r) that you can cut and paste in your new commands.

No one is perfect; no one remembers everything; and many people who might love to use CLI features are put off by this moronic insistance that they spend time learning how to use them down to their depths before they can do thing one

I think that's not the point. Maybe 99% of the users will never have the (costly) time to learn CLI ; the same way I don't have the time to learn properly MS Word, and use it in a crappy way. But saying that, even for the remaining 1%, CLI are inefficient is plain wrong.

As for the comment below re: keyboard shortcuts, testing reveals that they are for the most part slower than using the mouse. People don't consciously realize it, but unless the command is incredibly common and ingrained as only a few are, they pause and try to remember it.

When keyboard shortcuts are a matter of life or death, not only you learn them, but you learn to learn them so that to remember them efficiently. A example of GUI with many shortcuts (it was 100% keyboard shortcuts before newer version) is Blender. I spent a few hours learning the modeler and the keys, and never used it after, but I'm amazed when I come back to it, 2 years later, that I still remember most the keys. Of course, for a big system like Emacs, it's harder, that's why there is Meta-x with long names, apropos with "Ctrl-h a", and a 4+ page dense "reference card", all with the keyshort cuts, not to mention search in the index of the big emacs help ("Ctrl-h i", "Ctrl-s emacs:", "enter", "i", )

define good tools. You mean 3d modellers?

Try Blender

Radiance comes immediately to mind for open source. Not-so-open source programs like Blender and BMRT are also good.

There's probably other modelers and user interfaces from BMRT and POVRay. They may not be what George Lucas uses but they aren't shabby. I've seen some amazing stuff done in Blender and it is FREE.

Well, I doubt you'll see much from Alias/Wavefront as open source anytime soon :-)
Still, it'll be nice to see some good modelling packages (other than Blender) on Linux.
But we might see some of the other software, developed by the studios/FX shops, used for modelling and rendering, released as open source.
That would be nice.

Take a look at Blender.

It should most certainly be noted that on the website (www.blender.nl) some excellent tuturial material can be found. With these a new user should be able to master the basics of Blender (which is quite an ellaborate program) in a couple of weeks. Trying to learn the program by trying random key/mouse combination is a pain (believe me, I've tried it, there wasn't much documentation available a couple of years ago).

About the question if there has been done any professional work with Blender: yes there has been, and there will be. Not only used by NaN but also used as teaching material for future generations of 3D artists, this tool could quite well set a new standard to 3D modelling and game creation.

After having used the program for around 3 years and heard many many user feedback, I'm quite certain of the following points:

- User interface is quite hard to learn, but pays back once you're common with it.
- *Very* quick modelling posibilities
- multiplatform
- free
- fast
- nice modular setup of UI
- bit edgy on some things, used to have some bugs which caused the program to crash. Many of them are removed right now.
- fully OpenGL (including the GUI)

I think if you're only faintly interested in 3D modelling, you should give it a try, it's worth the effort.

The book seems to be good material, although I have not bought it yet (I've seen it though). Excellent fullcolor images, clear layout, good texts. It also supports NaN ofcourse, which is generally a good thing :]

In fact, see the post from Ton Roosendaal, Creative and Technical Director: Here

Calli's book is great, but it's already outdated. It doesn't describe any of Blender 2.x advanced features (like the game engine) and IMHO you should consider buying the Blender manual instead (which is much more beautiful and there's also a lot of Calli's work in it - he works for NaN now).
the manual

--

Lot's of people recommend building a solid demo. I would too. Not because I know the industry, but because there's a very good, fast and easy FREEWARE tool for 3D-games out there.
It's from the dutch company NaN and called Blender. The second most popular professional 3D App that runs on Linux. (Maya's the first) Features a fully grown game engine with python script support (you can use c if you feel better with that, though).
The only competitor to that I know is NeMo - the devtool that was used for Halflife/CounterStrike. And that costs LOTS of money.
Coming to that... you should make your entire game in blender. The independant player should be finished within the next 5 months. Then you can go ahead and publish it already. Or just use it as a playtesting previewer (playtesting is 90% of the good games (as seen with StarCraft)). After you've done some realization you still can switch to the unreal engine or whatever you fancy.

The bottom line is, that sophisticated 3D gameproduction will more and more become a task of the good old garage group of the eighties again. Alas.
Good Luck and Happy Blending.

Just so that everyone knows:

The multi platform 3D modeling program
blender (full featured and fits on a floppy!) has had this for a few years now. It's really pretty easy to get used to.

Congrats to KDE

-pos

The truth is more important than the facts.

Let's face it: at the present time there's nothing under Linux that works as well as Microsoft Office. Period.

