Suitable tools

Community Forums/Developer Stations/Suitable tools

Gord(Posted 2007) [#1]
Although the game programming industry is fairly large a number of otherwise exellent 3d design programs are not very usefull for providing game content, especialy where animation and file formats are concerned.This is surprising to me as they could increase their sales by paying attention to this problem.Some of the ones that diaapoint me include Carrara 4,Cinema 4d and even Silo.Could someone do an updated list of suitable 3d programs..


Naughty Alien(Posted 2007) [#2]
..for me it is one ultimate solution..3DSMAX...initially i thought it is mistake to purchase it, since I'm using B3D whats very cheap tool...then after some analisys I did, actually I realized that every game engine outside basically is supported by 3DSMAX exporters...it also means whole thing such as character modelling, character animation, geometry modelling, texturizing etc etc, is in there..so once learned, its actually pretty much same for every game engine I'm going to use in future, or if there is a difference it will be only regarding exporter but not creation within MAX itself...and I purchase it..together with Photoshop/Giles/B3D its ultimate solution...as well as for any other engine I know so far..simply great..


D4NM4N(Posted 2007) [#3]
Why not start one here and request a sticky

fragmotion is really good for animation and b3d so is milkshape

well i think so anyway :P

Others i use are:
Blender - modelling/uving
Hexagon (but not as much as blender)
cartography shop - for doing buildings quickly
fragmotion - animation
ted - terrains & putting everything together
flash, psp & gimp - 2d stuff
spriteforge & flash - 2d animation
giles - lightmapping and sometimes texturing


Mustang(Posted 2007) [#4]
XSI, Lightwave (there's very good free LWO>B3D exporter Lee did).


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2007) [#5]
For animation/animated Characters I would suggest to use PaceMaker, probably the best animation tool in it's price segment, allows to save DX8 X as well as B3D.

There's also CharacterFX for char animation, but it seems it's a little outdated an no longer in development (tho still useful).

When using one of the BIG apps, like 3dsmax, maya etc. then you may have to use UltimateUnwrap3D as the ultimate file format converter. This includes correct import and export of animated B3D.