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GPL'ed 3D Modeler And Renderer
hardgeus writes: "A lot of people (including me) have said that what the Open Source world needs is a 3D counterpart to GIMP. Well, it looks like it's finally here: The OpenFX Open-Source 3D modeling, animation and rendering suite . It has a renderer and raytrace engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, a plugin API - and it's under the GPL. Currently only for Windows, but they're working on a Linux and FreeBSD port." There's this and Blender - what other options are there?
http://bicekru.eurobits.nu/~myspys/openfx-1.0.zip
Realsoft3D is a newly released, truly professional quality 3D application. I have the Windows version and it is fantastic. The Linux version is being finalized now, and will be released when beta testing is complete. Free download of the Windows demo at their site, btw.
There's Renderman Interface Bytestream. RIB is not like SVG, however. It's more like PostScript, in that it's intended to be an interchange format between modellers and renderers, rather than between modellers and other modellers.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Is publishing software. If you use DTP, you can't use Linux.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Well, I'd have to admit Softimage is a very close second. And every program has its own strengths and weaknesses that would make them well suited for certain projects.
Anyway, I think I missed the point of the article, which was a GPL'ed modeler and renderer. And while Softimage and Maya are soon to find a home in the Linux world, I can't imagine them ever being open source.
A good GPL'd geometric kernel with support for offsetting, rendering and a bunch of other gooodies. It's supported on Linux, Windows NT, SGI Irix, IBM AIX, and Sun Solaris. Check it out at: <A=href http://www.opencascade.org/>Open Cascade</A>
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
I actually don't know if they intend to release an opensourced version of the modeller, but since the render engine was developed by Mental Images and not by them they won't be allowed to release the code.
This is also the same render engine the Softimage|XSI uses, tho in a more powerful version.
http://www.heroinewarrior.com/bcast2000.php3
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Linux 3D Graphics Programming has some links to other Linux 3D modelers. Invention 3D comes to mind as a promising modeler.
Maya!
Of cource. I doubt any of it would be open source, or even free. But thats a differnt story.
What's more, those features are probably going to be things that the average person would never suspect. Like "the renderer must be able to handle more geometry than you have RAM for without thrashing", or "you must be able to specify the coordinate system that shading happens in separately from the coordinate system of the geometry", or even "you must be able to tune the shading sampling rate separately from the image sampling rate".
I might add that all of the above companies (ILM is an exception with respect to renderers because Pixar used to be part of Lucasfilm, so they have good licensing terms for Pixar's renderer) have written their own animation systems and renderers precisely because nothing on the marked did what they wanted.
That's true, but the cost of hardware and software is (generally) not as important as the cost of people. Look at Pixar's render farm, for example. It would have been cheaper to buy PCs and slap a free Unix on them all than buy the farm of 100 Sun E450s that they have. However, Sun E450s can fit 14 CPUs in each box. That's 1400 CPUs in 100 physical machines. Compare to number of physical machines you'd need if you bought PCs instead. Fewer machines require fewer sysadmins. And since sysadmins are more expensive than machines in the long run, it turns out cheaper. Similarly, the cost of a Maya licence is not nearly as much as the cost of a talented modeller or animator to use it.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Looked at the website, and it is apparently an application called SoftFX, which has been on the market for years. It was never much of a commercial success. I looked at it a few times over the years and it's OK, but pales in comparison to apps like Maya, Soft, Max, etc... Seems like the author's given up on selling the thing and has decided to give it away. Maybe some clever people can add enough cool features to make it production worthy. Hook it into BMRT for a start. I think this is a great idea. Maybe authors of other failed commercial ventures can do the same thing - give away the code via GPL. Some of it might find life elsewhere.
I work for a college that is running Maya and there is a massive cost to running this on some 35+ systems. I like the fact that this software is coming out, but I don't know if I could just walk in there and pull Maya and put this on ;-) One of the important things is what is being used in the industry. If that's Maya, then that's typically what we would run. However, I do not see any reason why we couldn't use this software for intro classes and cut down our costs by only running Maya on 1/2 the systems. Basically, I'm just happy to see opions opening up!
If you want attention, start a fight. Scottish proverb.
>However, Sun E450s can fit 14 CPUs in each box.
