I am totally new to 3D modeling and 3D programming, so if someone could provide me some suggestions here on how to proceed I would really appreciate it, and I apologize if this is a FAQ, if it’s already been answered you can point me to links and I’ll appreciate it:
Basically, given a real-life 3D object, i.e. a bottle, a can, a box, a house, a car etc. What are some of the best ways to made a .3ds file that is a model of that object? I know of the existence of 3D Studio Max but haven’t looked at it yet, is that the best out there?
I have started learning OpenGL C++ programming but constant calls to glVertex3f and glColor3f I’m betting are not typically the way to go.
Any pointers in the right direction or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Joe
Wow, you’ve got a lot of learning ahead of you, I myself am in the infancy stages of learning C++, and I am not going to worry about 3d programming until I have a better grasp on object oriented programming. I have 3d Studio Max, and I guess it is pretty good. By good I mean powerful, but not the most user friendly piece of software I have ever used. It isn’t the kind of thing you can just look at the interface and say “oh, I get it now.” I recommend THE 3DSTUDIO MAX 3.1 BIBLE, I don’t have it in front of me right now, or I would tell you who it is by. The author does a really good job explaing the different things you can do, and how it actually works.
for a car, I would probably create a box to be the center section (passenger cab), and extrude the front and rear faces to form the hood and trunk. I would then convert the whole thing to NURBS and try to make some nice contours.
The bottle I would start with a cylinder and extrude the top and taper it, again probably converting the whole mesh to NURBS to add some smoothness.
Sorry this post is so long, but I hope I have helped. Good luck on the programming and modeling.
a link to the book on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0…5277698-6516519