Ive had a look into this occasionally over the past year, but it’s always a nightmare finding the best software to do it with.
I’ve had a go of crysis, which while amazing, is a little heavy for what we want (plus is a game engine and cant be sent standalone)
Theres another one i’ve found which allows you to make a standalone exe of the project, supports HDRI and looks suprisingly good. Unfortunatly, cant remember the name. I do remember one of the demo’s for it being some ruins in a hillside, lit by hdri though.
Any other software out there to reccomend? (Or does anyone know the name of the one I mean?) Ideally something that requires as little programming knowledge as possible.
they have a demo, try it. a website is not always trustworthy.
it takes some time to get into it, but it will let you do anything you describe and a lot more too.
Ok, so ive spent about 2/3 hours downloading everything I thought i needed and getting a model ready… and their exporter plugin doesnt have a 64bit version??
Virtools aint bad at all. Tho i havent played with any of the recent versions. It’s very powerful, nodebased (=no programming) and since it was bought by dassault it gets a bias towards industry use it seems.
you’re probably thinking of Unity3D which is a nice engine, though I’d recommend some light programming or scripting skills for that one. edit: and its mac authoring only, though it can publish to mac/pc
I Personally use Virtools, and like it as a program, but be sure to have a handle on their publishing costs before you dive in too deep. they can be a bit cost prohibitive for simpler work. I’ve done everything from *large* project room design configuration tools, to product demonstrations, to arch walkthrus with it over the past 5 years.
Quest is decent, I’ve used it for some simple things, but haven’t gotten toooo deep into it. both quest and virtools fall under the category that of visual node based scripting. meaning you can take them as far or as simple as you like, but they’re pretty complex programs and not a pick it up and learn it in an afternoon thing.
I cant really go much further than a couple afternoons with them without getting some tangiable results out. Quest broke my brain and I had a nightmare just importing the model, let alone doing anything with it.
I’ll carry on playing with it at home because I want to learn something like that anyway, i’ll have a proper look at the others tomorrow afternoon. If all else fails might just go back to editing out the HUD in crysis and keeping things internal, it’s far easier that way :lol:
windows + mac os x and also very usefull extensions:
I personaly like VRML, because you can really easy export from max and “hack” all what you need , like materials or interactions, directly into an asci file.
the examples on their website arent too exciting, but you can get great results if you texturebake everything. Very easy to use (atleast for basic stuff), and produces a relatively small file which can be viewed in IE or Firefox.
I believe they recently released a 64-bit version.
/k
Apparently it’s also possible to mod the menu’s in-game now, so I think i’m moving back to this.
I did try quite a few of these listed - but they just dont look good enough. And the ones that are getting there have a horrible interface and take ages to learn.
I’m an “old” Quest3D user…
but upgrade to 4.0 is far too expensive to me…
Another thing : virtools and Quest3D uses latest versions of directx, and needs a solid graphic card
As i’m making reatime archviz and wants it to work on every browser and both PC and Mac (and Iphone !), virtools, Quest and vertice and bad for me as they have limitations for massive web diffusion.
I’ve changed for Stonetrip Shiva, and don’t regret my invest !
Works well, everywhere, and even on basic platforms..
I’m surprised no one mentioned Autodesk showcase. It’s not incredibly flexible, but the quality is good at least. It can handle data much better than others I’ve seen, but it’s quite expensive.