2 replies to this topic

[eugene]

Hi friends,

I have two questions:

1. Do you know what is the best 3D Modeling program for DirectX 9 ? Should I go with 3D Studio Max (cause I read somewhere this is industry standard for games) or I should use some free programs like Blender.

2. Does DirectX 9 has some default library method for loading model (.X) files ?

Thanks and regards,

[rouncer]

these questions of yours a little silly, as long as it outputs to triangles thats all you need from the 3d application, and they ALL do.

and just to tell you something rebelious about myself, i couldnt give a crap if 3dsmax is the industry standard, i HATE that program, im more into the arty detail of digital sculpting, its way more fancy. my favorite program is 3d coat, then i manually convert them to low poly normal mapped models if i feel like, but im lazy and just raster the point clouds most the time.

dont worry about using some D3DXMESH thing in direct x, just make your own vertex buffers and index buffers, the mesh tools are just code written for you THAT YOU SHOULD WORK OUT YOURSELF.

[MarekKnows.com]

Don't worry about what is the "best" but rather which does the job that you are trying to perform.

If you are an indie developer getting the "best" tools can be expensive, but there are a lot of tools that will do the job for you and most of them you can get for free. When I was starting out, I used Caligari trueSpace. I don't know if it is still available because Microsoft purchased Caligari and ended up shutting it down. v7.6 is a fully featured 3D rendering program, pretty easy to use, and it did support .x files.