CompuServe Thread

Hi all, 3D Studio is increasingly being used to create graphics for multimedia and games. I am a video game programmer trying to integrate graphics created in 3D Studio for game development. There are some serious problems I'm facing using graphics created in this way. I am either asking for a solution, or appealing for this feature to be considered in future versions of the product. We currently anticipate hiring a 2D artist to laboriously retouch every frame of 3D studio generated art, which is costly and time consuming. In our game, there will be thousands of individual frames which will have to be retouched. 1) Support for color cycling. Yes, I know that purists may object to this important technique, but it has an important place, and should be supported. (See a point I make later about the need for palette savvy.) In order to support this feature (color cycling), a graphic feature (e.g. taillight) would have an attribute set for the object which basically overrides some of the rendering subtleties. Rendering would only be possible using a limited palette (e.g. 256 colors), and the number of color cycled objects would reduce the remaining palette available (e.g. if 6 objects were to be color cycled, then only 250 colors remain for the rest of the object.) The color index used for that object should be assignable. Now, in every rendering of the scene, each object with the color cycle attribute set would be rendered with one color, always using the same index into the color palette. Our solution? Manually retouch every object. (e.g. Change every taillight in every frame to color index 17.) 2) Restrictions on palette usage, and the subject of palette organization. During the creation of a game (or multimedia product) multiple graphical objects with different palettes must be displayed on the screen. It is important to be able to able to generate artwork with a specified number of colors (e.g. 256 or 16 or even 14.) At the present time, the product DeBabelizer(R) (only available on the Mac) is what we used to accomplish palette organization. I would think that 3D Studio should support this subject, if it wants to become the mainstay graphic creation program for multimedia and games. 3) Support for multiple palettes. In our game, for example, we will have graphic objects (sprites) which need to change appearance as the time of day changes. We would like to render the sprite in one palette (for example day time colors), but then create additional palettes for different times of days. With one object and multiple palettes, we can either just change palettes when the time of day changes (e.g. day to sunset to night), or even better, be able to interpolate between palettes to create the correct colors for any time of day. We anticipate having to hire an artist to laboriously create multiple palettes for each of our thousands of objects. There is an obvious problem here, and I would think 3D studio should address the problem. — Perhaps I'm unaware of the ways that 3D studio does address these needs. If so I would welcome input. Perhaps there are good 3rd party solutions or other workarounds. Please inform me of any such solutions. Thanks Gene Sewell Minds Eye Games