If I had tons of money... I'd fix 3D Modeling for indie games.

Submit your own resources!

Rigo Cisneros   (May 31, 2008 at 07:17 GMT)

I have thought along those lines also...was wondering when someone would mention it. I think that is the future of some game art pipelines. And it sure would be a lot nicer to us Indies. I would hope that a team here would come up with a tool like that...hhmmm

I think it is doable though, because you could essentially precode your components ahead of time...after all a certain leg or arm component would still act as a leg or arm no matter where you place it. Possibly with some modifiers. So you could get a lot of variation just with that..just some ideas..

I think that if you made a plugin to a 3D tool which essentially does the basics automatically for you would be a lot easier than writing a tool from scratch. Since the GUI is essentially 3D placement anyways. Plus handling of prefabs (heads, torsos..etc) is already there. Something like XSI which has full coding support would be ideal. The main problem I see is the UV mapping..since I think that is the most confusing and time consuming to me. And I just don't see an easy way to auto UV map..

but anyways that would be a nice tool if it could be done for torque :)

Neill Silva   (May 31, 2008 at 18:00 GMT)

Or you could just learn how to model and texture? Seriously, I hate game developers who think everything should be point and click. Learn to do something, don't whine because you don't want to learn.

EDIT: Can't fix what isn't broken.
Edited on May 31, 2008 18:18 GMT

John Rockefeller   (May 31, 2008 at 21:07 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Hi Neill, thanks for your kind words :) I guess the point of being a game developer is that you want to spend your time developing games, not mucking around trying to get your models working in Torque or whatever other engine you're using. Or trying to UV map.

The point is that the modeling tools out there are the only ones in the pipeline that are entirely too complicated for their own good with respect to indie game development. To make music, you can use a simple program like Schism Tracker. To make levels? Easy. Worldcraft/hammer or even GarageGames' own Constructor. To make models? Take 4 years of university or prepare to spend all the time you should have been using to tweak your gameplay to rig your models.

Chris \"C2\" Byars   (May 31, 2008 at 23:10 GMT)

Hah, Neill, this would be useful for anyone. There's nothing wrong with streamlining and enhancing the way things are done. Increasing speed and efficiency in modelling and texturing is something everyone would love. Learning to do EVERYTHING game related with maximum skills is not something everyone does... you learn a few areas extremely well and then either source out and pay for things you can't do as well as you'd like, or find methods that allow you do to things easier.

I'm sure you'd be able to completely write a game engine from the ground up as capable as TGEA, model and texture with quality superior to anything else out there, lay out perfect gameplay and storyline, as well as script everything you want to work without flaw.

Neill Silva   (May 31, 2008 at 23:59 GMT)

But the thing is, you can easily learn to model. I can professionally model, and I do for my game studio, and I never have even finished high school yet. The magics of the internet.

John Rockefeller   (Jun 01, 2008 at 00:50 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Hi Neill,

What program do you use to model characters or items in your games and can you point me to any tutorial sites you used to level up your knowledge about modeling? Thanks!

Tank Dork   (Jun 01, 2008 at 01:38 GMT)

Neill you have a website with some sample work we can look at? I figure anyone l33t enough to troll someone elses hypothetical tool thread ought to have a sweet portfolio.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 01, 2008 at 02:15 GMT)

First off I'm gonna have to agree with Neil on this one.

As a matter of fact, as many times as I have gotten flamed around here for torque not being more user friendly to here some one say something like this kind offends me. We dont get a big red "make cool game button" to put our art into and you guys dont get a "make cool art asset" button for you game engine! and that is the way it should be.

People always want something without having to work for it. the reason the average person cant make good art is the fault of the program. 99.9995% of the time it is because the person is not a artist at all or is not a good one.

as for this comment:

Quote:

---

The point is that the modeling tools out there are the only ones in the pipeline that are entirely too complicated for their own good with respect to indie game development. To make music, you can use a simple program like Schism Tracker. To make levels? Easy. Worldcraft/hammer or even GarageGames' own Constructor. To make models? Take 4 years of university or prepare to spend all the time you should have been using to tweak your gameplay to rig your models.

