we have the following use case:
In order to support this, i was thinking of the following process:
a. the 3d models are created offline and uploaded to the server
b. in real time, the texture mapping is done on the server
c. the generated view of the 3D model is saved to a temporary file
d. the file is displayed in a img tag
So now to the questions:
what are your suggestions about the tools that would support this kind of process? The OS on which they run is not important. The steps b. and c. should be quite fast.
So the requirements for theses tools are:
for the 3D modeler:
- open source
- easy to use
- save the model in a format readable by the library used in the next steps
for the graphical library:
- open source
- easy to use
- easy on resources (well as much as a graphics intensive application can be :) )
- read the files generated by the modeler
- apply textures
- save a view of the generate object + texture to a normal file to be displayed in a browser.
Thanks.
(it seems i cannot add a comment to the question above - thus sending this as an answer)
all you suggestions are great and we had great fun trying them out.
however pretty soon it became clear that we cannot apply them on the server-side since the server does not have a GPU.
now there are 2 options arround that:
Thanks.
what are your suggestions about the tools that would support this kind of process? The OS on which they run is not important. The steps b. and c. should be quite fast.
There are a lot of 3D modelers out there, I suggest you look at Blender, but here there is a list (with screenshots) of 25 apps out there
Here are some tutorials explaining how to model for XNA with Blender:
http://www.stromcode.com/2008/03/10/modelling-for-xna-with-blender-part-i/ http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/blogs/getting-started-with-blender-3d-and-xna/
for the graphical library
I suggest you use XNA, it will save you time since it's c# and doesn't need a lot of effort to pick up and it's very quick because it uses the GPU. You will need to load a model from a file (you can make it import during runtime with a bit of effort) then load the texture and apply it to the model through the models' Effect.
Then you can generate the image you want to a file accessible by the website. Your users can then read the images.
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