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Software for the Realtime 3D Modeler?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I've been involved in doing a number of games and other realtime 3d apps and I always run into the same problem: the 3d modelers that most artists use (MAX, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave...etc) are all heavily biased towards doing non-realtime rendering using raytracing or some other technique. While they can be used to make models for realtime 3D hardware, a very large number of their features don't map well onto realtime 3D hardware. For example many of the procedural shaders used by these packages map very poorly to a hardware shader's abilities, and similarly, if you want to use a hardware shader on some polygons, most modelers give you no way to see the effect while modeling."
"There are other problems too: modelers that have no concept of polygon strips/fans or that make it very hard to avoid generating polygons that will never be seen (the inside surface of a pipe for example). Even if you have the target 3D hardware on the modeling machine, it's rare to have the modeling windows look anything like the finished product. I'm wondering if anyone has run across a good solution to this. Possiblly a modeling package more geared to hardware capabilities, or some way of adapting an existing modeler to make it more hardware friendly by blocking or modifying features that 3d hardware can't handle. It would seem such a package could be cheaper too, since it wouldn't have to support as many fancy features."
Take a look at MultiGen & SGI's Performer
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For great justice!
The new version (6) of Caligari's trueSpace has "texture baking". It can translate procedural textures into mapped UV surfaces. Pretty nifty set of tools too. Windows only.
if youre looking for a cheap solution, try mosh http://www.jimbomania.com/mosh.html it uses blocky opengl primitives (glutSolidCube() & Tetrahedron & Sphere() ) in pseudo-opengl code, saved as text. you will have the disadvantage of using an unfinished piece of software, but the advantage of heavy influence ofver the future design of the code/interface.
Blender is in the process of becoming open source, and would make an awesome tool for game modeling. Blender had a built in game engine and modeling tools.
Visit Blender3d or elYsiun and help open the source on this program. It could become THE gaming modeller for Linux.
*If* you are just talking about modeling, then there are some possibilities. www.wings3d.com is a free version of Nendo and I *think* it's open source. It is written in ERLANG, however. If you are talking about the full range of 3D asset generation (models, textures, animation, etc) then there isn't much you can do. As for Max, Lightwave (and all the others) becoming more game friendly... Doubt it. Those companies are all trying to make their 3D app "all things to all people". That was lies madness.
3DFilm does realtime modeling AND video compositing. I use it a ton....
They might be going Open Source, but they have made some demands like they need to get $100k (Euro, ~95k US) in user donations before they open up the source code...So its not a sure thing.
I work mainly in film and commercials, but I do work on a few games per year (modeling/texturing/animating characters). I don't see whats worng with the current tools. 3dsmax supports both OpenGL and D3D in the viewports. :)
As for your problem with procedurals... Well, procedural textures are, for the most part, 3D textures. Which means you do not need UV coordinates to map an object with a procedural. You can, either by script or plugin, "bake" the procedural into a bitmap and use that.
You also have options to send data in any format you choose to another viewer. There are tons of options available. I dont see why choosing a more limiting system would make life easier. As porjects change, you may very well like the versatility your "fancy" application affords you.
Didn't Max4 add the ablity to execute DirectX 8.1 shaders for its real time rendering so artists could preview exactly what they were getting?
Information on Blender's current situation can be found at the blender3d website, or at elysiun. As for the money needed to free the sources, this dosn't have to come solely from user donations. Ton has quite a few ideas in mind, and Siggraph is coming up here soon. As for it's realtime and gaming capabilities, they are extremely promising. What will be interesting though, is to see how the developement of the gaming engine is handled upon open sourcing. There seems to be a definite split between those who are into gaming, and those of just modeling/animation. Also, another interesting point is, they had blender running on an iPaq before NaN went under. This opens up the future for blender and mobile type applications.
As a proud registered user of milkshape I'm very happy with it, it can even export models in ASCII format for very simple loading into homebrew apps, the ms3d model format also saves surface specularity, ambient color, diffuse color, etc. And has smoothing groups..
Klowner
Doesn't nvidia's CG fix most of your problems? They (nvidia) are creating plugind for maya and 3dsmax so that one can see the final product in the viewport. If you dont want to wait for Nvidia, try out Softimage|XSI as it comes with some very robust tools for creating shaders for use in video games (yes it really looks like it would in your game). Check this out for more info: http://www.softimage.com/Products/Xsi/v2/features. htm#rts
3ds max r4 has plugins available that allow you to create d3d8 pixel shaders on materials and view them in viewports. i presume that's what you're after?
really though, i think your question is silly because you want a procedural modeller, not a polygon based one like versions of 3ds prior to it becoming 3ds max. procedural modellers allow you to go back through the stack and modify parameters, rather than deleting and recreating to change something.
because of the procedural nature of modellers, the polygon geometry that the renderer uses has to be regenerated everytime you make a change, which is slower than manipulating polygons directly.
other modellers probably have the same shader previewing functionality now, or the ability to create plugins to allow them to. i can't speak for them though because i'm only familiar with 3ds max.
The last time I looked quake was using binary space partitions, portals etc... in the rendering process.
These are very quick for real time play, because world is broken up into subspaces and placed in a binary tree when the wold is pre-render compiled for the game.
all of this breaking up takes a hell of a long time, it's also a slow process to merge the subspace trees whenever a space changes, this is why it's all pre-rendered and shiped with the game.
So the quake engine isn't good for dynamic real-time modelling, but it is good for realtime play with a fairly static world.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.