---

Are you serious? hammer is prolly one of the worst programs ever written and constructor is not all that far behind it. thank god for polysoup.

I'm a full time modeler animator Self taught. and have been doing so for almost 10 years now. I too was a high school drop out. though I did go to community college and take commercial art. of course at that time there really was no 3D it was all just package design and page layout stuff. In 95 I picked it up cause I wanted to make stuff for games like quake. I was modeling and animating game characters with prolly the first 3-4 month of picking it up. The reason for this is that I'm and artist. I have been artistically inclined my whole life. And that is just the facts of it some people are artist and some people are not. 99.9% of the people in the community can code circles around me. The are programmers it is what they do.

John Rockefeller   (Jun 01, 2008 at 04:26 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Ugh.. I had a huge reply typed out and when I clicked "Post Comment" it disappeared. Just a heads-up to anyone writing comments on blogs on this site, copy your reply to your clipboard before you submit it!

I will try to remember exactly how I said what I wanted to say.

First, I wanted to explain that this blog post was never intended to become a flame war. Nor was it intended to insult or trivialize the heroic work being put into the Torque engines by GarageGames. Torque (both 2D and 3D) are considered by me and others to be some of the best engines and in fact "game builders" in the industry.

Second, I wanted to touch base with respect to James and him saying that there isn't a big red button that we push as programmers that says "Make cool art assets" and likewise there is a lack of a big red button for artists that says "Make cool game". Why not? I thought the goal of Torque was to bring game development to the masses - to allow indie game developers the chance to make world-class games using world-class tools without world-class budgets. If that truly is the goal, then I think it's a good idea to look at (in my case anyway) stripping away some of the more technical details of modeling a character and really focus on creating great tools to easily allow anyone to create a game. Why must it be so time consuming and/or hard?

Also, I noticed that James mentioned that the price of CrazyBump was worth it because it had saved him man hours. After watching how simple yet effective CrazyBump is, I wonder why it is okay to be a fan of a time-saving tool like that but that it's not okay to want the same type of tool for character modeling? To me they are the same thing.

To summarize: From my perspective, skillset, and requirements as an indie game developer, I need a simpler tool to make game characters. I simply have not the time, resources, or artistic talent to use what's out there to make a 3D game. It's a huge barrier.

Thanks for listening guys & gals! Great discussion so far.

Scott Warren   (Jun 01, 2008 at 15:06 GMT)

@ John

Wish I had a straight forward easy answer for that request. I'll keep playing the Lottery, who knows..

Anyways, I think the closest thing to your request would be Poser, or Daz Studio, but the downside right now is the high poly count since the models are nearly real looking.
You can import the models to Lightwave at least and then tweak it from there. I tried this awhile back just to see if it would work and I wouldn't suggest it.. It's alot like scrubbing B-B-Q grills with a sponge..It's not clean and the sponge has little effect.

I'm still learning to use LightWave, it's affordable and does just as well as 3Ds Max for everything I have seen.
Modeling, Scenery, Animation it's all there and for $800 usd compared to $2000 (ish) for 3Ds Max, it's all I'll ever need.

Recently, the www.arteria-gaming.com/ site posted some fantastic elven city for those making an RPG game, the graphics look amazing. After looking over the site, I decided to get my Art content from them.
While I was there I purchased a tutorial for making Medieval homes and Last night I was able to complete 2 home Models with Interiors, got them into a test scene ( Barebones ) and ran around in glee.
The tutorial was very concise, each step explained and easier still because it's a video, i could rewind what wasn't clear to me.

