I want to use Panda3D full-time for my game projects, and the software I use for 3D work (Blender) doesn’t have an export option for .egg exports, which pretty much means I’m screwed in the animations department, right? The only other file format I can think of that retains animation data are .x files, but is that correct? Are there any other formats that support animation data?
I’d like to stick with free software as I don’t have thousands of dollars for Maya, but if you know of software that’s great, easy to use and has many professional features for less than $200 then I might consider buying it in the future.
What do you use for your 3D work with Panda?
EDIT: Upon some Googling I discovered an egg exporter for Blender 2.6, made by someone on this forum! Cool!
I’ve actually been spending the last couple of days using Carrara and I must say it’s quite good for animation! Modeling it leaves a lot to be desired…
Does anyone have any experience with Cinema 4D? I’ve been messing around with the demo for almost an hour and I love the modeling features but can’t quite justify the price of almost $1000 for just the Prime version… I must say that it makes modeling INSANELY easy though!
If you aren’t making a commercial product you can use Softimage Mod Tool which is a free version of Autodesk Softimage. It is an excellent modelling and animation package.
Since many people here are only hobbyists with low budgets or followers of the open source wave, most people here are using Blender. However, the CMU used to work with Maya, IIRC.
You can get 3dsmax for free with a educational license if you are a student or a teacher. But then you can’t use your own models for almost anything.
As far as free/cheap apps …well you can’t beat Blender and its community. Doing some things in Blender can drive you mad, but you can do all the things you will need or want to do.
Huh, my other post never made it through on this thread…
Anyhoo, I’ve been spending the last several days with Blender and I must say it’s a LOT easier than I thought it would be! They’ve done a lot to revamp the interface and it’s made it much easier to use (at least in my opinion; the 2.4 series was quite hard for me to understand). If only I could figure out how to install Yabee it would be more than perfect! In the meantime I can just generate .x files and use x2egg.
I can answer this one - I just did it. It’s not too hard, basically you just need to extract the YABEE archive somewhere, then go into Blender, turn a panel into User Preferences, and hit the “Add-Ons” button at the top. Find “Import-Export” along the left side to filter the extensive list of options a bit, then down at the bottom “Install Addon…” navigate the file browser to wherever you extracted YABEE and accept, then scroll down the list of I/E addons to make sure it gets a check in the box on the right.
dNN
Edit to add: and I now notice the previous post was on the 7th, not the 17th (today) so you’ve probably already figured it out. Oh well, maybe it’ll help someone else?
Illusion Mage is just rebranded Blender. And while technically that is a legal thing to do it is quite scummy. Not only in the lengths it goes to hide the credits or the fact that it is open source, but also the way it is advertised via these fake reviews and testimonials. Oh yeah, and the above user has 1 post on this forum.
No matter which application suite you use… You’re only going to get out of it, what you put into it. I actually went from Maya to Blender because Blender allowed me to work faster.
I don’t have to go through as many menus with Blender as I did with Maya. With Maya, I really had to layout my GUI so I could do my thing. With Blender, I just fire her up and get to it! Very little menu clicking with Blender…love it.
I must say though… If you’re planning on making CGIs for a game, I would go with 3DSmax or Maya over Blender.
I did read an article that stated a newer version of Blender was being made for multi-core machines and this newer version would take full advantage of what modern day Graphic Cards have to offer. That is insanely sweet, because older versions of Blender fake a lot of things when it comes to rendering.
I have used many 3D animation software’s in my time, and did not use panda 3d.
I recommend 3D Studio Max and Maya both are the best animation and modeling software’s.
Wings3d is a very easy to use but powerful modeller program. Then I export in obj format to blender and theno, I use chicken exporter to get model in egg format. Only watch out on blender is to ensure anything is off under object edit or you’ll lose hard lines and definition.
