Hi all,
I’d appriciate a little bit of advice. I desperately need to make an interactive 3D model that can be exploded and compressed. I’d REALLY like it if said model could run outside of the developement environment (stand alone item). Anyway, it seems like Blender is what I want to use. However, before I go through the learning curve I’d like to get the advice of anyone who has used it…CAN Blender make an interactive, explodable 3d model?
Thanks for any help!
Yes it can, but it would only be one of the tools in your arsenal most likely. I’m not a game developer but I would suspect you would need a game engine like unity to do what you want. It possibly could be done in Flash as well, I’m not sure exactly what you want to do. But Blender is definitely a tool that you want in your arsenal, and I personally think of it as the starting point for all 3d work.
Blender is the most versatile 3d tool I have ever found.
Of course I am a blender fan, I’m sure max, maya, and lightwave users feel the same about their tools. But Blender I think is unique because it doesn’t hold your hand as much. To get something accomplished in Blender, you almost need to understand how it works, not just how to use it. As a result you truly begin to learn 3d itself, not just an application. The learning curve for this industry is extremely long though, don’t try to learn Blender just for one project, it’s not worth it. But if you want to learn this business, then having a project you are trying to accomplish is a great way to get started imo.
Welcome to the forums.
Blender includes its own game engine and can produce a game runtime that will let people ‘play’ your model without them needing blender itself. How difficult or practical it would be depends on the complexity of the model and its constituent parts, and on how complex you want the possible interactions to be. Assuming you don’t need anything much more complex than manipulating the camera / viewpoint, rotating the model, having it pull apart / slide back together, and perhaps rotating individual pieces, imo it would probably be easier to learn to accomplish this within blender rather than having to learn a seperate game engine such as Unity. A potential problem with this approach is that the contents of the runtime you create are not protected in any way - anyone you give the file to has complete access to the models, textures, animations and interaction logic it contains. You could probably get more definative answers in the BGE section of the forum.