I guess i'm just saying I support your Idea of a much more user friendly graphics package, but until then.. there is always www.arteria-gaming.com/ and other sites with excellent tutorials to get you up to speed quickly.

p.s. Why not drop Bill Gates an email, being the richest man on the planet.. I'm sure he could fund a team to make exactly what you seek. Who knows.. he might actually do it.. He still puts his pants on the same way as anyone else.
Edited on Jun 01, 2008 15:30 GMT

Rene Damm   (Jun 01, 2008 at 20:17 GMT)

Hmm, I think 3D modeling *has* been fixed. The solution is called ZBrush.

Tony Richards   (Jun 02, 2008 at 00:03 GMT)   Resource Rating: 3

@John - You are exactly right.

If today's software development tools were as arcane and tedious to use as some of the tools we're trying to use for game development... well, we might as well be using Notepad instead of Visual Studio or Eclipse.

"Real programmers don't need IDE's" is as much a myth as "Indie Game Developers don't need specialized tools."

Not to worry... there's a revolution brewing.... are you ready? :P

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 02, 2008 at 13:01 GMT)

I don't care what tools you use if you are not an artist that tool is still going to produce crap and you will then b!tch about it.

There is no tool that is going to replace talent! period.

I will grant you that some of the more affordable tools have horrible interface designs " blender" comes to mind. This is because these tools are designed by programmers going by some white paper written by some other phd that said this is how and interface should work. Wich is non-sense. when what they should have done especially since at that time blender was very well funded is find 3-4 ex ILM guys and ask them what they think a program should have for an interface. Programmers don't know 5h!+ about the needs of artist.

Patrick (RollerJesus)   (Jun 02, 2008 at 14:13 GMT)

@Rene,
ZBrush doesn't solve very many of the problems described here. Yes, it is a major shift in the way things are modeled, but you can't rig and animate with it. Not to mention, poly reduction prior to normal mapping, you still need to incorporate another app and that experience will be no fun for the uninitiated.

@James,
I couldn't agree more on the talent part, and most of your ideas regarding Blender's interface.

I don't really know what you mean about Blender being "very well funded". My understanding of Blender's funding is that it was donation only until 2002, then NaN purchased purchased the Blender Foundation and injected about $100 K into it. For the effort, I wouldn't say it was "well funded", but it was adeqautely funded for creating the software and underfunded in the human factors department.

The solution here, seems to be some sort of easily modifiable content packs.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 02, 2008 at 14:58 GMT)

yeah the only package I know of that currently allows for editing of skinned rigged meshes is Maya. Unfortunately IMHO Maya has gotten the love it should from GG. out of the professional level packages it is the cheapest. I very excited about the next version of Maya and Mudbox. I have good feelings about what is in store for this pipeline.

@RollerJesus:
Yes you are right about the funding might point was there was a time with the program first was being developed when they had money that they could have gotten the input from the right people but instead based it on some guys with a PHd's paper called something like "the Human Interface" or something to that effect I used to could been able to tell you the guys name but it escapes me now. But regardless it was and continues to be a disastrous choice. I had a couple programmers that I was gonna pay out of my own pocket at one point to to customize it but, once they dug into the blender code they were like no thanks this is a mess. The updating of the blender interface is still on the to do list on the blender dev site but that has been there for about 2 years now. who knows if it will ever get done. I think blender is a great app with great potential I'm just not willing to completely relearn everything I know about 3D. Almost all 3D packages have some commonality in the way that they function blender follows none of these. In some cases it is like they went out of their way to make things different because there is no logic to some of it.

Ross Pawley   (Jun 02, 2008 at 18:12 GMT)

I think to a large degree Neill and James are right. I personally don't think that at least for realistic-themed models, doing a "Spore-like" modeler (w/ generated animation) would work very well. Part of the reason the Spore thing even works is that the characters are all very "squishy/rounded/cartoony." And you'll notice the animation isn't all that great. I'm talking entirely arbitrary skeleton creatures though (ala Spore).