Correction: If these are indeed E450s then they can only hold 4 CPUs per box. The total would then be 400.
I think you mean E4500s, these can indeed scale to 14.
Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement. --Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
Check out VariCAD. It does solid modeling and can export in lots of formats. I'm assuming the .dxf is revision 12, tho, and this will not generate code to cut your part. Still, it's available.
You are all fartheads.
FINALLY
(Sorry. If you work in 3D it's hard not to twitch uncontrollably when reading that question.)
A.
at last we have a decent 3d modeller.
I know about blender et al but this looks like it will be realy good
It is good to see the snowballing of good quality 3D opensource applications. Helped along by the emergance of fast 3d acceleration (NVIDA 3dfx and ATI) The rendering quality looks good from the screen shots
Good to see that there server has been slashdoted already!
Forget it, it doesn't exist.
3D programs take many different approaches to representing objects and their interactions, from simple polygonal meshes to surfaces defined in terms of spline patches to volumetric representations to parametrically defined solids, to implicit surfaces (Meta-Blobs), with a plethora of texturing, partitioning and animation systems. You'd also have to include any physical and dynamical parameters - weight, mass etc. since this is very important in Engineering/FEA fields
X3D, VRML, DXF, IGES, OBJ, 3DS, OpenNURBs etc. only deal with a certain subset of these representations and you'd have a huge job to come up with a file format that could efficiently represent all of them.
The only way you could really do this would be to define a standard API for access to all this information, and let vendors simply implement the parts that their apps need.. i.e. we don't need a standard 'file format', we need a standard 3D codec system.
Just like any program n Windows can manipulate DivX or MPEG video on Windows without implementing it's own DivX loader/saver, as long as the necessary codec is available.
Still, 3D is changing fast, and the breadth of the field makes creating any kind of 'standard' very difficult.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
If you have to steal something it's obviously not free, besides, that's not what's meant by free. Sometimes Linux-losers write software themself instead of sitting around waiting like the average Windows user... yeah sure, Linux only have half-decent software, what ever... though Linux is lacking in places, I'll admit that much.
well, I feel this is getting off-topic so I'll stop, bye.
This is a bit of a rant, sorry:
I don't see exactly why people keep programming countless raytracing programs. No offense, but there are innumerable programs already out there, many of which are at the very least freeware, and many that are open source. However, people continue to program non-standardized raytracers that have varying levels of functionality. Few of these are specifically designed to fill a nich, either- it would make sense if this were specifically for macintosh, which seems to be getting the short end of the 3D graphics stick.
The second most frustrating thing about the glut of rendering apps is that they're almost all RAYTRACERS. Raytracing is one of the slowest rendering processes(though, faster than reverse raytracing, and some forms of radiosity), and there are numerous other rendering methods that are oodles faster. Please- if you're going to make yet another rendering app, at least make it REYES, or scanline, or some algorithm that will set it apart from the rest of the college programming final project crowd.
Also, if you're going to make a new renderer, make it adheare to some standard- I personally find the Renderman standard(check out http://www.pixar.com) to be very helpful, and to promote the production of fully featured renderers with a standard file format(ie RIB).
Sorry if this seems to be a personal attack- it isn't. Its just that there are millions of renderers out there, and unless you can somehow offer compatability with other, highly popular modelers(BMRT and POV-Ray.), you'll have a hell of a hard time aquiring a large user base.
If you want to truly help the opensource renderer movement, I suggest you cruise over to http://gman-toolkit.sourceforge.net/ and see if they need your expertise.
Again, excuse me for the rant,
Alex Magidow
Don't forget the POVLAB development effort, which is beginning to pick up the pace. POVLAB has been around for years as a modeller for POV-Ray, and is just now being rewritten in C++ and made cross-platform with wxWindows.
See the POVLAB development site for details and to find out if you would like to help.
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
also, having a good 3d card doesnt mean much once you hit the render button on a raytracer... thats why blender renders so fast, cause the 3d card still matters...
doesnt look as good though
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
An open source project where open source operating systems are the second-class citizens.
Traditionally, open source stuff was taken care of on the Unices, especially Linux and BSD, first. Windows was the second-class citizen simply due to it's lack of portability.
