So a question for the 3d modelling experts.

Strata Foto 3D SE is an application which takes a series of photographs of an object and (after a bit of effort) produces a mesh and texture.

Now I admit to having absolutely no skill or experience of 3d modelling, ok I can faff about in Blender and end up with a lumpy potato thing but that's about it, so I was hoping that someone, friendly, with 'the knowledge' could maybe advise whether using such a tool to generate a 3D model could be the first step in a workflow resulting in an animated character.

A rather nice person said they would transfer the examples of Strata Foto 3D SE output that I apparently put in the wrong place to the new thread so hopefully some time soon they will appear here, if so could anyone that has the inclination please take a look at them and answer the following questions:

1) Are the resulting meshes and textures suitable for 'rigging'/animation.

2) What would they recommend as the remainder of the workflow, assuming that any resulting models would be GG'friendly.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

I had a quick look at your model on my break tis afternoon, loaded it into blender and checked to see if I could add some bones, and yes you should be able to rig it and animate it.

It would be better if the model started off straight from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail though, it's a bit tricky adding bones with its head facing to the right and the tail bent, but it can be done.

The things is though mate, by using your method to create the model you have really only avoided doing what most people think of as the easiest part of creating an animated "character" model, rigging it, setting up the animations, and getting it ready for GameGuru is a lot harder. So if you can't wrap your head around the modelling part, you will have trouble with the rest.

Here's a series of videos that show you how to rig and animate a character in Blender:

I thought that might be a major issue, finding 'real world' examples of animals that are 'straight' is extremely difficult.

For things like vehicles this might be more of a 'doable' proposition I suspect.

The annoying thing is that back in the early 90's I had a program on my RiscPC which produced animated dinosaurs , you basically selected a skeleton type, altered bone sizes or number, tested the results and when happy chose a skin pattern, then after a few hours of rendering you had a dino stomping around the place. Granted it was an 'educational' program rather than game related but why don't similar simple programs exist now? (and before anyone suggests Poser, I have it and it's rubbish. The animals have few unrealistic animations and the method of adding more is far from simple).