I do think that *some* things could be done in this fashion, though I still think it'd be better to make the mesh in an actual modeling package. However, for certain types of meshes/creatures (namely large snake like or aquatic creatures with no or few limbs), you could possibly use a technique like this (link, pdf warning) to define the mass/spring muscles used to animate it.
Edited on Jun 02, 2008 18:20 GMT

Rene Damm   (Jun 02, 2008 at 20:07 GMT)

@RollerJesus
Yes, that's absolutely right. Was thinking solely about the modeling aspect and ZBrush3 is just incredible in this respect (at least for organic structures).

@James
Absolutely agree with you that it's not the tools that make good artwork. They help or hinder but never *create* great work.

And the whole programmer/user dilemma is something that pertains to the entire field of software (except for software *for* programmers). Still, I think that good communication or having "cross-breeds" on your team can overcome this problem.

Blender is not helping to manifest that point, though. It was produced by Ton Roosendaal as an *in-house* tool exclusively programmed to the specification and needs of the artists on the team. The result was bad code (it was never meant to be a widely used and actively developed 3D package), but with an extremely streamlined interface with just those functions the artists needed and wanted.
Edited on Jun 02, 2008 20:08 GMT

John Rockefeller   (Jun 02, 2008 at 22:55 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Hi All.

Yes, my idea was that the characters that come out of this "character generator" program would end up looking like something from Zelda: The Wind Waker, Final Fantasy 7 (real-time gameplay models, not cut-scenes) or Animal Crossing, which is perfectly fine for me and the types of games I like to play.

There is no doubt in my mind if you want realistic, high-quality models like the ones found in Counter Strike Source or Prey, then you've got to have a talented artist using an advanced modeling program like Maya, 3DS, etc. No doubt, no contest.

I would think for most quick, inexpensive indie games a tool like the one I'm after would produce a lot of unique and interesting content and it's something that we could all use and benefit from.

@Roller Jesus, yes a modifiable content pack seems to describe the functionality of this program well.

Scott Warren   (Jun 02, 2008 at 23:45 GMT)

Many content packs are complete with everything you need to modify them. You even get Install instructions for testing.
At first I thought this thread was the local chat club about making a graphics package for the unskilled and at first I thought it was being taken lightly. Now the thread seems to be a meeting place for making Dreams Come True.
Forgive me for popping bubbles.
Any character worth having in any game will be the character designed from scratch from those with Talent.
Those same people with artistic talent can learn to use a graphics package they feel most comfortable learning to use.
With enough practice that artist can forge a future in the community or even the world if they choose to.
The days of "cookie-cutter" graphics are long gone.. they went out with Pheonix and Pac-Man in the '80s.

Nowadays, it's Artist eat Artist and the best ones stand out while the others fall to the way side.
So again I am sorry for the reality-check.

Tony Richards   (Jun 03, 2008 at 02:02 GMT)   Resource Rating: 3

A great tool can't take the place of a talented artist, just like a great tool can't take the place of a talented programmer.

But, tools are constantly being developed to help non-programmers create games.

Take TGB as an example. Sure, you might have to program a little, but as more behaviors are created, the less programming is required.

The same is true of artist tools. The problem in the past has been that artists are creating one-off non-reusable works of art...

Take MakeHuman, Daz, Poser, Bryce and a few other tools as an example on the content side... although these tools aren't geared towards creating games, the concept isn't revolutionary.

All it takes is someone willing to take the idea of these tools and tailor them for game development.

It's happening now, and I know of at least two companies that are pursuing the development of tools that will give John and most non-artist Indie and hobby game developers exactly what they're wanting.

Now, granted, without an artist feeding the tool, the tool is worthless, but that's not what we're seeing.

The artists create the next generation content packs that go along with these new tools, and the non-artists can use them to create custom content for their games.

So much for the reality check... the days of non-innovative, limited thinking are gone.

Glenn Thomas   (Jun 03, 2008 at 14:44 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

What happened to Neill? I wanted him to put his work up. Because I went to school for four years in game design and I can't keep up with the industry in modeling technique. Rigging, mapping, and skinning, blows chunks. A new solution is needed. Z-brush is getting there though as far as mapping and textures.

