Is this for the 3d previewer? It seems to be getting much cooler as time goes on!
Yes, this is for
Lifevis, the 3d real-time remote control interface for Dwarf Fortress.
ASCII!
I was thinking about that, but honestly, even THAT requires quite a bit of artistry. Think about it. Make a simple ascii char stretched out over one axis? It'll only look good from ONE side. So you have to do something to make it readable from multiple sides, which is non-trivial.
Spoils for bright colors on dark forums.
I think I can do some low poly models for you, it'll be good practice.
That'd be pretty awesome. Also, yea, good practice it is. You'll be surprised how *QUICKLY* you get over a thousand polys, especially keeping in mind that everything needs to be triangulated.
Can it be sent to you directly as a wavefront .obj?
Blender can export both to wings 3-D and wavefront.
Either is fine, although i suspect Wings 3D format might be better due to packaging the texture directly. The thing here is this:
I personally use Wings 3D as the core modeller for this, as it's free and open-source, that means anyone can modify stuff without buying 3DS MAX. Then i export models in Wings 3D into Wavefront .obj, which one of my Perl scrips can read and transform into the data lifevis needs internally.
If someone has a tool like 3ds Max, there shouldnt be a problem to create 3d creatures. It is really not that hard to create some basic "average quality" models. I dont have the software, but I had a chance to try it, since one of my friends is working with that software.
Keep in mind we need low-poly stuff here. I don't know the limits of lifevis yet, but roughly a million polys per second seems to be the cut-off at which it stops running nicely on my 2.4GHz/NV140M Thinkpad.
Oh btw I think that Deon might be interested in this, since he is creating 3d models for Mount and Blade.
Could you give him a poke? I don't know him.
I can do 3D modelling. I've never done ultra-high poly work, but a max of ~1000 triangles sounds right about where I'd want to be. However, I haven't really done anything in a while, so I'd probably be rusty if you had some requests.
I don't have special requests. I am after all, asking you guys to do stuff for me for free. Beggars can't be choosers.
I'm not looking for awesome art or something, all i'd like to have is some
simple models which i can use in lifevis so i can actually tell whether a creature is a dwarf or a fire imp. I could honestly do it myself, but i'd think my time is better spent coding, no? =)
If you want 3D ASCII stuff done, I'll grab a milkshape trial and get to work. Milkshape is <3 for ultra-low-poly work.
I'm open to
any kind of model. In the end there will be one directory for models where people can throw in the .obj files from another repository directory, then double-click the conversion script and they're good to go. It'll be pick&choose.