3D modeling software?

[Adam Ratana]

Hey, so I'd really like to start doing some real 3d type wallpapers.  I've been reading the classic red book, and also a really nice 3d math primer book, which is helping set the stage.  Just wondering what software people are using to model their scenes and then map textures to the meshes etc?  Blender?  Any suggestions on how to load them into a wallpaper, I know there's some libraries out there like min3d, etc?

Any pointers would be much appreciated!

Adam

[Josh Gooderham]

Currently I'm using libgdx with a third party backend. It's a very powerful framework but I mostly use it because I already have a lot of experience with libgdx. The live wallpaper support is a little messy. I'm only just now confident I have it under control but I'll soon find out how my users' devices respond when I release my first project using it in the next day or so (working on marketing graphics/video right now actually). There are some published wallpapers which use libgdx on Play.

If I were starting out from scratch I'd definitely give Rajawali a try. It's from the same developer who created min3d and looks very promising especially because live wallpapers are specifically supported, unlike libgdx where support is just kind of hacked in. Rajawali has support for common formats (.obj, .md2, .3ds and .fbx) which I believe you could easily export from Blender. Blender itself has a completely bizarre UI that I could never get the hang of but I'm told it's wonderful once you get used to it. I use 3ds Max, which is not free. Since you're just starting out anyway you won't have a lot of the hang-ups of coming from an established UI paradigm and expecting things to be a certain way so I think Blender is certainly the way to go.

Ultimately the best solution is always to roll your own format and code an export script of some kind (which again I assume you can do from Blender) to get just what you want from 3d package to final program. This way not only do you get just the right 3d data in the format you want it, but also you may want to export camera paths or define entity properties for animation and interaction. But until then the common formats should suffice. The Rajawali site has some excellent tutorials and example code to get you started. At the very least you should be able to get some models up and and running without much trouble. Once you get comfortable with 3D you can start doing really interesting things with shaders for which thankfully Rajawali seems to have great support. Good luck.

Josh
https://market.android.com/developer?pub=gentlemandroid
http://www.gentlemandroid.com/

[Adam Ratana]

Thanks Josh, really appreciate the insight.  I've played with libgdx a little bit before, and the author's "beginning android games" was a nice intro to some graphics concepts.  This will go a long way.  I also just checked out the new clockwork - nice work, lots of animations, light, camera angles etc there!

Adam