You're right that this is the most important statement. You're wrong in alot of the other things you say. You point out that in order for an environment to survive, it has to run MS Office. This begs the question, why?? Two very simple reasons: 1. The file formats. This is the most important, because if you can read and write office files, you're almost there. 2. The learning curve. Almost all the time, if you try to show someone a great program (like blender) they get interested but don't have the time to learn it. My point:

Applixware Office Lets get one fscking thing straight, Applixware is NOT AbiWord. Repeat that. Applixware is commercial software for linux. Its very fast, very easy, complete, cheap, available now, etc.. It works and feels just like MS Office, and it reads and writes Office files better then any other native Linux alternative. My girlfriend switched over to Linux after Windows gave up the ghost for the last time. She runs Debian. She loves it. She is your typical windows user. She uses both Gnome and KDE (with kdm as her display manager, which allows her to easily select either gnome or KDE).

Everyone who is claiming linux is dead on the desktop needs to look around. Plenty of us make it work just fine. And by the way, I don't think the developers of these wonderful desktop tools give two shits what this ass at LinuxPlanet has to say.
--------

Some people are doing very interesting things with Blender, which is, ostensibly, a game development modeller and renderer.

::Kinda of off topic:: I, myself, have been a user and teacher of Alias|Wavefront's 3D applications for a few years now, and really like their user interfaces. Particulary their interface for Maya. It has a slightly larger learning curve than a web browser, and once you got it you can fly through the application (after eight hours though, I start looking for the spacebar/right-click context sensitive menus in other applications > especially netscape and photoshop). Seeing as how I'm an animator, I'm always looking at what other packages offer. I remember playing with Blender (free 3D app for Linux, BeOS, or Windows) for a while. It had gestures, and that was years ago. I think I remember the gestures being fairly useful, but I don't remember much more. Someone should comment on how wonderful or horrible they are. -Me

Yes, the average game cost millions to produce. Think of this, though: The average MOVIE costs $50M to produce, yet Robert Rodreguez produced "El Marachi" for $7000 and made millions off of it.


And do I even need to mention "The Blair Witch Project"? Movie production: $4000. Advertising through sneaky web-hoaxes: $0. Making millions upon millions of dollars with your micro-budget indie flick: priceless.


Spare time programming is difficult and slow, but it's free. Artists WILL donate graphics and sound for your project, if it's cool enough (and especially if they're still in college).


When I found out it was now possible to program your own games on a Dreamcast, I bought two. This, combined with free 3D raytracers like blender and povray save approx. $45000 off the cost of a traditional development system.


The video game industry is bloated. Billions of dollars are wasted on copycat titles. We are long overdue for some guys in a garage to blow the big boys away with a game that embodies what the industry SHOULD be all about... creativity.

It works better with a direct pointing device like a pen, less well with an indirect pointing device like a mouse, and badly with a velocity pointing device, like a joystick or force-sensing button. Basically, if you can't handwrite with the input device, gestural input will be a pain.

If you want to show them some cross-platform multimedia... Blender is the way to go. There are tons of web sites with Blender galleries and tutorials; one of the best is Blendermania.

There's even a nice tutorial (textbook) on Blender called 'The Blender Book' by Carsten Wartmann.

Blender is primarily intended for 3D graphics and movie rendering. I think that it would also be suitable for a highschool course on CAD.

I've used Catia and Unigraphics for years in the auto industry (designing air intake systems), so I can speak from experience and say that: The 3-Dimensional thought process is more valuable to teach students than it is to learn/use a precise '2-D drawing program' that many of the lower-end CAD packages are. Here's why:
1. All advanced solids modeling packages support schematic drawings, so students will still learn about Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing issues. (Actually, Blender doesn't do this, but the rest of the benefits are more important.)
2. 3-D thinking is like a language/art, children need to get an early start. How do you build a complicated 3-D shape out of simple spheres/cubes/prisms? This is a very important issue and it seperates a good designer from a bad designer. Looking at 2 different complicated 3-D CAD models that both have the same shape, one might rotate/scale/refresh on the screen as smoothly as a Quake 1 on a 1 GHz Athalon, and the other might take 1/2 hour to rebuild/refresh and rotate like Quake 3 on a Pentium 90. My job when I started was to take other companies' CAD models and rebuild them the right way.

3. Finally, Blender opens up possibilities in the graphic design market. The advanced lighting, surfacing, and reflection techniques present in Blender are not available in even the best 4 CAD packages (Catia, Unigraphics, Ideas, ProEngineer). You don't have to teach this in a class where CAD is the focus, but the motivated students will have the option to learn these.

that's why people think Windows is so great, they don't know how good it is be to be free. I am Empowered by my Linux system far more so that I could ever expect to be using any MS WIndows products.
I try to explain this to people all the time, that, Although you pay lots for your computer, MS OWNS YOU, if you're runnig windows.
Perhaps they (the normals) are best influenced by just plain calling Microsoft EVIL in a televised interview. EVIL is a nice term to cover MS without going into NDA pressures, software development, and the open free flow of information.
Linux is the start of a Utopian world. As we all pool our resources together, instead of looking to "protect" innovation under the guise of "intellectual property", soon the world will be fully automated, and we can all sit around and Doodle with great open source software like Gimp and Blender .
I hope the world can see MS as it really is, a company trying to pull wool over their eyes with outright lies and deception. I hope the guy at MS who said all this stuff gets some help, his view of the world is either seriously warped, or he has a serious lack of personal integrity lying to the world like he did.
I fear that many people will discount what the Redhat guy was saying because he was wearing a silly read hat on his head in the interview. they'll think to themselves "what's windows? that reminds me, I need to call my ISP to ask what kind of illegal operation is going on there!"

