Game Development Community

From Strata to DTS?

by Rob Terrell · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 12/29/2005 (4:09 pm) · 3 replies

Pardon the art newbie post, I'm usually only in the coder forums and I don't know very much about today's 3D tools.

I have a bunch of assets in Strata 3D format that I would like to convert into DTS. Some objects will need to recreated (i.e. stuff that, to Torque, is a DIF) but I'd like to get as much as I can out of the existing assets. Many objects will need poly reduction and animations. Humanoids will need Torque-compatible skeletons (I see there's now a resource for this available). I don't have Strata 3D anymore (and I can't find the free version around anymore, drat) so I can't even look at the suckers. I guess the pipeline for me will end up -> Blender -> Export to DTS.

But how to get out of Strata? Any suggestions?

#1
12/29/2005 (4:14 pm)
Well, from looking at the Strata 3D website, they have a 60 day Full money back guarantee, so you could by it, convert all your assets to other formats within 60 days, then return it... :-)
#2
12/30/2005 (7:03 am)
@Andrew -- I always screw those kinds of deals up, and end up paying the full price, so I want to avoid that. But thanks to your suggestion I did find that their installer gives you a 30 day trial, so I did that. However, I don't see many export options. DXF looks to be the only export option that inculdes meshes, but that doesn't include textures, does it?

I guess I'm looking for some kind of 3D format swiss army knife, if such a thing exists.
#3
12/30/2005 (8:28 am)
It should export .obj, but I have not used stratacx (although it's renderer is pretty nice from a lot of screen shots ive seen on the 3d forums, not really related to game dev).

If so you can convert .obj to .dts using this resource:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=7541

.obj has mesh and texture data (referenced in the companion .mtl file), but no animation data.
Good Luck.