As time went, open source software appeared that made software developed under the Unices easy to port to Windows. SDL and GTK for Win32 come immediately to mind. The Gimp doesn't seem to lag very much, and the OS SDL games out there don't seem to lag at all.
Now we have open source developed under Windows that people want under the Unices. I bet that's going to be fun to deal with. That's going to end up having to be completely rewritten under SDL/GTK/Qt or something before being useful.
There are a bunch of people here saying, "Yay, 3d software for Linux."
Not for a while...
Is there a standard out there like SVG(a nice XML based format that I'm counting on getting popular) for 3D models? I'd love to make a bunch of 3D models and such for fun and be able to use it in one edior or the other.
Well, lets face it, blender's a bitch to learn. the UI plain out sucks. The only real decent UI i've seen for a linux modeler/renderer is Moonlight3d, which has all but died (not opensource, but based on opensource code. and there'r sounds of life commin from globfx, rumored to be the creators of moonlight3d)
~~~ They call me Little John, but don't let the name fool you...in real life I'm very big.
anyone got a mirror of this? looks like they've been slashdotted...
~~~ They call me Little John, but don't let the name fool you...in real life I'm very big.
---
uh... the free 3d studio max program, that descreet is releasing isn't free... it will cost the company that wants to use it.. and it will be for winblowz only... as far as i know, this (the featured program of this article) is the first Open Source 3d modelling program ive seen.... Power to the GPL!
-Legion
what other options are there...
for serious 3d?
Maya (when it's released).
Not everything has to be free to be good.
> the UI plain out sucks.
>If you were to actually support this statment, I
>might give it some thought. After getting used
>to the interface of Blender, I've found that
>it's rather usable. Although I haven't used
>other 3D modeling interfaces (and perhaps for
>that reason), I generally don't find myself
>wishing that anything about Blender's interface
>was different. However, if the interface "plain
>out sucks" as you claim, this shouldn't be
>happening, and I should be finding annoyances on
>a regular basis. That's simply not happening.
Personally, I find the whole gesture system for moving, scaling, and rotating objects to be rather annoying, and those three equivalent keyboard shortcuts always escape my memory. Also, I hated the rotating (or spinning, or whatever) buttons, although 2.04 seems to have reworked how they are handled. Finally, I wish for a plainer interface. I've used 3Ds max, Lightwave, and Softimage 3d. Of those three programs, my favorite two are Lightwave and SI, both of which use a rather plane, non-windows like interface. I'm working at designing my own animation package, and the interfaces that I'm drawing on paper tend to look like a cross between Softimage and Inferno (a 2d effects system). Code for this animation system hasn't yet begun, but code for my 2d effects system has. Don't know when I'll have something to show though.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
So it should be available for our goofy OS eventually.
Radiance which is a Radiosity Renderer capable of every bit as much as lightscape (and the new enhancements in lightwave) but is a touch more advanced.. You can check it out here:
http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance
It's got my vote for best free renderer in linux
(And it can be set up to do cluster rendering too)
There's also SART, the renderer I'm working on. Its current focus is rendering, but there'll be a modeller in a, well, not too near future. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on it as much as I'd like.
Current features are full programability (using guile), support for NURBS, blobs, parametric and implicit surfaces, volume rendering (including nonuniform textured volumes), radiosity, postprocessing. Check http://petra.zesoi.fer.hr/~silovic/sart for more info.
Why do all these libre 3D packages try to do everything. If someone would take the time to do a renderer that was as good as BMRT (or better yet, PRMan) as GPL'ed software, I'd be so happy. I do not need another program that is a poor modeler, worse animator, and average renderer. I need a program that accells at one of those areas and can easily work with other programs in the other areas. BMRT is an excelent renderer. It doesn't even try to do animation, but that's OK because I can export animation from Max or Blender to BMRT.
BTW, the key to making a renderer that is better than BMRT is to make it a scanline renderer that looks just as good. That is the approach that PRMan takes.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
if you want something that has a sharp UI and runs on Linux, wait a few months for Maya to come out.
Between hot-boxes and hot keys, the menu is never needed and most commands are a small mouse move away.