Programmers can't say that they don't have close to the magic button but I don't see anyone making games in assembler, if your using torque script your not even using the true C#. Once an easy solution is developed anyone would be foolish not use it just because it not hoe real developers do something or whatever the excuse. Quality versus time is the problem. If I can crank out the same or greater quality in less time then I'm sold.

Tools are making a lot of artist so so artists phenomenal now. When I went to art school it was yournever allowed to erase just draw and if you mess up draw it again. Draw it fast, shadow and light, get it wrong do it again. Now that there's digital art, a lot of mediocre artist are get surpassing traditional artists. A mediocre artist can learn the basics of form, light, shadow, negative space and perspective and easily become a master of photoshop or any other digital package in two years. I've witnessed it. With brush creation people can make concept scenes in 5 min with more detail and quality than the happy painter guy with the fro on pbs in the 90's. He painted all his life. Art is becoming more technical and the genre is becoming more respected. Soon you'll see it in a museum or art showcase.

Regardless of the medium, people should embrace new technologies or be left behind, I never want to be the old person that can't use the computer or thinks phones capture your soul. Adapt or Fail.
Edited on Jun 03, 2008 15:06 GMT

Scott Warren   (Jun 03, 2008 at 20:54 GMT)

hehhe, Glenn lol. Great post.

@ Tony
I do share some of your thoughts in your post.

@ John R.
Thank you for the entertaining Post. I read everything I can in every area of the forums as time allows me.
I'm not against having a new Software package to facilitate making characters so long as that software still gives all the power to the user.. ( Linux comes to mind as compared to Windows ).

While at work today I was considering this entire thread.. collectively.
What I decided:
If you form a team of programmers from the Torque community to piece this Software together, Make the teams progress available to the License owners in the Private forums for speculation and wish lists etc.,
Get something rolling thats more concrete then just an Idea.. And I will Donate to the cause so long as there is accountability for where the funds are going.

The more I like how the project comes together, the more frequently I will donate..

Tony Richards   (Jun 03, 2008 at 22:53 GMT)   Resource Rating: 3

@Scott - I have already started working on this several months ago as part of my Zen Studio project and the Indie 2.0 Revolution. It's not limited to making content for Torque, nor is it limited to just character creation as it will eventually encompass terrain generation, world editing, etc.

I would love to make the development more transparent and get a whole lot more feedback from the community, but so far I've only received a little feedback and most of it has been negative. (Naysayers are always the loudest) :P

I'm not interested in donations... most of what I am doing is Open Source using the ZLib license so that it can be freely used in commercial and non-commercial applications. I'm doing this because I believe it will revolutionize the Indie game development industry.

If we could band together and make our own tools specifically for our own needs then we remove one of the advantages the commercial guys have over the Indies. I've been preaching this for months and I even gave a presentation about it at IMGDC.... but so far the only "banding together" I have seen is me and a couple of my apprentices helping me with Zen Engine, and so far no help for Zen Studio.

I have written a fantastic plugin system that would allow for commercial plugins. This makes it so that contributors can still have a way to make a profit.... the plugins should be kept moderately priced so that the entire package costs under $1000 (or at least that's the goal).

I've kinda lost contact with the GG crew... Stephen Zepp had approached me and I dunno, maybe I scared him away with my response because we haven't spoken since our initial e-mail exchange. Ben Garney was my only other GG point of contact, but that was related to some work that I was doing for the Forest Pack... and of course he's no longer a GG employee.

I would love to be able to make an entire IDE with plugins for TorqueScript (Torsion converted to use my plugin system?), something like L3DT for terrain generation algorithms, maybe a conversion of Constructor, a better GUI editor, a character modeler, etc.

I'm willing to lead the project and do a significant amount of the programming for a fair share of the profits, depending on how many people contribute to it.

