Posted by waufrepi III on Feb 25, 2008; 11:25pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Blender-for-Croquet-Other-or-better-options-tp128903p128904.html

hello all,

     I'm still trying to navigate the world of Croquet:
     I'm a Blender Head and have been for about a year(on and off) so I guess I
talk from a somewhat priveledged (and selfish) position. Is Blender difficult
to learn? Yes. But why? and can this be overcome?
     First: I think that the average user does not(I didn't) fully appreciate
the scale of an animate package or better put: how much goes into making 3d
content. Regardless of what you use there are very basics that create the
complexity in authoring tool. Modeling, material and texture
settings,animatingadding interaction to the object are un-avoidables. these are
concepts and skills that are application independent. If your learning about
these concepts (which was my case) in addition to learning an interface or tool
with which to do something with them then your learning twice as much[twice as
hard...twice as confusing}.
     As you delve deeper into the process the load thickens. For instance
modeling deals with manipulation of meshes:(booleans or just joining, rotation,
scale, duplication, selection [edge, vertices, face] etc.) Materials:
(unwrapping, material indices, dealing with shaders ) Textures: ( procedural,
animation, applying multiple textures) Animating: (Bones, armatures, parenting,
vertex groups, constraints).
 Aain I'll restate that this is not a Blender thing it's a learning about the
3D creation process thing. if your a programer and your suddenly overwhelmed by
how much time your investing learning how to create content for 3d environments
then you feel the same when I did when I decided to move from painting to
learning to create digital content;from creating digital content to 3D content;
from creating 3d content to placing in an evironment in which others can
interact with it(which is where I am now).  in essence about moving from a
place where your mind is fluid to one where the are obstacles between concept
and object.
    Croquet is a beautiful thing and since it is still the relatively early
development stages some realities have to be faced. the creation of rich
emersive environments is conmposed of separate entities,two of which are
programmers and designers. As a 3d designer I want to spend as little time as
possible hacking into Croquet and as much time as possible making things to
place inside it...things my imagination needs a place for.(he alternative is to
have electricians fixing your roof.)
     Regardless of which package is chosen,the key is that in its selection you
should not limit the power of designers. Croquet worlds will be very dismal
environments if its design tool is catered to minds whose enjoyment is writing
code (though some coders would obviously be capable of beautiful content and
vice verse). further, I believe time will show that some of the things that
Blender can do now will not be outside the bounds of 3d world creation. in fact
what I find particularly appealing and promising about Croquet is that its
design places processing on each individuals machine a limitation of Blenders
game engine for immersive content creation.
      Blender is -the- open source alternative to otherwise expensive authoring
tools. It has a very large, active user community and a developement team that
is in a constant effort to add features and make improvements to the existing
package. Meaning that by adopting it the Croquet community will attract members
of the Blender community (e.g. attract designers). To develope a Croquet based
creation package exclusively will stunt the growth of the community both in
numbers and infusion of ideas. The idea part is the big issue because its not
only the potential content that goes but its the features that Blender coders
haven't invented yet that go too (remeber Blender isn't going anywhere).
      As far as learning the interface and basic modeling technique I would
suggest a Croquet based Blender tutorial series housed in proximity to Croquet
proper ducumentation. that way people can enter into the Blender Croquet
relationship with knowledge of what to disregard when using Blender for Croquet
specifically. I'm frankly still unclear about the import process (me not much
of a programmer) for use with the skeletal animation package. any words on this
would be greatly appreciated. I should also mention that I'm in the process of
creating video tutorials to compliment the DMU tutorial "holy trinity" series
I've been following(posted most likely by the end of next weekend.) Blender
specific.
      But really, I've OGRE exported xml files sitting on my desktop just
waiting to be imported into Croquet...help help help :=
   
I'm a bit of a dreamer and I think we are all inspired at least in part by
notions of a holodeck. I would hate to spoil the imagination of the future by
the limitations of now.
                                      ciao, waufrepi