Vista - Good news: Blender-XAML converter

If you are one of the many readers (more than 100 everyday) of our free DMU
tutorials about 3D game creation using WPF , there are good news for you:

Daniel Lehenbauer put available on his blog a converter from Blender to
XAML. Now you can create your games using this free 3D modeler.

http://blogs.msdn.com/danlehen/archi...14/513012.aspx

Soon we will present a complete tutorials serie about the use of Blender and
the Daniels' converter. For beginners in 3D modeling.

I believe that we have here a good system (Blender+WPF) to teach the basics
of game creation for students. And all FREE! (if the school has Windows XP,
of course).

WPF is not a professional game engine (I like to repeat this again) but it's
is good for hobbyists or students. That can publish using the free Visual C#
and ClickOnce their works at the internet.

Thanks Daniel.

Our tutorials (good for Dec CTP) are at:

http://www.dmu.com

Blender is available for download at:

http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html

WPF is still a viable game platform in general for simple games - side
scroller, 3D card games, and etc...basic stuff only, but still production
quality.

The issue with Blender and other tools is to see what you actually get. I'm
looking at blender right now to see if certain light settings will create an
approximate look that WPF 3D will render.

Using Blender with ray tracing, and seeing something completely different on
the other end is not helpful without a lot of experience in knowing what not
to do.


"Americo" wrote:

> If you are one of the many readers (more than 100 everyday) of our free DMU
> tutorials about 3D game creation using WPF , there are good news for you:
>
> Daniel Lehenbauer put available on his blog a converter from Blender to
> XAML. Now you can create your games using this free 3D modeler.
>
> http://blogs.msdn.com/danlehen/archi...14/513012.aspx
>
> Soon we will present a complete tutorials serie about the use of Blender and
> the Daniels' converter. For beginners in 3D modeling.
>
> I believe that we have here a good system (Blender+WPF) to teach the basics
> of game creation for students. And all FREE! (if the school has Windows XP,
> of course).
>
> WPF is not a professional game engine (I like to repeat this again) but it's
> is good for hobbyists or students. That can publish using the free Visual C#
> and ClickOnce their works at the internet.
>
> Thanks Daniel.
>
> Our tutorials (good for Dec CTP) are at:
>
> http://www.dmu.com
>
> Blender is available for download at:
>
> http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
>

I am also working with 3D in WPF. I have written a tool to import 3D objects
from 3ds files directly into WPF (available for free at www.ab3d.si).

When I was trying to import different 3ds models I have found out that the
biggest problem with using third party models (for example 3ds files from
internet) or third party modeling software is that WPF uses different object
model for storing 3d objects. An important difference is that in WPF it is
only possible to assign one material to the whole GeometryModel3D. But in
many other formats it is possible to assign different materials to different
faces (TriangleIndices) inside one 3d object – use of so called compound
materials or multi-sub materials.

This problem exists also for converter from Blender to XAML (if you get a
more complex 3ds file from let's say www.3dcafe.com and import it into
Blender and from it into xaml). So you must have that in mind when you are
designing models for WPF. But that can be quite inconvenient when you are
using third party models.

I do not expect that the WPF 3D model will be changed in the future. So the
importers/converters must be changed to create new GeometryModel3D objects
from different faces (TriangleIndices) that use different materials. In that
case some vertexes (Positions) must be duplicated but this can be done. I am
currently writing it for importing 3ds files so that almost all imported
models will look the same in WPF.

Of course there will always be a difference between ray-traced rendered
images and images in WPF. But with some adaptations we could somehow come
closer. Hopefully