Hi,

As I continue to learn the basics of GG and work on my first game (and website), I would like to begin dabbling in graphics design for my games down the road. (My first game which I hope to release in the next month will only use assets provided by GG and the GG Store so I can focus on getting around GG more.)

As someone who has never learned how to create my own 3D graphics, I did some research as to which one would be the best for someone such as myself.

It all came down to either Blender and Dark Basic Pro.

Right now, I am only interested in creating immobile objects like boxes, buildings, cars, etc. Characters are not much of a priority at the moment as the character creator provided by GG does more than enough for me at the moment.


Thanks!

Blender is a model program, Dark Basic Pro is a programming language to make games and apps in. they do separate things.

Blender is a great open source program for modelling and has most of the functionality as Maya and 3ds max, just done the Blender way. It will be good for you for what you want to model. You will need to turn on the direct x export plugin in the user preferences.

You will need a paint program for textures for your model. GIMP or Paint.net are good and both have the plugins you will need.

Dark Basic Pro, If you want to make your own game from scratch and program every aspect of it, then that will be for you also. FPSC classic was made with Dark Basic Pro coding, and GameGuru when it first came out was made in Dark Basic Pro also. It has since been ported to C++ and is the current version we are using today.

Thanks, Myke! Really appreciate you help. Kinda feel like a dud thinking that Blender and DBP did the same thing haha.

Thanks again, I've also heard of other programs such as Maya but I'm going to give BLender a go, especially since it was recommended in the GG tutorials.

Your welcome. Plenty of blender tutorials on line also for the basics of the program itself.

As PirateMyke said they're two completely different things, you can't compare them. Personally I love Blender, the control methods is not as intuitive as some modelling software, but once you get use to it it's well on par with some of the top software out there that costs thousands, pretty damned good for a free program!

If you are seriously interested in modelling for GG then I highly recommend watching a series of videos created by one of our own mods "Unfamillia", he has a tutorial series that, while a little old now, takes you by the hand and walks you through step by step on how to make, texture and import a model for GG.

He's one of the few people I have ever come across that explains every detail down to which buttons he pressed. His tutorial really a "must watch" for anyone who has just picked up Blender and wants to learn.

Check our his thread here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/208184

The only thing I would not use Blender for is character modelling for GG, for some reason the .x export in Blender kind of messes up where bones and animations are concerned, it's ok for character modelling in other engines but it becomes awkward when creating character models for GG for some reason, I think it's something to do with different .x version compatability.

Actually, Blender is also a game engine with visual scripting and lots of good tutorials on the subject. Some neat games have been made with blender, like Big Buck Bunny and some others. There are also people creating mmos with blender that are still in alpha. Its quite easy to create a simple shooter with blender if you just follow some tutorials. Youtube has allot of them to learn from.

As for simple fast to the points modeling with good functions. You cant go wrong with Wings 3d. Its free and very easy to use. For organic you just box model your character then smooth it and boom you have a really nice clean lined mesh to animate. For static objects, same thing.

example of object modeled in wings 3d.

Best of luck...

Re: Learning Blender

For a very up to date (v2.7) set of tutorials, here is a most excellent collection... clear, well paced, well produced:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLda3VoSoc_TR7X7wfblBGiRz-bvhKpGkS

Very good to know, i'll definitely be looking through those, i'm always wanting to learn more. It's also worth paying £6.99 on steam for the Blender Game Assett Creaton streaming video tutorials, they're extremely well put together videos that take you step by step through the process of creating game engine ready entities, including LOD etc. http://store.steampowered.com/app/373020/