Yes. Blender is not the same class of program, it does
3D rendering from models. It does include a game engine,
but that is for low-poly 3D rendered games, which
is different from what we're after (which is 2D animation).
Craig Maloney wrote:
>
> Have you guys looked at Blender? It's not open-source, but it is free for
> use...
Yes it's "non-free".
> http://www.blender.nl
>
> Linux Versions as well as SGI and Solaris versions exist, and it's
> scriptable in python.
>
> I've been using it for about 2 years, and although the learning curve is
> steep, it's VERY activey developed, and the community is incredibly
> active.
If you (or someone you know) would be interested in
working with us on backgrounds or other 3D pre-rendering,
we'd be VERY interested in the help! Right now, we don't
have anyone to do that.
We need someone to come up with a castle, bridge, forest
settings and so on. We're considering competing approaches
such as hand-drawn or painted backgrounds and post-processed
photographs, but the 3D rendering approach (with some
post-processing to give a rendering that blends well with
the character art -- mainly keeping the colors bright),
sounded the most promising.
It would be nice also to figure out the best
way to collaborate on the model, since it
would make more sense to do something this
big collaboratively and check it all into CVS. There
could be "roughers" to create the overall kingdom
geography and "details" for each section. Also,
probably we'd get someone to specialize in natural
objects like trees and someone else to do buildings.
Probably have a single person to design the castle.
I wonder is this something VRML would be good for?
We're using web formats as much as possible -- maybe
we should do that with the modelling as well.
So far we just have very basic designs -- there's
a map of the kingdom (with some spaces yet to fill
in), and a logical-map of the "scenes" (like "rooms"
in interactive fiction, but most are outside, etc)
in the first "day" or "level" of the game. It's not
that much guidance -- but then again, it is that
much more creative freedom!
It's just that no one on the project knows how to use
Blender -- you're right about the learning curve: I went
into immediate icon-shock when I opened the program the
first time, and still feel completely lost. :) Of course,
I haven't really been able to work at it very long.
I think buying the tutorial is probably unavoidable.
We're also looking for something like "Poser" to create
moving characters in 3D to be used as a reference for
the character animators (not used directly, though).
We've been trying to use a choreography program called
"Gepetto" for this
( http://laurent.riesterer.free.fr/gepetto/index.html ),
but it's been somewhat awkward to use for this project.
I'm not sure how much better (if any) Poser is for
this task -- maybe we just need help using Gepetto --
but this task has been taking longer than I had
hoped.
--
Terry Hancock
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