Sure it will cost a bundle, but CG is one of the places where quality does not come cheap.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Although I generally agree with you, I have to say that I laughed out loud at 'The programs are utterly immense, yet need an interface free of ad-hoc additions' when talking about Max. That's Max the poly-modeller, Max the broken-bezier-patch-modeller and Max the NURBS modeller.
:-)
:-)
:-)
For the record, I didn't mean to suggest that Max is entirely successful along those lines, allthough I was thinking of Max from a different point of view - 3DS R4 was getting to the point where the only way to introduce the new features made possible by the new technology was going to be seriously ad-hoc. 3DS Max re-did the interface from the ground up to incorporate those things consistantly. Regardless of how successful it was, it was far more successful than trying to patch the features into 3DS R4 would have been. That was years ago, and while I haven't used a recent version of Max, it wouldn't surprise me if 3DS Max is now where 3ds R4 was (ie the interface is starting to break down under the weight of features that could not have been anticipated, and so could greatly benefit from an interface overhaul). I don't know if that's the case or not, but it sounds like at least you would describe it along those lines
I've been out of the high-end 3d loop for a while
For me anyway, this is a pretty big problem - these packages can take years to truly master (partly due to their complexity) so you don't want to throw half of that investment away by throwing out the UI every year, but the UI breaks down pretty quickly due to the speed of innovation, so it's a choice between two evils. If only another way could be found. Direct neural connection or something
Nurbana is a blender look-alike for NURBS surfaces. Its website is up over at http://www.nurbana.cx/. Looks to be a pretty interesting project.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I don't know if they have this or not (I don't use POV-Ray), but along these lines a good idea would be to have a OpenGL engine that could parse POV-Ray files for a quick preview. Although I suppose the modeller would do this for you. Unless of course you're using vi as your modeller, but then you're too hardcore to need previews... =)
lovely posts all around!
guys, u got to identify yourself and tell me which studios u r working for?!
jag
seriosly .. what kinda support does this
have for clusters.. any good 3d renderer
needs to have this.. especially if it's
been developed for linux.. as clusters is
linux's home court..
when the world comes to an end.
What about using winelib? Isn't this exactly what winelib is supposed to help with? Easy porting of code from windows to *nix machines? Especially with open code...
Power to the Free Software folk! Using Winelib I bet they could get a port in a few weeks...
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Maybe for linux, but I like the windows version of POV-Ray. It's nice and easy to type code then render because of the easy to use GUI. It can be a pain sometimes to have to get out of the text editor then type up a line of code to render it.
Sometimes it's just easier to code it up and click a button to render.
----------
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Ok, I admit from the start that it's unfair to compare this to the likes of 3ds (though it's hard for me not too, as I haven't done much work with lower-end stuff), but at first glance, this doesn't look like it will be useful for much for a long time (other than really basic stuff, like simple web animations etc). And I suspect it might even look worse at second glance.
:-) with the expertise to make a non-raytracing renderer that produces raytracer-quality (or better) results at a fraction of the render time.
:-)
Gimp, while not photoshop, is still at a level where it offers a viable alternative (for a fair amount of uses) to one of the leading packages. Even mid-range 3d apps dwarf photoshop in complexity (and usually price), so it's no surprise that this (great) start in that direction has a long way to go, but I don't think this thing can be called the Gimp of 3d - it just doesn't offer a serious alternative, and doesn't look like it will for a very long time (if ever).
But for a very long time now, I've been of the view that open source simply cannot produce a 3ds MAX or SoftImage, or whatever (or at least not with the current methods of production). The programs are utterly immense, yet need an interface free of ad-hoc additions and localised revisions to be a fast production tool, not to mention there being so few people in the world (virtually none
Compounding that is that the 3d apps evolve much faster than the like of photoshop (which already seems to evolve faster than Gimp, (but I haven't compared the latest versions, I might be wrong)), so the successful open-source model of gradual accumulated improvements - great for a word processor - just won't work.
