3D Rendering of Gaming Graphics

Raph Koster's ever-entertaining blog had a post yesterday about using OGLE to print 3D graphics, and other entertaining but questionable uses of technology. From the post: "OGLE: The OpenGLExtractor is a tool that lets you grab 3d data out of an OpenGL application and output it as models again. What does that mean? It means that someone with a 3d printer can get 3d statuettes of their Second Life character. They can send it off to be manufactured, if they like. It means that you can snag any 3d model you like out of someone else's game data, and insert it into your own 3d scene. So much for stealing textures... ;)"

Comments

Welcome to the world of FOSS

[caffeination]

For those of you who aren't "into" FOSS culture and all that, all us Linux users already know ogle as The first opensource DVD player to support DVD menus!. Another example of a developer not thinking twice about the basic tenets of picking a name for your software, including:

• Is it shit?
• Is it already in use?
• Is it also a word with negative connotations?
• Will it get me shut down by the trademark police?

There are many examples of FOSS software breaking these rule. I don't care enough about this incredibly niche piece of software to check if it's Free though (it's a fairly irrelevant detail anyway).

Seems like a nice tool

[88NoSoup4U88]

I did not know 3D printers were around yet on consumer level: I really like the idea of some MMORPG-er being able to print his/her favorite char.

People will use this to learn from the models they output, but it also makes stealing/copying of objects/characters much easier.

Re:Seems like a nice tool

[88NoSoup4U88]

In reply to my own "I did not know 3D printers were around yet on consumer level" :

Judging from this site, they apparently aren't yet... at $18.900 :)

Re:Seems like a nice tool

[Tlosk]

Depends I suppose on your precise defintion. Up until about 10 years ago or so would you consider photo development equipment to be consumer level? More expensive than most people would pay to buy one themselves, but almost everyone had no problem dropping their film off at a developers and paying a few bucks for the "use" of the equipment.

Same here, lots of fabrication shops out there that you can send your data and they send you the object (most are not exclusive to this, just one of their many tools).

And 10-15 years from now it wouldn't surprise me to be able to pick one of these up for a hundred bucks, just as you can now with digital photography and photo printers.

Be boon for first person shooter...

[__aaclcg7560]

After my opponent splatters my guts in a first person shooter, he can pull out my splattered remains to create a 3D trophy. Actually, that might be cool. I can now have a trophy of my boss after I killed him three consecutive times in Counter-Strike. That's better than a screenshot.

So...

[argStyopa]

Who's going to start doing this for money?

Looking at the sample shots of the WoW character, it's apparent that some of the gear is not translated? I wonder why? Also, I wonder how well it would translate non smooth-skinned characters (=Taurens).

Recording games with this?

[Max Threshold]

How much does hooking these OpenGL calls cost in terms of game performance, and how big is the resulting data? If this could capture textures (which it currently can't), it seems like it would be a much better way to record video from games than the ubiquitous FRAPS, which eats up about 1GB per minute with its fast but inefficient codec.

If you wanted to get really fancy, you could even run your capture through a raytracer or something that would render it in much greater detail than your machine is capable of in real time.