Interactive 3D Environment

#1

Hi…I’m hoping to get a little guidance.

A client recently contacted me looking to develop a sort of interactive town. Basically, he wants to be able to fly around the town, and then when certain buildings or other areas of interest are clicked, a little bubble pops up to give a factoid or two.

Ideally, this would be a free-standing little application that the end user could use without too much training or hassle.

So my question is: would this be best done in a game engine? If so, does anyone have any suggestions of a good one that I could tackle (coming from a non-programming background) to accomplish this?

Thanks for any suggestions.

#2

Actually I’d suggest Director - I made a similar project to what you’re explaining for university, and it was trivial through director.

#3

Were you using Shockwave 3D or something? It’s been a while since I’ve used Director, but it seemed like most things needed to be fairly linear with Director.

#4

Director has scripting… so no it’s not a linear program unless you only use the timeline.

#5

Thanks for the responses so far.

Does this mean that to create a freely navigatable (sp?) 3D environement, you’d need to script it? Or is there some mechanism within Director to allow for this?

#6

Anything interactive needs to be scripted. I’m not aware of any ready made system in Director for doing what you want unfortunately.

Does your client want the factoid to pop up within the 3d world? or as part of some sort of overall GUI?

I’m trying to think of a simple solution, I’m sure this kind of thing is frequently needed but I have never researched in this particular area. I know how to build a program like you need, but I don’t know of any readymade solutions. I think unfortunately for you that a solution will probably require some sort of scripting unless you can find a special tool / engine.

#7

OK…thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. He wants the pop-up info to be part of the 3d environment; although it could probably be to the side in the interfaace as well.

Looks like I’ve got some Director research to do. Thanks much!

#8

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