Such a project would have to be so full on that it would have to be full time for a lot of people for a very long time. I can envisage some business models which could allow this, but I'm not going to hold my breath. (Besides, holding no hope can allow for nice surprises
Hmmm. I realise this entire post sounds like a petulant bashing of what is a praiseworthy and excellent piece of work, but I have this sinking feeling that the next thing we know, people will be touting this as almost up there with production-level apps - as viable an alternative as Gimp to photoshop, and I just don't want to see that happen. I can so imagine some rabid zealot defending open-source along these lines and thus teaching people who are unfamiliar with open source that o/source is a "viable alternative" in the same sense that amputation is a viable alternative to antibiotics.
nope, doesn't use OpenGl for rendering
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
This has far more potential than drawing simple 3D pictures on your home PC.
This could realistically be tied into Finite Element Analysis software similar to SDRC's I-DEAS , Pro-Engineer Or even Hyper-Mesh.
Windows has been able to capture a lot of the Mechanical Engineering software market mostly due to the fact that P.C. Hardware has been getting much cheaper while catching up to hardware built by Sun, SGI, HP, and even Cray. This could be a great opportunity for the Linux movement!
I'm not saying this to be funny, but seriously,
Imagine a cluster of these!
Companies like Ford, GM, and Daimler Chrysler literally have thousands of computers sitting idle most of the day. Meanwhile, they also spend Millions of dollars on hardware to run crash test simulations.
Get rid of your secretary's 4 year old PC, buy her a dual Processor Box with 2 gigs of RAM, (she'll be very happy), and then use it for Analysis Jobs when her screen saver kicks on. Two birds with one stone. Do this with even a few hundred secretaries, and you could literally save a company millions of dollars on Hardware.
The license is with the source. They don't mention it on the page. It's GPL'ed.
2 things:
First:
Blender isn't open source.
Second:
The submitter, whose comments are in italics, stated that this is the first open source 3D program that he knows of. Michael (of slashdot who posted the storry) then stated after this "There's this and Blender - what other options are there?"
That's why it was a revelation to the poster. I suggest you work on your reading comprehension before rushing to post.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Anyone can tell me how good this program is? I can't download or even view the site.
Anyway, is there a Bryce like program that is free? Windows, Linux, BSD, I don't care about the OS.
But Bryce is definately the *best* 3D program that I've used.
And it's UI is about as good as it can be.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Innovation 3D. Looks just like 3D Studio MAX, only open sourced and for Linux. Let's hope it will get just as many features and plugins as 3D Studio - if that happens, then this thing is going to rock!
In his defense, while the 3d acceleration may not help the rendering engine, it sure as hell can help out the modeling portion. Nothing sucks worse that turning your model, or pulling a vertex out of place and waiting for the scene to redraw, over and over.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
Exactly - that's why you would use the povray renderer for the final step. Since it's slow, you'd rather have a lower quality but faster renderer while you work on the picture, so you can see how it's going to look before you do the final time consuming rendering.
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
It needs a GPL modeller, and I've put a bit of work into Giram. It's not bad, but it needs more work by better GTK+ programmers than I. Runs on Linux & BSD. Help. Please.
Vik :v)
If you're talking about 3D packages for Linux, then the first on the scene as far as big names goes is Houdini. Never heard of it? Well then I suggest you start doing research, because it's absolutely fantastic for compositing and volumetric effects.
On the other hand, universities won't be paying list price for software of this type. Engineering departments typically get huge discounts for real high-end software, so that they produce graduates who know how to use it, who go onto to work for companies that buy it. Compare the student to professional costs of a package like MATLAB. And universities will get all the support they could want, plus access to the full, very specialized software package which, like another poster said, will contain features that wouldn't even make sense to people outside the niche market. Compare MATLAB to Octave. The core engines might be comparable, but Octave doesn't offer the specialist tools.
Another blessing is that it will force the cost of the professional version of these programs down.
Unlikely, for the reasons above.
. Especially as people start copying the features in the top end programs and add them to the GPL'd stuff.
Again, this doesn't help. Why wait for an imitation when the commercial product will deliver return on investment so quickly? (And on a separate note, why doesn't the Open Source camp innovate?).
PVMPOV has supported parallel rendering of a single frame on a cluster (or a massively parallel supercomputer, or a network of workstations) for years.
If you just want to edit/convert certian game formats it's okie. Even the widgets are GL rendered.
http://gooseegg.sourceforge.net
For a cross-platform, GPL'd multitrack sound editor, check out Audacity:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/audacity/
Alias/Wavefront is releasing Maya for Red Hat Linux sometime very soon. Check out this link And Maya is quite possibly the best 3D program out there, so no complaints here.
