How do you make 3D looking graphics

[Aulë]

How do you make graphics like the ones on this site?

[Dwo]

paint shop pro 7 0r REAL-DRAW.

[Jamul]

For the 3D modeled stuff, I used 3DS Max. For the hand-drawn stuff like Yerfdog, it's Paint Shop Pro.

[Aulë]

Thanks, I've got PSP but how do i get hold of the 3d software :?:

[Jamul]

The same way you get any software... buy it! It's made by Discreet, but it costs about $3000, so I'd recommend something a lot simpler to learn with! I think Wings3D is a cool simple 3D modeling program, find it somewhere on google.

[Dwo]

real draw is for begginer 3D graphic makers. http://www.mediachance.com/oldindex.html

[Dwo]

d'OH, wrong link :oops: :oops: , here's the right one! http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/index.html

[Jamul]

I'd just like to point out, in reference to a post here that I deleted since it violates our policy, and that I am half an inch from banning the poster of, that we IN NO WAY accept, condone, or remotely tolerate sofware piracy here at Hamumu. I make every CENT of my living from people paying me for the games I make. If people choose to copy these games from other people instead of paying for them, that's money directly taken from my pocket. It's stealing. It's illegal. And it hurts indies like me the most, not only because we are the most fragile, but because if you for example pirate a copy of Photoshop, now you are using the top-of-the-line artwork program for free. If you didn't have the ability to pirate, yet you didn't have the money for the outrageously expensive Photoshop, you would've had to buy something cheaper, like say Paint Shop Pro - it may not do as much stuff, but it's in your price range. Because you pirated the top of the line, you potentially cost its cheaper competition a sale (so the standard argument that you would never have bought a copy of Photoshop in the first place is NOT an excuse for piracy, it just means that your act is hurting the little guys instead of the big corporation you thought you were so heroically attacking with your theft).

You don't need to have any morals or ethics, all you need is common sense: if everybody pirated, there would be NO SOFTWARE. People need to be paid for their work. If you don't like the price they charge or anything else about the product, then DON'T BUY IT. That's how everything else on earth works, why is software different?

[Aulë]

btw i was only joking its just a free trial i downloaded from descreet

sorry anyway though

[Starweaver Blue]

(New-to-here blue dragon sticking his head in randomly ... Quick stats: have played almost all of the game demos to 100% or close, very impressed by company overall. Dying to buy dr.l supreme but am saving it for a reward -- most likely when I get a piece of writing to the "finished, edited, and out the door" stage for the first time, unless I do something major with coding first . . . (I'm one of those strange rare writer-programmer hybrids ;)))

Long rambly post about assorted (for the most part) free graphics software that I've come in contact with.

Re 3d software -- there are a few things that people haven't mentioned yet here. First of all, there is a free "light" version of 3dsmax, called gmax, that is targeted primarily at game *mod* developers. I've played with it a bit, and I don't think it has any commands for rendering a view to 2d (aside hitting screenshot and going to some other software to paste -- which worked fine for me because the only thing I wanted to do was show a couple of people online what I'd been doing that day...) -- which is what you would need to statically render your sprites from a 3d base like what you have in Loonyland (if I'm remembering correctly).

However, if you want to create 3d models for your 3d game, I think you could write an export script for whatever format you're using -- just like, say, NWmax exports to files that Neverwinter Nights can use. (That's how I found out about gmax, anyway ;)). I haven't researched or attempted this (yet?) though, so . . . . It will definitely let you get a general feel for the 3dsmax interface and 3d modeling in general -- and practice -- so it's probably worth a poke.

Program number two, is a totally freeware (possibly opensource, I forget) program called Blender. From what I've seen of it, it seems more geared toward creating animations, and using 3d to make rendered static art. However, I did manage to make a script to export a mesh to a extremely basic file format that one of my earlier GL-experimentation programs could work with. (And then I ended up falling in love with python, after that experience with it in blender, and going down a completely different route . . . ).

From my fuzzy memory and limited experience, max probably beats it flat out for complicated mesh-editing similar things that you'd want if you were making game models.

And then there's POV-ray. Extremely powerful raytracer, free or open, but it's not going to help you at all with meshes. It's strictly a tool for the production of rendered art or animation, not resources for other programs to work with. But it can do some amazing things if you can bend it to your will. (Not that I ever have . . . ) It only reads scenes from text-based definition files, so if you're anything like me you'd need a third-party modeling program that is built around its format, or perhaps an exporter tool for something like max.

On the painting side of things, there's the linux world's premier graphics program: the GIMP. It's more and less powerful than photoshop in various ways, (I don't know PSP well enough to compare . . . the main thing photoshop has over it is it's layer styles system; my favorite feature of the gimp was the ability to remap all of your keyboard shortcuts (just by hovering on a menu and pushing the key you want, which I've yet to see in any other program) which PS has absolutely no allowance for), but it's definitely in same general level. The main reason I don't use it, is that I have yet to get the windows port to do anything but have a schizoid panic attack when attempting to use my graphics tablet (wacom graphire original) with it. But it may well have grown since then, it's been probably a year since I tried.


