How are you getting your creations into Panda3D? Looking for consensus, best practices.
Mine was going from Blender 2.71 to Blender 2.49 so as to use chicken. Having a problem getting work done using Cycles to display in 2.49 though.
Seems I might have to take a step sideways and write a converter for Blender 2.71 to egg… unless someone else is doing it?
For myself, I use Blender 2…66a and YABEE.
I’m not sure that you’ll find a useful concensus: I imagine that some people use Max, some use Maya, some use Blender, and so on.
The consensus isn’t in regard to a specific application, But the most efficient in a best practices context, to use whichever it is, in a Panda 3D based tool chain.
For myself, what do I know is I have no wish to use a dated application in order to have a working pipeline. But having panda show up as a render choice in Blender, or writing a converter for it, is heavier lifting than I was intending to do at the moment: I have a game to get out.
So at a minimum I have to differentiate in hard way, between long term and short term goals regarding the engine; which I intend, (as I almost went to unity) in the end, to make mine.
Thanks for the reply.
What’s wrong with YABEE? It’s a converter written for Blender 2.5 and above, so it should suit your purposes. It should also work for your Blender version (and if not, I’m sure it can be fixed relatively easily).
… I’m honestly not sure of what you’re saying here. The most efficient what in a best practices context, for one thing? 
How dated is Blender v2.66a for your purposes? It’s not the most recent release, admittedly (I believe that the most recent release version is v2.71), but do the more recent versions have features, changes or fixes that you intend to use for your game, and that 2.66a lacks?
Out of curiosity, given your focus on tools, what prompted you to choose Panda over Unity? I would have thought that the tool-chain would be one area in which Unity had the advantage over Panda.
I gather that ninth decided to not work on YABEE while anti-Russian sentiment was high; I don’t know whether that has changed. Of course, deathless could always have a shot at updating YABEE, but I don’t know how complicated that might be, as I don’t know how much Blender has changed its API between versions (which I seem to recall ninth mentioning as one of the reasons that YABEE breaks between Blender versions).
I don’t have time for any of this:
[url]Blender object exporting trouble]
This didn’t help either:
I’ll spare you the 2.71 release notes and bug fixes, suffice it to say combined, the above were enough to make me look elsewhere.
I just downloaded the Blender source and libs: I like the idea of using Panda as a renderer, with (-flame retardent- better than Maya) Blender, as a WYSWYG world editor.
Integrating, making the node editor available to Panda3D artists, or with people with limited to none coding experience, has merit as well.
But … all that said, with the nod you’ve given it, I’ll give YABEE, for the short term, a shot.
Changes nothing though: I have my own ideas, and I think them more fun, and in the end more fruitful.
Whatsoever application people are using, it should be possible to synthesize or derive a best practices approach to that specific application. And thereby weigh ones options and choices relative to such a milieu, accordingly.
Dated as in ancient; subjective I know but still.
As to features, everyone of them, so far.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.71
Tools are actually secondary, it is the ability to express ones self and the ease with which such is (fully) possible that’s truly core, or the driver as it were. Also Unity perhaps … does have an advantage, until you get to Panda3D itself: Unity doesn’t have Panda’s depth.
Somewhat like the difference between Maya and Blender, I think.
Hmm… If you want to use Blender as a full WYSIWYG world editor, you may have your work cut out for you. YABEE is, I think, primarily intended as a model exporter; I don’t think that it handles things like lights or Blender’s game logic (other than exportation of tags).
Hah, I’d hardly call 2.66a “ancient”–but as you say, such judgements are rather subjective. The important thing is that you have determined that 2.71 serves you significantly better than 2.66a.
Ah, I believe that I understand you now–thank you for the explanation. While I do think that it would be possible to reach a consensus, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever’s agreed would actually be the best approach, let alone the best for a given individual: after all, even leaving aside the question of “argument to popularity”, each of us is different, and what works for me may not for you, and vice versa.
I arrived at Blender through the same type of hard questions that brought me to Panda3D, actually, popularity would be, for me, a flag after a fashion. I do not believe you simply arrived at (powerful, but only “so so” as to popularity) blender either.
So after a fashion true but, It it is both possible, and necessary, to go beyond the superficial and get to the physics of a thing. Most are capable of such discernment if disposed to apply same.
At this stage of the game and my life, such has become a matter of course and thus, habitual.
Have you posted any of your work online?
To be honest, I don’t think that I recall all of the reasons that I settled on either Panda or Blender–although I’m pretty confident that in both cases one significant element was that they were both entirely free (well, more or less so in Panda’s case–there are issues such as use of FMod to watch out for, as I recall (and I hence use OpenAL)).
As to habits, they can be broken (when called for), I feel. 
Of recent Panda projects, only a few; you can actually find a few small projects of mine in the Code Snippets and Showcase sections of this forum, as I recall.