All it takes is a little support from the community and maybe a blessing from GG... a forum on this website would also make things a bit better so I don't have to host the forums on a different website, thus dividing the community.

Who knows, maybe someone with better connections could make this happen :P

Glenn Thomas   (Jun 04, 2008 at 15:10 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

@Tony, nothing against you but your post is ridiculous sounding. You say you want to help and it's about what you believe is the next revolution but it sounds like selfishness. When you break your post down it sounds like this:

Hype, Excuse, not interested in donations, next gaming revolution, discouragement, profit and big numbers outside of most indie budgets, discouragement, your willing to save the industry, you want to be leader and want the most money depending on how much work other people do, a plea for support and a blessing, and you want to piggy back off the community that garage games created.

You interrupted my post that was reaching out to the community to advertise your product that isn't even ready. and then when I talk to you about it you take a cut at me and my business practices. I used to believe we had similar interests and ideals and could come together but you sound irrational and far from any leader that I'd follow. My background, experience, and drive make me a leader and I hope that it sets our products and mission far from each other. I wish you luck though and hope you fulfill the promises you intend on providing. Garage Games is a business and as a business they are often busy. They will not ignore you but you have to give to receive. The reason I believe I had support on the Last Man Standing Behavior Competition is because I wasn't in it for me. I truly wanted to improve the community and raise support in creating behaviors in TGB. They allowed me to pick the winners prize, they didn't give me any free product or service. You have to help others help themselves.

@Scott and everyone, I believe something of this sort should be open source and tracking of all funds should be posted on an outside website along with a post showing where the funds were spent and how much funds are in the pool. A board of developers should be formed to vote on how funds should be spent and the community can vote as well but their collective vote would count as one seat. Money for developers of the product can come from a online advertisements posted on the site and included with each release of the product. The situation would end up being a win win situation for both sides. All advertising funds can go into an account that pays out royalties once a month for workers that contributed that month. It can be based on percentages, scope, priority, and amount. We can use open source tools such as Mambo, Joomla, SMF, project pier, and mantis to set the site up, handle the forums, handle project management, and bug tracking. The domain will be cheap and hosting won't be much either. Godaddy.com offers the services at a reasonable price and they support open source tools. In the beginning, I don't mind allowing the community to piggyback off my hosting account or purchasing the domain as long as funds go to reimburse me my losses. We can post .plans in this community to gather support but core development will be done through an outside site and scheduled chat sessions. It will take more than one project leader on an open source project, so we'd have to create a board and determine a set of rules for being on that board. Something like founders, developers that have contributed for three or more months, and people who have contributed a donation of at least x amount the previous month. We allow people to donate to both accounts but it will be their will to decide where money is going. With this structure there something in it for everyone and no self promoting. I have a company as well but I rather my company be a contributer rather than heading up a project that is community driven.

@John, Sorry for straying off topic there in the beginning. I get a little passionate about my beliefs.
Edited on Jun 04, 2008 15:17 GMT

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 04, 2008 at 15:37 GMT)

arrgggh done with this nonsense.

Glenn Thomas   (Jun 04, 2008 at 16:01 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5

Does anyone know if there's any news on the newest iterations of Maya and 3D Studio Max? I'd like to check it out. I want to apologize if I discouraged anyone from posting on this subject.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 04, 2008 at 19:21 GMT)

3ds max just had a really nice new release. version 2009. spline based UV mapping is awesome!

Maya " what I use every day" is at version 2008 and will prolly see a release in late summer or early Q4. The rumors for this comming release are very promising. If you go with either of these applications go on maintenace. The maintenance for Maya complete is down to like $529 a year. Awesome when you consider all of the stuff you get. plus you just stay on that maintenance and you will always have the latest version.

3ds max has the best support by GG though. "by best I mean most feature complete" I wish they would get the maya exporter up to par and internalize it. Suck the community have to do this themselves.

both softwares have trial versions that you can check out.

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