PrettyPoly is another option. It's still in alpha though. See prettypoly.sourceforge.net.
The povray renderer is way too slow. How about adding support in povray for openGL? That would make it a lot more useful - just use the povray renderer for the final image.
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
Open Cascade has put out really nice screenshots, but their business model is centered around support. Which is fine by me, but its really a pain to use --its a nuissance! I mean, I think that it still needs a little work on the UI.
povray has a linux version that allows multi-machine rendering...
It's not GPL, but they're thinking about adopting that licence.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm suprised that no one has mentioned K-3d. I haven't tried it myself... But I've always been fond of screen shots and they have some cool ones. Also k3-d is gpl and runs on linux and windows.
BTW their website looks like crap. It used to look good. Brilliant even compared to how it looks now. Perhaps setting a background color would help?
Thanks to the beauty of open source, someone will come along shortly and port it to linux and the Unixes. There is even a mention on their website about a porting effort about to begin.
This is true, particularly if you don't have the manual.
If you were to actually support this statment, I might give it some thought. After getting used to the interface of Blender, I've found that it's rather usable. Although I haven't used other 3D modeling interfaces (and perhaps for that reason), I generally don't find myself wishing that anything about Blender's interface was different. However, if the interface "plain out sucks" as you claim, this shouldn't be happening, and I should be finding annoyances on a regular basis. That's simply not happening.
I had a look at blender recently with the idea of suggesting that some of the artists at work evaluate it.
I didn't get much beyond the broken navigation. The view rotation doesn't keep a sense of what 'up' is -- thus making it virtually useless for modelling anything that is going to exist in an environment where there's gravity.
There's also SART, the renderer I'm working on. Its current focus is rendering, but there'll be a modeller in a, well, not too near future. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on it as much as I'd like.
Current features are full programability (using guile), support for NURBS, blobs, parametric and implicit surfaces, volume rendering (including nonuniform textured volumes), radiosity, postprocessing. Check http://petra.zesoi.fer.hr/~silovic/sart for more info.
---
I refuse to use
Maya isn't Free and is certainly not free. It is not made for the typical linux person. Maya on Linux is for when Maya comes first and Linux is secondary.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
So, if you know about Blender, then you realize that there has been an OpenSource 3D modeling/rendering package available. So why is this new one such a revelation to you?
And you forgot one. Kinetix/Discreet/Autodesk/(whoever they are this week) will be releasing an OpenSource version of the Max modeller. I don't think it will have rendering capabilities, though. They're putting it out there so people can create content for their favorite game mods.
vi is the only modeller that POV needs.
<p>
and POV is the only renderer that true artists need.
If you write an open source program for Windows, it can reach many more people than it can if you write it for Linux, especially if it's desktop software.
It's not that Linux users are second-class citizens - it's just that the authors have decided to write it for the most popular desktop OS, thereby spreading the wealth to the largest number of people.
http://www.quesa.org/
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Bah, forget it. It runs under wine. Corel tried this with Corel Offfice 2000. And when I tried to run it, it gave me wine runtime errors then crashed. Either they port it to linux, or im not running it at all. I don't really want to run a emulation program just to use a renderer. I have wine on here, but its for running stuff like FlashStudio, and stuff that our peabrain friends at macromedia have made. Any of you feel the same way about running programs that should be ported directly instead of using emulation?
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
There's only three features I know of not in GIMP.
1) CMYK color. This is the biggest thing. There is a proprietary plugin that implements this, though
2) Recordable "Actions". This are _much_ simpler than scripts.
3) The Editable Text utility is more advanced
Then, of course, GIMP has a feature that Photoshop doesn't have - scriptability in multiple languages, currently Scheme and Perl. And, it has a batch mode so you can use these to do web-enabled scripts. Check out www.cooltext.com to see this in action.
Also, remember that free software itself is a feature, because you can pay someone to make any sort of modification you need for your purposes.
Engineering and the Ultimate
They took it down temporarily because of traffic...
Does OpenFX have OpenGL or Direct3D support for the viewports? What file formats does it support? Hopefully it has a better ASCII exporter than MAX...
