For the past ten years or more, moddable games have been using file formats from extremely expensive software. I've always wanted to get started with 3d graphics modding for my favorite games, but in the past it has been very difficult to convert from free software like gmax or blender for many games. 3ds max has a 30 day trial and Maya PLE has a protected file format that can't be used for anything else.
I will never in my lifetime be able to justify the expense of 3ds max or maya. It's off the table, period. I'm doing this for fun only.
3d modeling software is always very complicated and takes forever to get to a productive level of competance. There was a time when I had some fluency with gmax, but then as time went on the games I wanted to mod weren't compatible, so I've since freed those braincells for other uses.
I expect that Elemental is going to be one of the best modding platforms we've seen. I'd like to do some graphics modding. Is there a free/low-cost option that I can learn that will integrate with Elemental? I'd like to get some practice in, but if I pick wrong it's all wasted effort.
Truespace3D is now being offered for free and it seems to export to both .3DS (3dsmax) and .x (DirectX).
These two file formats are very common in 3D and it's possible that Elemental may support them. If so Truespace3D may be your answer, it's amazing it's offered for free even though development on it has now stopped.
I'm a 3dsmax guy but I remember playing with Truespace3D years ago and was impressed! Good luck and have fun!!!
There is a .3ds and Direct X import and export in blender. I am sure that with a little community spit and polish it wouldn't be too hard to put together a clean tool chain that imports the skeletons from Element's library and exports a rigged model.
I've noticed that in Civ4 modding, it's actually very rare to find custom animations. Is that because you need max to do that?
In a few situations, I have been able to get away with using ".obj" files. These seem to be handled by a number of game engines, and are fairly easy to export from less than super expensive software.
I've seen people follow some funny export chains to get from one file format to another (such as creating the model in a program, importing to Unreal editor, then exporting to their desired format.
So if I'm following this rightly, it sounds like the community here should be able to provide a 'format migration' service that would help get things like kyogre12's Barad-Dur into an importable form? (Given, of course, a sufficiency of volunteer time on the part of folks who own the different apps on the migration path.)
I would imagine that once the mod tools enter beta it shouldn't be long before somebody writes a how-to, especially among the hardcore LOTR and MOM fans. I know that I was certainly planning on taking a hack at messing with the python scripting and importing models. I was more interested in adapting the Rice Boy universe (http://www.rice-boy.com/), the Sword of Truth Universe (Terry Goodkind), or Warmachine Universe (http://privateerpress.com/). Though in general it might be more rewarding to try and add modules which would later becom canon, which would preclude adapting other IP. I know I have a desire to see an ursine faction and the ability to utilize the dead as a resource (BoogieBac mentioned bone pits, which made me think of skeletal pikeman, skeletal mounts, and enchanted bone armor).
ed: fixed random inappropriate links
We used to have this problem with compilers too. Thankfully, we have access to the best these days, free for non-commercial use.
I haven't looked at Blender in a long time, but it's looking better than ever. I hope we don't have to jump through too many hoops to make models and animations with Blender. Blender support in games has been pretty spotty as far as I can tell.
The best solution here would really be to support a good open interchange format like Collada for modding.
Blender's Collada support has been spotty in the past(it was just a random script), but I think that I heard that it's going to be officially supported soon.At the very least, it would be great if Stardock would publish the specifications of whatever file format they do use (which may well be an internal binary format), and enable us to write our own conversion tools. I have a Collada loading framework mostly written for one of my own projects that I could probably repurpose relatively quickly to export to a binary format and provide a file format converter for Collada. Having such documentation would allow the community to make a much wider selection of tools viable for content creation (although, admittedly the reason they wouldn't do it would be because it would also make it much easier for us to access the game's existing assets, which may or may not be something Stardock is particularly worried about).
Going to have to look into this Truespace thingy once my main computer is back online..... great find, Psy!
And what is wrong with Softimage Mod Tools now owned by Autodesk? They have had a FREE mod builder out for many years.
Hey, thanks for pointing this one out. Does anyone have any reason why this won't work for us?
"Now owned by Autodesk" is, I believe, the biggest argument against it. From everything I've heard though, XSI was a great program (and they used to actually have an affordable* version of it!)... Whether it will remain so under Autodesk's reign is yet to be determined.
*(Around $600. Affordable by the standards of such programs, at any rate. Mysteriously, now that Autodesk owns them, the cheapest commercial version is several thousand dollars)
The XSI Mod Tool that henrydryovage mentioned is a free version of XSI. I use it, and it works rather well. The one problem with it, though, is that in the newest version of it they removed support for the .obj file type, something to do with lisencing issues or something.
I know the modtool is free. I don't have anything against XSI or the modtool - although I would prefer that an open format be used for modding assets.
I was talking about the pricing as a comment on Autodesk - about how XSI used to have commercial versions (XSI Foundation) with decently affordable price tags for that kind of software - and then coincidentally when they're acquired by Autodesk the cost of entry for a tool with which you can produce commercial content (say, meshes and animations for an indy game - a type project that could definitely benefit from good tools, but which probably can't afford 3ds Max for example) shot up to several grand.
I'd prefer that content formats be ones that don't lock us in to any particular piece of 3d party software - even if that software is free. As I mentioned, my preference would be Collada, or even just a documented internal format for Elemental so we can write custom converters.
Thank you very much Psiborg on the heads up for trueSpace. Also a big thank you to landisauras for the links to gimp, blendor and python. It would be nice if there could be a comprehensive list of mod tools and software. With relative importance to gaming described. If someone knows of a website that discusses this and, has pointers for us wannabe game creators and modders, can you please post it? I also realize this topic is old now but I will look from time to time..
If you want to learn about game programming and development, www.gamedev.net is a great place to start.
Thank you VicenteC. Spent about an hour so far on the site reading up on all things related. If I could I would give everyone who posted here a little Karma
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