maya animation output to real-time 3D

[MasonDoran]

basically...you want a 3d engine that supports the latest highend stuff like CG Shaders(which buy the way use your graphics card)

Once u got the money, call up ID software...or Valve that is doing the Halflife engine.

Then for the physics engine you will need a few more grand to get Havoc.

Then of course you will need the 3d software....which doesnt really matter as long you can comfortably model, texture and animate with it. They all export to some degree fairly well.


Then you will need some kind of middleware to convert the 3d stuff for the game engine to understand.


We are using both Maya and Lightwave....Rendeware 3.4 to export the 3d info to the custom game engine that we made. and Havoc to provide the physics.


You can of course program your own 3d engine....but it wont be any cheaper cuz it is a tremendous amount of work to do....


Last i heard...Blender is a free 3d app with its own realtime and programmable engine for games.

[viper_07]

seems there isn't any exisiting RT3D engine that plug cg(nvidia) into itself, isn't it?

and seems the solution u proppose are quite complicated pipeline

[Levitateme]

www.kaydara.com

there is some program they have that exports to quicktime and its like full 3d. i saw it with my motion builder videos.

[Chappo]

You mean the Kaydara FBX plugin for Quicktime.

It's great :)
You can watch animations in wireframe, shaded , different cam angles and etc.

What is even cooler is that you can view any model/animation that you've exported from Maya :)
(and also max, lightwave i think, not sure....)

[Levitateme]

nyah huh, i dont have it. but i know of it. kaydara sure is an amazing company

[Michel Besner]

You can get the FBX for QuickTime plug-in for FREE at www.kaydara.com/quicktime ...

M.

[ceql]

I think Shockwave/ Director isn't so shabby.... Someone recreated a apperantly near-perfect version of Quake 3 Arena using it a while back, but it was taken down due to requests from id software :p

It's got quite a versatile scripting language, so you don't have to learn c++ or anything to use it, but it *doesn't* support cg shaders or other neat shading effects.

afaik, Director also has havok built in... Havok demos with Shockwave/Director:

http://www.havok.com/xtra/demos/demo-ragdoll2.html
http://www.havok.com/xtra/demos/demo-mace2.html

edit: older havok demos: http://www.havok.com/xtra/index.html

[viper_07]

u mean this Quake 3 engine suuports advanced shading?
if yes, any more info on it?

thanks

[ceql]

hehe have u played Quake3 btw? :p

No, neither Quake3Arena not Director does.... Virtually no contemporary game engines use any really advanced shading, cuz I mean, stuff like cg shaders is still quite new, y'know!! ;) Even hardly any current games support features like bump mapping (can you name three?) let alone some of the other effects you might be after :p

That said, you can still do alot with just standard textures and baked lighting... I'm not sure if you'll be able to find an existing engine to do everything you're after.... I mean, you're asking for a ready-made engine to produce next-generation visuals like in doom3 and Half-life2?

I think what you might be after will depend very specifically on what you're aiming to produce... there's quite a difference between a game and a movie...

[womanonfire]

this is what we are using to make a game. i find it an all around versatile and lovely real-time app.
http://www.quest3d.com
it will probably give you what you want, not terribly expensive, and with an interesting graphical approach to programming.
there are demos there you can take a look at.

[MasonDoran]

you will still need programming to integrate the stuff to make it interactive....so you need to know what your needs and limitations are. Like can you program....or how fast does that game need to be? Or how many polys do you need to render or do you need physics. Once you know these answers, including your budget, then you will know your options.

cuz frankly....what you want doesnt really exist yet at a useable level. Nobody has the graphics cards to play doom 3 or halflife....

Hell, our programmer can write all of these pixel shaders your talking about....but we cant use them because there is just not enough people out there that have a grafx card to play the game in the first place.

[lapinbily]

hi evryone

i'm currently looking for a web pluging to interactively showcase stuff from maya straight into web browsers . It has to feature shadows, animation and basic texturing .

Does anyone knows about such a piece of software ?

Thankx

G.

[Houkah]

Shockwave 3d won't do most of the stuff you want (shadows, advanced hardware shading) you can find software workarounds for a lot of that stuff though. (I remember seeing a test of multi-texturing in shockwave3d that was pretty cool.) It's supposed to be easy for non-coders to use (drag and drop behaviors), but to get anything really nice out of it you really have to know lingo (directors programming language). However based on how much vram you use in your scene shockwave3d can drag normal computers to a halt. (if you pass the amount of vram on the end users videocard it automatically goes to software render which is horribly slow and ugly).

lapinbilly - shockwave 3d will do all the things you want with the exception of shadows. If the shadows aren't interactive just bake them into your textures. If they are then you have to find some other workaround for it. (ie. duplicating your object w/ a black or transparent shader & scaling it in one direction to make it flat)

There are a few other possibilities for web3d. VRML 2, activeworlds, viewpoint, wildtangent (dunno if they're still around), cult 3d <-- most of these are primarily for 3d product display. Good luck.

edit- just checked out quest3d link that womanonfire posted. WOW that looks cool.

[arliss]

There is also this which is pretty cool:
Flash VR (http://www.alias.com/eng/community/behind_screenz/light_the_torch/index.jhtml)

Click on the links in the upper right-

Anyone have a tutorial on how to do this in flash? (and how to compress the file)

Thanks:)

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