creating shipsets

inigma · #1 October 7th, 2005, 08:30 PM

What's the best free graphics program out there that would allow me to create good shipsets for SEIV?

narf poit chez BOOM · #2 October 7th, 2005, 08:56 PM

Wings3d.

inigma · #3 October 7th, 2005, 09:02 PM

What do you think of Blender?

Does Wings3d have the capability of creating shipsets for SEIV that could transition to SEV later?

Ed Kolis · #4 October 7th, 2005, 09:54 PM

Blender would be great just because it's so powerful, but unfortunately the interface drives me up a wall with its complexity

Wings will let you export to .3DS and .OBJ, which are easily convertible to .X, which is the format which SE5 uses. Also, Wings is designed as a low-polygon modeler, which is good, because SE5 ships shouldn't have more than maybe 1500 polygons.
There's been talk recently at the Wings forum about a plugin which would export directly to .X from Wings, but that's right now in the idea stage... it shouldn't be too hard to implement; it's just a matter of finding someone who has knowledge both of the obscure programming language (Erlang) which Wings is written in and of the .X format to actually write the plugin

If you want to use a program called Art of Illusion, I did make an .X exporter for that program, but it currently is rather buggy; I've fixed up some of the bugs and I've got the revised version lying around on my computer somewhere, so if you're interested let me know and I'll zip up the revised version and post it

edit: here ya go: http://kolis.dyndns.org/ed/prog/exportx/exportX-1.2.zip

Atrocities · #5 October 7th, 2005, 10:57 PM

I use DOGA Its easy to learn. Its like building with legos.

http://www.doga.co.jp/english/

Look at my site to see what can be done with DOGA.

inigma · #6 October 7th, 2005, 11:28 PM

Atrocities, is what you've done with your site done with the L1 version?

TerranC · #7 October 8th, 2005, 02:10 AM

Quote:

inigma said:
Atrocities, is what you've done with your site done with the L1 version?

Although I am not atrocities, I can tell you that they have nearly all been made with L3.

Atrocities · #8 October 8th, 2005, 04:27 PM

I used L3 with many custom images and bonus model packs. You can get them from the forum or perhaps they are listed on Todd Zirchers web site.

I have posted a tremendous amount of info about this so do a search for DOGA and read through some of the threads.

Post on the DOGA forum asking for new parts downloads and what not.

inigma · #9 October 8th, 2005, 05:09 PM

Is it possible to create our own parts with DOGA, or are we limited to only what they provide?

I was thinking of creating parts in Bender or Wings3d and making them available for assembly in DOGA.

I just haven't read enough of the documentation to find out one way or the other.

zircher · #10 October 8th, 2005, 05:21 PM

One of the interesting perks to L2 and L3 is that while they are shareware, only the movie rendering feature is disabled. For ship set makers and model designers, the programs are fully functional. So, DoGA is essentially a freebie for our needs.

If you're new, I suggest downloading L2 and getting a feel for that before moving on to L3. I have written a translation of the L3 Parts Assembler help files on my DoGA support page, you can also find a tutorial on designing game meshes with DoGA for SEV, and a slew of parts.

http://zircher.iwarp.com/doga

Ed, weren't you working on a SUF export plugin for Wings3D? If so, what the progress on that?
--
TAZ