I’ve been looking at various 3d game engines that I could use to make a game in python, and I have to say. panda3d has probably been the most promising!
I just have a question about the formats… it seems panda3d currently supports only the internal egg format for models…
are there any plans of supporting any more common formats such as the quake-related formats like BSP maps and MDL/MD2 models? I ask because most amateur game developers (like me can’t afford packages like maya or 3dsmax, we’re more familiar with free tools such as those for Quake games, ie: quark, valve hammer, etc…
We don’t have any specific plans at the VR Studio to extend the set of egg converters to include these products, although I can’t speak for ETC’s plans for the future.
But that being said, the egg format is quite simple; it’s a text format, easy to read and understand by a human, and it’s fairly well documented (see panda/src/doc/eggSyntax.txt). And there’s a library in panda/src/egg that can be used to generate and/or parse egg files.
So it’s not really difficult to write a converter from any arbitrary file format you like into egg (with a few caveats–Panda doesn’t currently support BSP culling, for instance). There are several of these already in the pandatool hierarchy, as well as the 3dsmax converter that the ETC team has written. If you wanted to tackle an additional converter or two, you would find plenty of help here to do so, and your contributions would be gladly welcomed into the codebase.
Where has this project been hiding!!! I had tried to look in google for a project like this before I started my own, and if what I see is true, this engine is perfect!!! Python is the way to go disney!
The problem is the export. It has been in purpose limited in the export. Only by the gmax listener, but text to have an output is limited ridiculously.
The only chance is export as md3. Md3 is limited to 8.192 triangles, which for now is even too high. But is not usable for levels, for that.
But there are may modellers.
You should imho at least add an *.OBJ support, and *.md3.
being ideal later on a bones an weighted universal format like *.x
That one can do also for levels. (it should work for objects, characters, animations, if used the dx8 or better version. *.x is totally free format, like obj and md3)
Gmax can be used for even comercial projects provided you don’t do any exploit , reverse engineering to gmax.
so, knowing md3 format loose bones, but can be as smooth -I use no tags, or body parts ;I make all character a single piece and force engines to interpolate- , and is limited to 8192 tris (aproblem for the future) , you can yet give support to it, as is free this way.
I see…the problem is…then the engine is maily only going to be used for people with non legal versions of max… or the very rare legal Max users…
I have found like 2, in years of inet…
Instead, supporting formats like *.x (sceneries, objects, character animation) or *.obj (small or huge sceneries, objects) and md3(objects, character animations) would open the engine use to practically any type of artist…(blender exports now natively to *.x animation…like a load of packages more…)
Python is a language quite easy for someone like me , that I’m only an artist…I could learn it, I think. And yet could serve me to code other kind of things, not only games.
Well, stealing the models from Toontown for some other use is both a copyright violation and a fairly limited way to get models. There are better ways.
In addition to the Maya, SoftImage, 3DSMax, and MultiGen converters, Panda currently imports Lightwave (.lwo) and AutoCAD (.dxf) files. The latest version of Panda in the development tree also supports VRML 2.0 (.wrl) and DirectX (.x) files (models only, no animations); I imagine these will be included with the next CMU release.
Furthermore, Panda’s egg format is fully open and documented, and we also provide a C++ library that reads and writes egg, making it fairly easy for an interested party to write a converter to or from any file format of their choosing. For instance, we have had some reports of someone working on a Blender converter, although I don’t know what the status of that is.
…Which there are no websites for those(that’s why i said it’s easiest to get them from 3DS)
Why didn’t we make a command line converter for 3DSMAX? If we did, nobody would be ripping at ALL from toontown(I don’t distribute my projects… yet) And because amatuers can’t afford 3D software like that, we have no means of converting
here’s my idea for converting non-animated .3DS into .EGG:
Wait for the .X supporting version of Panda3D to come out
Convert your .3DS files to .X using Microsoft’s non-plugin converter
And convert your .X to .EGG!
Though, the only problem with converting multiple times is that it can take quite a while to convert and you won’t feel like going through that process just for a few models(imagine if there were 4 converters you had to go through) Oh, well, my only guess is to ask 3dsmax users to convert the files for me or use Maya Personal Learning Edition(the free version)
can’t afford packages like maya or 3dsmax, we’re more familiar with free tools such as those for Quake games, ie: quark, valve hammer, etc…
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