Cheap complete 3D engines - where?

Hi all!

I would like to invest in a cheap 3d engine that can help me create a fps view roleplaying game. I mainly want to do 3d models and textures, and just plug it in.
While the engine might be c++ or scripting, doesn't really matter as Im only going to be prototyping game artwork.

Im sure you know of plenty good engines, but the things Im interested in is:
1. easy export from 3dsmax 7.0
2. multiple uv's on models
3. working alpha (z-ordered)
4. sphere-mesh collisions
5. 3d sound
6. flexible bones animations system

so, could anyone give me a heads up? ^^
Thanks in advance!

I don't know such engine, however Reality Factory is tried and working, you may need t heavily modify it, as it has full source.

http://www.dhost.info/realityfactory/

Torque is an alternative, however it may not comply your needs.

If you don't mind Cipher is a bit old, you should give it a try(programming required)

OGRE has by far the best 3dsmax Exporter. It lets you build scenes in 3dsmax much like pipeline only has far more extensive next gen feature support.

The beauty of it is that it uses the OGRE renderer in max viewports with shaders, lighting, multipass rendering and various dynamic shadows.

It also supports techniques, and LOD materials.


But you need to add sound and colisions yourself. Sweenie is currently working on a Blitz Engine that renders with Ogre and even workd with blitz3d to some extent.

Sweenies recent engine thread with early editable Bmax demo (need bmax to edit the scenes)

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=57601


http://ofusion.inocentric.com/


If you have seen B3D pipeline, the material editor is like a SUPER extended version of that, and infinitely more powerful, and exports Ogre .mesh .Material and .shader scripts

It also has its own C++ scene loader library with full source which currently support:

SceneManagers and its settings (world geometry)
Shadows techniques
Shadows settings
Sky techniques
Sky settings
Background color
Ambient light color


OGRE material Panel


Technique



Pass



Texture unit



Vertex program and pixel shader editor (see the bottom pof the pass panel.




Can't recommend it enough, if you feel comfortable with realtime game engine stuff.

Damn the net, its really crawling this morning :(*

Torque has just about the worlds worst art path ever at the moment. Doing anything with the supplied tools is like pulling teeth.

PowerRender 6 covering everything you asking for...

thanks guys! Im going to check out everything mentioned, although the OGRE artpath looks SWEET to say the least ^^

remember OGRE is just a renderer...

--Mike

3DRAD! 3DRAD! 3DRAD!

Truevision 3D has my vote. That and my engine, obviously. But since that's not yet available for licensing, I can't really suggest it.

Is 3D RAD still being developed? I was looking at the site last night and I noticed the free version has been removed, and there's also an advert for 3D glasses (like you get in the cinema). The graphics are also ugly as sin.

For an RPG FPS with little programming required, I'd go with Reality Factory. There's a MAX exporter, 3D sound, bone animation... it's had a lot added since I last used it.

Also, the graphics have improved alot... Oh yeah, and it's free.

although without source and not really scriptable. At least cheap :) maybe only useful for single player fps.

reality factory is a cool adaption by the genesis3d (1995) engine. This means: genesis3d (opensource) is a good framework for 3d engines like reality factory.

>>> I think blitz3D is a good framework, too. <<<

bye

hey... those RF screenies do look like they've really done a number on the graphics... still no networking though, is there?


hey... heeeyyy!!!

watch it there Muz... i've got a fond spot in my heart for ole 3DRAD :)

it's still available, but there's no longer any development being done... and, you're half right... the graphic renderer is based on the dx6RM api, so you'll be doing lots of workarounds to get anything even close to what you can get with Blitz3D... and it won't really be that close :)



still... it is capable of making a decent game... i almost got my sub thing released with it... but lack of reflections, true multitexturing, and the
awkward decimal math implementation, finally served to frustrate my already limited coding abilites
to the point where i wound up settling :) on Blitz3D...

more 3D RAD screeshots... enjoy... enjoy :)






ok... that's enough...

also... if you're into B'Max already... take a close look at TMyke's Eliza3D... it looks like it's far developed, and game making capable...



and it has an entity system similar to Blitz3D's...

--Mike

ColdSteel supports all you requested, except for 3D Sound (not yet!).

Jedive: He did say 'complete', after all ;)

Hehe. ColdSteel still lacks some features (physics, networking), but apart from 3D sound, everything he requested is implemented now.

ColdSteel looks nice, but the loading time of the demo takes far long time, even longer than some commercial big games, I don't know why, maybe the fileio is not optimized yet?

However it's very promising, and seems to support many languages.

I believe cold steel uses irrlicht and the load times for that sometimes take a little longer then usualy based on my experience with it.

Well try this. www.fpscreator.com. I hate db, but its first appearances is impressive.

The gfx in RF arn't bad, you just need to work to get thing slooking nice (like any engine really).

As for networking, last I checked you can connect to a server with other players, and see each other, but you can't interact together, so no pwnage of any kind.

Also, I think the main developers are currently working on a new version of RF, which doesn't use Genesis3D (which was the major thing preventing alot of improvements to the engine).

As for RAD... well, I do like the ease of it (WYSIWYG editor, individual brains), and I must admit, there are some impressive RAD screenies floating about.

The map is really big an unoptimized. It takes a lot of time to calculate the octree to do occlusion with the map. I will release a better demo in the future which takes a more reasonable time to load.

How about Irrlicht or Ogre3D? Those ones are pretty good.

I found that irrlicht doesn't have a well designed art path. Just a collection of generic old 3 formats barely suitable for games. .x, .3ds, .obj and one so so realtime mesh format that supports multitexturing like lightmapping, but only does static meshes.

That pretty much ruined irrlicht as an artists platform, it felt like stepping back to early Aerial Antics development with a limited blitz3D 2.5 years ago.