Game Programming and Development Tools

New free 3d express modeling tool? – eternallifegames

EternalLifeGames
Member

Posts: 13
From: USA
Registered: 10-11-2006
Everyone,
Just ran across this link. Check it out. Its for a new free express version of their 3d modeling package thats normally huge amounts of money. Looks like its more for design of real objects than gaming but hey *IF* its free and allows ya to model like i *THINK* i am reading the writeup, then have a ball with it.
http://www.alibre.com/products/
ELG
buddboy

Member

Posts: 2220
From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S.
Registered: 10-08-2004
this is one of the best I have heard of it. but yes it is for more realistic objects, a robotics company I plan to work at someday uses it in their mechanical engineering department to make models of their future products. im sure tho that it could be used for gaming.

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that post was really cool ^
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buddboy

Member

Posts: 2220
From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S.
Registered: 10-08-2004
hey hate to repost but this is really awesome.

just did a tutorial. some of the stuff wouldn't work but it's really quick. it takes longer than it would to make a similar model in Wings or something, but it's cool. what I really like is you can 2D sketch a face, then just extrude that face to make a model.

wow one really cool thing is you can publish your model to a PDF. and when it's in a PDF, it not only shows a 2D picture of it, but (I don't know if it requires the software on your PC or not) you can switch to a 3D viewer mode where you can zoom, pan, rotate, and change your background color, the lights, the render mode (solid, bounding box, illustration, all kinds of stuff). only thing is I can't get it to just render so i can't really use it in a game, it's just sort of to play with. which it is fun for.

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that post was really cool ^
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[|=D) <---|| me

EternalLifeGames
Member

Posts: 13
From: USA
Registered: 10-11-2006
quote:
Originally posted by buddboy:
wow one really cool thing is you can publish your model to a PDF. and when it's in a PDF, it not only shows a 2D picture of it, but (I don't know if it requires the software on your PC or not) you can switch to a 3D viewer mode where you can zoom, pan, rotate, and change your background color, the lights, the render mode (solid, bounding box, illustration, all kinds of stuff). only thing is I can't get it to just render so i can't really use it in a game, it's just sort of to play with. which it is fun for.



Buddboy,
Humm, you cannot render the object to a image file format like .png or .jpg? That makes it hard to use for gaming. Sigh. Oh well, at least your having fun with the pdf part. Guess its good for design only. I guess you have to buy the 899.00 version for any rendering? I was gonna download it myself tonight but may refrain for now then.
ELG
Lava
Member

Posts: 1905
From:
Registered: 01-26-2005
Can GIMP export to JPG or PNG? If the modellor can export into BMP (or something like that) and GIMP can export into one of your formats, you could always convert it

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EternalLifeGames
Member

Posts: 13
From: USA
Registered: 10-11-2006
quote:
Originally posted by LAVA:
Can GIMP export to JPG or PNG? If the modellor can export into BMP (or something like that) and GIMP can export into one of your formats, you could always convert it


Lava,
Did some checking on this last night. The express version apparently exports only to .pdf and .stl files. You can find a .stl -> .obj/.lwo/.dxf/etc file converter maybe. I have NOT tried the .stl export feature in the express version yet to see if it works. All i have done is mess with a utility converter. (see below) You could of course get a .pdf to .dxf or .obj converter and try that. I am just guessing. Like i said, i havent made anything in design express and exported in any format to know.

However, I expermented with STL_UTIL (free utility that makes .stl/.dxf/.obj files) and it worked for converting .stl to .obj for me and then I loaded the .obj into lightwave 3d. So it might work with the express .stl files. Not sure. But word of warning, STL_UTIL is a pre-windows xp file utility. It might mess your system up. However, it seems to have worked on my xp pro system ok. I had to unzip it into a folder and then run the setup.

On my windows xp pro system, .stl files are showing up as Certificate Trust List (.STL) files. So until you know what .stl is on your computer, DO NOT permanently associate them with any particular program or your system may not work right. (IT could be that something i have loaded on my system made .stl associate as a certificate trust list file. Not sure. What type of file does your computer show a .stl file is? )

Here is a help for converting files site you might wanna look at:
http://home.austin.rr.com/reubenrachel/reuben/3D/index.html#3dv
Get the STL_UTIL file here: http://www.ptcuser.org/rugs/U52/downloads/index.html (Scroll way down the page to stl_util and download from there!)
ELG

[This message has been edited by eternallifegames (edited December 18, 2006).]

buddboy

Member

Posts: 2220
From: New Albany, Indiana, U.S.
Registered: 10-08-2004
yeah. the only thing it can export to is .pdf and .stl. of course there are ways around that... like he mentioned, converters.

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that post was really cool ^
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[|=D) <---|| me