Oh, one last program, that I will recommend hands-down to anyone who has to deal with a greater-than-small collection of graphics files. Thumbs Plus. Shareware, 75$ or so, and I've yet to have any regret whatsoever for it. That was a good chunk of my money back when I bought it (****, I was still a kid then I think), but I did my research, and spent at least a week considering it, and I could not find another program for free or for any amount of money that worked a third as well for me as it. And I still haven't seen one, what, four or five years later? This is one of about four windows programs that I really hurt for when I try to switch over to linux. The only files I've used that it won't handle are GIMP's XCF files (it's right happy with PSD if you leave on one the file-saving options, i'm blanking on the name but it's something about saving extra image data.) and perhaps DDS (compressed 3d texture format) -- but then, I'm running two versions behind until I get some income for the upgrade . . .

[Starweaver Blue]

(splitting this into a separate post since the topic utterly changes here)

And it hurts indies like me the most, not only because we are the most fragile, but because if you for example pirate a copy of Photoshop, now you are using the top-of-the-line artwork program for free. If you didn't have the ability to pirate, yet you didn't have the money for the outrageously expensive Photoshop, you would've had to buy something cheaper, like say Paint Shop Pro - it may not do as much stuff, but it's in your price range. Because you pirated the top of the line, you potentially cost its cheaper competition a sale (so the standard argument that you would never have bought a copy of Photoshop in the first place is NOT an excuse for piracy, it just means that your act is hurting the little guys instead of the big corporation you thought you were so heroically attacking with your theft).

Thanks -- that's an angle on things that I've never actually seen before. I've been trying to understand the ethics of intellectual property for a long time now. It's still a murky mess. And perhaps your right, that the ethics don't matter as much as the practicality of things. But there's more to it than that, for me at least.

I come from an environment where piracy is standard; this is how I grew up. For a long time I didn't have any problems with it. I can see now that that started changing in small ways -- when I made up my mind that I would not publicly distribute anything, when I made up my mind that I would not use pirated tools to create anything I would publish publicly. At some point I stopped looking for any of it myself, and only using what I got second hand from the people near me. I can see myself becoming slowly less OK with the concept . . .

But I think the real turning point -- and heck, I didn't really know it at the time -- was when someone close to me started pirating _books_. Discworld. I still don't really understand _why_ they were doing it. There are these things called libraries, and they carry books that are as popular as that . . . . Plus, you're talking about an artistic medium with not only one of the lowest average price per unit but perhaps (along with some games) the time usage time per dollar. PLUS, this is a person who is lucky to have time and energy to read a whole four pages in one day. So a Dr. L Supreme (30$) worth of books would last them a whole YEAR, nevermind a mainstream/commercial game's worth . . .

(I still wish I would have spoken up directly about it. I think the only reason I didn't was because the target was an extremely popular series by a significant author, and not some poor struggling author for whom every sale counts (I.E., the other 98% . . . ))

Ok, that was a bit of a tangent. Anyway. I found out about this a bit over a year ago. If my timeline is right, this puts it right in between the time I first started writing fiction seriously (jan 2003) and the time I more-or-less declared myself a writer before the universe-and-four-people-who-mattered (mid summer 2003). I don't know if I'd just matured or if it was because it was about my own new artform, but . . .

It's an artist's honour -- or, that same old warranty-void-in-the-presence-of-sociopaths Golden Rule. If I want to give myself the choice to ask for money for what I create, then I have a moral obligation to pay for the creations of others who have also made that choice. (I also choose to repay those who do not ask, in other ways: passing any enhancements back to the open source ones; free copies of things that incorporate someone else's work. A number of bands will receive free copies of books I publish, because what I write is so heavily influenced by music.)

(Version 1.5 of this will actually incorporate something I feel but don't have words for at four am, which is why I would still pay for others even if I insisted on giving away everything of my own for free.)

(And now I'm wondering if and how the wiccan three-fold rule could apply to software and IP . . . maybe I really should become a minister . . . )

. . . I did not intend to blather so. I hope something I've said is somehow useful. Thank you for giving me a prompt to figure something important out. It's probably a strange way to introduce myself . . . . I'm really just learning to really think for myself about . . . a lot of things, really. I'm still shedding my old skin, in so many ways. (I've just recently moved away from home, I realize this forum hasn't the context now :)). I still need to sort through and . . . correct, my last few lingering fallacies.

660 words in this section alone . . . I should start over and write this again in a different tone, as an article . . .

[Piggyworks]

Hamumu grafics kinda look like RareWares grafics.

[Dwo]

i agree!