Ok, I looked at one…Blender because its free and I am a hobbyist. If I get good, maybe I can leave the hobbyist world behind.
Anyway, I have never used blender, I want to use it to make simple meshes like rocks or crates and then eventually make simple animated models like a tank or soldier.
Is blender a good choice? Am I limiting myself by picking Belnder. Can I use blender to make a house with rooms and a stairs that a soldier could enter?
I know its not 3ds max, but that is way too expensive and I repeat currently I am a hobbyist. And when I do decide to spend money Unity will get it first.
The answer to both questions is “yes”. Go to blender.org and blenderartists.org and find some tutorials and get started. Good luck!
A word of warning. Blender has a very akward UI. Though it is very powerful once you get used to it. One think you should really do is remember keyboard shortcuts. Once Blender 2.5 is released (that should be soon), the UI should get a little less confusing.
Once you get the hang of Blender, the possibilities are endless. Blender can be used for anything you have asked for. Creating crates, rocks, stairs, animations, texturing etc…
If you want to see what blender is capable of, search google for “Big Buck Bunny”. It is a short CGI movie done completely in Blender. It is hilarious and has stunning looks. They also created a game using Blender. IIRC it is called “Yo Frankie!”
blender can do for more than I could possibly dream of creating. No need to spent dollars on Max or Maya.
I love the Blender UI, personally, but RizMan is correct, learning the keyboard shortcuts makes all the difference, and that every bit of effort you put into learning Blender will be rewarded.
Now that Unity Indie (sorry, just “Unity”) is free, Blender + Unity (OK, and maybe Gimp) provides all you need to build games limited only by your imagination and hard work, at no cost whatsoever. Have fun!
I wouldn’t say I love Blenders UI, but with time, you get used to it. I think it is THE thing that scares most new Blender users, because it is not “Standard”. But, it has its strengths.
Anyway, talking of free (in this case: as in beer) applications for content creation. Let me suggest Mapzoneeditor from Allegorithmic. (www.mapzoneeditor.com). It’s a procedural texture generation tool. Very powerful. Blender can do that too with its nodes system, but I don’t know if it is as powerful. Haven’t tried it yet.
This tool does also have a very special UI and there is not a lot of documentation, but with a little trial and error, you should quickly be making cool looking, seamless textures with a lot of details.
So if i wanted to big a pretty big cave to explore, I could use Blender and then bring that into my game as a mesh? And if the cave floor angled slightly upwards, my soldier could move up it ?
Yes to the question regarding importing the mesh. To get your player to be able to climb walls you’d need a script to do this. I seem to remember there was a thread on “climbing walls” a year or so ago. Maybe do a search for that or “spiderman”.
At the end of the day you get what you pay for.
And 3D max is alot better than blender in many ways. Blender has a horrible interface for one and doesnt take kindly to beginners.
In many cases 3D max is pretty unforgiving but its a fairly strong punt towards industry acceptance and mastery of it enables you to blend (see what i did there) on to other packages like Zbrush, Motionbuilder etc.
If you’re a student you can get a licence for about £80 i think.
Peace
And just how much did you pay for Unity, may I ask? Blatant, flat out insulting one 3D application just doesn’t carry much weight. Do a search of the forums here, you’ll see plenty of threads on “my 3D app is better than your 3D app”. Anyone whose been here a while will tell you we’re sick and tired of those kinds of threads. Stick to specifics and cut out the baloney please.
I will not argue about whether Blender is better than Max/Maya or not as I have never used those applications. Also, as Bigkahuna already said, there are enough such threads around. I’m new to these forums, but I’m registered on enough Game Developer forums to know that it probably is the same around here regarding Maya vs Max, OpenGL vs DX, x vs y etc…
Anyway, as I already said, Blender does indeed have a special UI which is difficult to get the hang for. But, it has its merits and allows for a very quick workflow, given you know you’re way around keyboard shortcuts. Yes, you have to read through some documentations before building a cave. But I’m pretty sure that given the complexity of software pieces like Max/Maya/XSI, you won’t do anything with those unless you read some documentation or tutorials. A person interested to go professional might be advised to learn those professional tools. It certainly is an asset to know them. But if you just start out with 3D modelling and you’re not sure whether you’ll be any good at it, then Blender is a very decent, 3d Modelling package which gives you a lot of interesting things to play with. It has all you need for game development.
Have you looked at the links I provided earlier? I’d suggest you do. www.bigbuckbunny.org. That should prove that for paying nothing you get a lot for.
<<Have you looked at the links I provided earlier? I’d suggest you do. www.bigbuckbunny.org. That should prove that for paying nothing you get a lot for>>
I have not looked at the links yet. My mind is made up to TRY blender and do the tutorials when I get to that stage. If I hate it, I’ll try someting else, but how can I hate it? You hate a software package 'cause your used to another one, like I hate Photoshop 'cause I’m used to Paint Shop Pro. Anyway, if I was a person who wanted a future in animation I would study the program where the most jobs are available, this is not me. I work full time as a programmer, writing business code for a large business. Blender should do just fine, I hope I can figure it out. My strength is in programming, my weakness would be the art side.
