I was on this site in 09 and 10 and was making progress learning Panda3d, when my life took a whirlwind rollercoaster 9 year detour… But now I have time again to try my hand at game making.
I am happy to see this software still being used with an active community. Unfortunately for me though I will have to start over as I dont remember anything and I have lost all my old files and assets. Hopefully as I try and work with the engine my memory will come back.
We will see if I can finally finish something,
Here were my biggest challenges:
I have never been able to use blender. Whenever I try to it just does not act the same as it does in tutorials. For the past nine years I built furniture and ran children’s homes and worked as a pastor. SO I used 3d modeling everyday through sketchup and viacad. So that will be a challenge for me to find a scene editor I can use. Unless blender is easier to use now.
The biggest challenge is I fall into tutorial purgatory and I lose focus and the project dies.
Anyway thanks to this community for keeping panda3d going.
I dont know why I cant use it, Well I get overwhelmed by Blender’s UI. In sketchup or 3d cad I was able to create models and then fabricate them from wood with little to no thought. But in Blender it just does not function how I can grasp it. I really can’t explain more than that to you. Hexagon, ANim9or, Wings3d, Viacad, I can create models in minutes. In Blender after hours I have nothing I can use. I explained it to a friend- I feel like a caveman trying to fly a helicopter when I use blender.
In fact, the blender also gives me difficulties, but I had experience with 3dMax2009. The blender in the management was not very familiar, the choice of grid points is like hell. However, when I switched control in 3dMax style, I felt comfortable. Try changing control.
There is probably a pathway to convert the Sketchup files to something that Panda can use. You might also be able to make models in Sketchup, then place them together (e.g., making levels) in Blender then export everything from Blender to EGG/BAM.
Blender has gotten easier to use, and is about to get even easier to use with the new 2.8 release, but it’s true that it’s known for its steep learning curve. Since it is still very capable software and a popular choice within the community, though, and the pipeline from Blender is likely to be the most well-supported one, it may still be worth it to invest the effort into getting better acquainted with it.
But, as Moguri points out, there are likely ways to get models exported from SketchUp or other software. Panda3D has in the meantime gotten support for the Assimp library, which supports a broad range of formats, to varying degrees.
I know the pain. Blender got better, but it still has its sins, you still need to know that special key combo to perform some actions that have no button, icon nor menu entry (and you won’t know about a feature like that unless you already know about it), there are still some UI features that are just F*, and with little effort you can break your own UI beyond recognition.
There’s Blender for Artists a much more usable fork, give that a try: