I am at work on the latest version of 3DCrafter. I recently completed a major redevelopment of the “foundation” of 3DCrafter. It is now entirely written in C# and uses Direct3D 11. This was the first step towards an entirely updated version, which will be 3DCrafter 10.
The first new feature for 3DCrafter 10 is voxel modelling. Voxels are 3D pixels. They can either be rendered as cubes, or automatically smoothed. Performance is quite good even with millions of voxels. I have completed this feature and am in the process of integrating it into 3DCrafter and at the same time modifying the 3DCrafter interface somewhat.
I’ll provide more information as I complete more features.
I am glad to hear you have not dropped this product. I need to ask if the existing plugins for Train Simulator 20xx (aka Railworks) will still be supported.
Actual I have several question, but I doubt this is the correct thread to ask all of them. Could we start a dialog on this? I am sure there are others who are just as interested about what v10 has to offer.
Yes, the Railworks plug-in will be supported. That’s a certainty.
That’s excellent! I’m glad I’ll be able to continue to use 3DC to produce DLC for TS2014.
This is wonderful news. Will you be revealing any other new features. Two things in particular would interest me greatly – one is automatic shadow baking (on a “complete map”) and the other would be to have a significant improvement to the stability of the tool.
Will this be avaiable as an ‘update’ to existing “Pro” users, and at what price? Thanx
This is essentially a re-write of 3DCrafter in that ALL of the existing code has been converted to C#. I’m happy with the results in all respects.
As for new features… I’m not at the point where I can talk about that. I’m very happy with the voxel support, so I feel good about talking about that.
One thing I can mention is that materials are getting an entire re-write. Call it a “reboot”. They will be entirely shader based. The old “blend” model is antiquated. Though, I may continue to support some sort of “simulation” of blending for those who still like and use it. But materials will primarily be via shaders.
I’m also looking at using the Microsoft ribbon style of interface. Actually, I have a working example up and running, with a sub-set of 3DCrafter. I haven’t decided yet if it is suitable for modelling or not. It certainly is a different interface. But, if the end result is less clicks and drags, then its a good thing. That goes for the rest of 3DCrafter also. I like the idea of reducing the number of clicks and drags.
This will be an “update”, and a free one for those who have 3DCrafter 9 Pro currently. Patience will be rewarded. 🙂
I have been using 3DC since 2010, and have made some very realistic models with the program. But I have to echo Mike Rennie’s comment about shadow baking. I understand that you don’t just snap your fingers and have new features appear in a program. I don’t know how hard it would be to implement automated bakes into v10. But for me to consider continued use of the program, it is a must have. For the end-user, correct shadowing can mean the difference between acceptance or rejection of a model by a game company. Sure, the baking can be done by hand, but that can be painfully slow and subject to the interpretation of the creator.
The only other improvment I would ask for would be bounding box calculations, which might be an issue with the IGS exporter for Railworks. Sometimes you get an object that disappears at the edge of the field of view. Looking at it in it’s finished form reveals that the bounding box is way to small for the object.
Texture baking is something I’d love to provide. Actually, I’d like to write it myself, but odds are that if I do provide it, I would use a third party tool such as POVRay. There’s no reason to re-invent the wheel, I guess.
I came across this, which looks entirely do-able:
http://www.ignorancia.org/en/index.php?page=ao-baking