If you're interested in some other 3D software for Linux (some GPL, some not), there's 3dom, 3dpm, Behemot, G3D, Giram, 3delight, AC3D, and of course Blender as mentioned above.

Come on Karma, don't fail me now! The Linux Pimp

Some people have rotoscoped light sabers in Blender as well. Once the initial setup is done, it's probably easier than the Photoshop method. I can't find the first link that I'd seen it on, but here is another.

Peck of Penguin Picasso's The Linux Pimp

Peck of Penguin Picasso's The Linux Pimp

Does anyone have recommendations for 3D modeling/rendering programs that will produce images of a quality that's at least as good as Moonlight 3D?

Yes!

Try Blender. While it's technically not a raytracer, it's rendering engine is still very capable. Look at the gallery on their site and be amazed. :)

The learning curve is high, but if you're at all interested in this art form, try Blender! You can use it for animations and game development as well. And only 1.5M!


_______________
you may quote me

You won't find that at NaN yet. Blender comes binary only, with a copyright that you can only see once you have downloaded their package. See blender's beginner page to confirm for yourself.

It's nice that it's no cost, but it's not free! People who know where the free software foundation page is (www.fsf.org) will know what free implies and be missled by rash's orignial post. Those who don't know what free software is, and I imagine a general interest article about Quake and graphics will attract many of you, should visit the page cited.

While Blender looks like a fine product and is provided at no cost , it is not a source code distribution and is not free . Thank you for pointing to Blender, I may download it one day.

Hmm. I too thought that all of blender was open source for version 2.x, but in fact only some parts of it are. Damn. Have a look at the open source section at blender's website.

It depends. If you want to program still and animated 3D graphics, then you have quite a few choices. Here are a (tiny) subset of the ones I know:

• Here is a series of accessible tutorials on the mathematics and implementation of 3d graphics
• OpenGL is the API of choice for most platforms. Simple, clear and easy to understand. It does assume that you know what the basics are though.
• Mesa is a free workalike implementation of OpenGL for most platforms. Reading the source to the included demos is a good way to start learning.
• Python is a very good language with OpenGL bindings with which to start messing around. If C and C++ seem too tedious just for experimenting then try PyOpenGL. Python itself can be learned in a weekend after which the GL module is there to play around with.

If you're not interested in programming - just modelling and creating then check out:

• Povray - a flexible raytracer
• Blender - a modelling, animation and sequence editing suite
• Some examples of what is possible

All of these tools and references are free and work on Windows and Linux alike.

Also, how prohibitive is the hardware for this kind of thing?

All you need is a resonable midrange PC and a decent accelerator. A hardware-accelerated graphics card on your platform is a must to view complex 3D graphics at any kind of framerate. Vendors with good Linux support include include Ati, nVidia, Matrox and 3Dfx.

this is going to bring a LOT of people over to linux.

case in point: i've got a friend doing some high level 3d modeling using apps like Maya and SoftImage on his SGI Indigo2. I asked him (faceciously) why he didn't blow away IRIX on that box and go with linux, which is, IMNSHO a signifigantly better OS than IRIX. He told me it was basically because ther was almost a non-existant amount of graphics support for linux.

Up till now i would have agreed with him. But with the recent ports of toonz, maya, and now 3DSM, that's all changing. There are a ton of people out there who no longer have any excuse to stick with windows (Irix yes, windows no). While 3d in linux does have a little ways to go...this is a gigantic step in the right direction.

Now it's time to sit back and watch how this affects NAN.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

I want to play this kind of game. I would $PAY$ to play this kind of game.

You said you would pay to play this kind of game. Are you prepared to work to make this kind of game a reality? If so read the post by Bryce a short distance up about WorldForge.

Don't worry if you are not a programmer, or you think you would have difficulty finding some area to help. We need people of all walks of life to build the ultimate massively multiplayer online gaming engine. One of the areas we are currently desparate for help in is creating animations of characters. The recent release of blender at no cost makes this in ideal opportunity for any of you with a bit of an artistic flair to make a really useful contribution to the game. Anyone who has experience of creating models or skins for Quake should excel in this area.

Keep an eye out over the next few days for the announcement of our first ALPHA release of our next demo game. This is the game we demoed at LinuxTag recently, and is already almost playable.

The MPEG is available at the FreeBSD blender mirror site, or if not you can find it at ftp.blender.nl, but please, be nice, because I don't think they want their little IAE connection to be slashdotted by people d/ling 36Mb files!!