Scratch

Are you looking to make a game? Or do modeling? I heard Blender is very good for making 3D models, but I'm not sure about the learning curve. If you want to make your own 3D maps for videogames, an amazing program is called Sauerbraten (Cube Engine 2). It's extremely easy to pick up and build with, it's free, and you can build maps online with other people. It's an FPS engine and all map modeling is done ingame, so you can just jump in and run around at the tap of a key.

Alice is exactly what you're looking for.

Yeah, Alice and Blender are good choices.  You can use python in Blender, but it's more of a create-by-mouse program.

You might also like POVray.  http://www.povray.org/ 
It can create some very cool images: http://hof.povray.org/

You write scenes in text form, It renders the scene you described into an image file.

for example:

// This is a simple red sphere

// first, the camera position
camera {
  location <2,5,-10>
  look_at <0,0,0>
}

// now, some light
light_source {
  <0,-10,0>
  color rgb <1,1,1>
}

// the sphere
sphere {
  <0,0,0>, 5
  pigment { color rgb <1,0,0> }
}

http://library.thinkquest.org/3285/tuto … firstscene
(You can also use a 3d gui program like blender to export scenes for POVray to render.  But it can be more challenging and fun to figure out how to code scenes.)

POVray was the first 3d program I played with. I had hours of fun loading the example files and changing things, to see what happens.

Last edited by AddZero (2008-10-20 15:30:57)

I know a program! Go to YoYoGames.com and download Gamemaker7.0. It cost $20 to download but it will probally be the easiest 3D game making program on the internet that uses coding. P.S I downloaded it and its great!!! P.SS If you do download it use this code to turn on 3D mode: d3d_start(); You can learn the rest on the tutorial.

have you heard of pivot.

it has a little stick man that you can animate

fullmoon wrote:

Alice is exactly what you're looking for.

Alice is drag and drop. I don't like it very much for making games-- you can't have mouse down, key pressed, or other things.

Alright, first of all, no offense, but Alice and Blender screw up big time. Alice's drag and drop interface is more complicated than it needs to be, and yet lacks some necessary features. Blender is just plain evil, with the exception of the physics. It's really hard to learn, and complicates EVERYTHING. I haven't really tried 3d GM much, but I've looked at some of its code, and it looks like a good choice... However, it takes a while for you to get experienced in GML, and the language feels REALLY bloated. However, it still is pretty good... If you're okay with having the help file open all of the time, and looking up a new function every five minutes. I personally use Python in conjunction with the module called Visual, because the rendering itself is really, really easy to understand. However, it cannot load 3d models, and it is a typed language. (not drag-and-drop) It's still really good. However, nobody should start 3d before they've learned some very important game programming concepts. You need to know basic physics, collision detection (You have to do this yourself! There's no built in "colliding" function for most 3d.), the distance formula for 3d, trig (useful to also know 3d trig...), the concept of a camera, (usually) lighting, the concept of 3d coordinates, arrays, some form of expressing objects (with OOP or arrays), a method for getting input, and programming concepts like objects. If you don't know these, then you have a lot to learn... How much of this do you know?

I would use blender

can alice use animations? well, okay, how do you animate in alice...is it keyframe based or frame by frame?

jasb wrote:

I have heard about this http://education.mit.edu/drupal/starlogo-tng It's a MIT project that let's you program in 3D.

Seems like Scratch, but 3D... I gotta test it out    Thanks for the link, but I think m0rfeusman was asking for a programming language that's NOT drag-n-drop.

I haven't tried many, but I've heard Alice and Game Maker are good programs. I've also heard about a game called Roblox, but you use mostly LEGO Bricks for models. You can script in Lua, though.

also I have a link to a really good tutorial. either look at my blender project or ask me. it really helped me. its what got me obsessed with blender 

blender can be used to export various 3D formats that can be used in 3D games if you program it in something like c++ VB etc

Last edited by NXTGeek (2009-06-12 14:11:08)

chazmaniandevel wrote:

I have both 

both what? both blender and....?