BTW, 3ds gMAX isn't exactly going to be the independent developers' holy grail. There is still going to be license issues and it is decidely NOT 100% open source. Also you'll only be able to use it with 'kits' released by the various game developers that want you to buy their game. At least it'll help mod makers and quake modelers though. Check it out gMax info here.
Funk_dat
FUNK!
Universities will love things like this. There is a need for three dimensional rendering tools in engineering and art classes, and schools do like to trim dollars. These classes often don't require the fancy bells and whistles that are required in the top end rendering programs. Likewise people who don't use these tools profesionally (and have a decent budget) will gravitate to these things.
Another blessing is that it will force the cost of the professional version of these programs down. As I have observed before, the bright side about open source programs is that they raise the bottom line. All of a sudden te functionality of OpenFX becomes the baseline standard and people have to look at the other features and ask themselves if they really need that other stuff. Especially as people start copying the features in the top end programs and add them to the GPL'd stuff.
I don't know how many different OSS 3D renderers there will be after a time. I suspect that there's really only going to be mindshare (given the resources required to create a program like this) in one program. There may be major rearchitectures over time, but I think there will be consolidation on that point between this and any other GPL'd renderers out there.
What will be interesting is any evolution towards cross fertilization with software like Crystal Space, the GPL'd 3D engine. Sooner or later people will think it might not be a bad idea to make sure stuff created in the modeller and renderer works directly well with an engine to use such things in games. Open source makes such things possible.
Slightly off-topic (but not so much). Exists open source clone of Macromedia Director?
Use vim.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
are there any solid modelling CAD programs for linx?
i use a lot of different types of cad programs between work and school, and the only one i have seen that even works on any *nix is Pro/E (irix). it is a very expensive, professional, proprietary, solid-modelling CAD program.
i think that the cad programs are a lot easier to use than typing code and rendering.
in case you're thinking cad - that's for making engineering drawings, not for rendering, here are some examples of renderings i've done with Pro/E.
Engine Parts
Wood Logs
look here
Bryce?
What are the chances that Corel will open up there doors to us?!? Then we could port it to Linux...
Dman7
Blarf.
it seems that moonlight atelier is also fine. the only problem is that i can't find out source code for it :/
i just tested it and it seems really quite stable and powerfull. Render seems a little bit slow.
heh-heh...
...you said windows and opensource...
heh-heh...
Blarf.
Even more strange, when you consider that their web server is apparently Apache running on OpenBSD.
Yet another one to check out: http://www.artofillusion.org. It doesn't have any support for animation yet, but that's coming. And it does include subdivision surfaces, a fast raytracer, and a remarkably powerful system for creating procedural textures.
It's GPL'ed, and written entirely in Java, so it runs on just about any platform out there. And yes - it actually is quite fast.
Why do I see no mention of POV-Ray?
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
While not a 3D modeler, Quesa is a LGPL API that emulates QuickDraw 3d. Quesa runs on classic MacOS, MacOS X, Windows 9.x/NT, Linux, and apparently work on a BeOS implementation is in progress.
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
--It's Pimptastic!--
Who cares if it's for windows only?! What other platform are you going to model in?
Just be happy to see yet another free 3d modeling suite! The biggest problem facing hobby game development has been the insane price of 3d modeling packages, leading to piracy or stiffling creativity. The more options avialable to the hobbyist developer the better. Don't complain because it doesn't work on Mac/BeOS/*nix or whatever goofy OS you were hopping for.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
These guys suddenly disappeared? Google says that the website, www.moonlight3d.org, had a "please come back later" message on it. But now, it appears, the site itself is gone. I remember looking at this package for a while, but suddenly the web site shut down, with some nebulous reason cited. Weird.
I haven't had much luck with the free/open alternatives out there. I used to use Ray Dream on Windows to goof around with 3D, but it had a lot of bugs and many limitations. But still I'm not thrilled about having to shell out $500 or more for an OK package, or several thousand for a professional one.
It seems though, that all the bells and whistles that go into making a professional 3D package like Lightwave would be a daunting task for an open/free project. Probably similar in scope to duplicating PhotoShop. Anyone care to comment on what percentage of PhotoShop functionality that the Gimp has implemented?