3D Modeller Progress

Published March 24, 2013
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So sure, I've not posted for a while but been very busy actually, just not felt the urge to put a journal up for some reason but reached a good milestone today on my pet project so thought I'd start to try to drum up a bit of interest.

Charm (Character Modeller) is a Milkshape inspired low-polygon 3D model editor and animation package. Think Milkshape with a modern interface and additional features and you're almost there.

I've already finished the modelling tools and have just completed the skeleton animation system. I've not yet set up vertex skinning - that's next on the list, but the existing feature set is quite complete apart from that.

Features:

  • Unlimited undo/redo
  • Automatic reflection of model across an axis (with smoothing of joining vertices)
  • Animation based on rotation and translation key frames and interpolation
  • Usual set of model tools (move, scale, rotate, extrude edges/faces etc)
  • Usual modellng operations (weld, split, split edge, snap together etc)
  • All views fully customizable
  • All views fully free-rotatable, including orthographic views (significant improvement on Milkshape)
  • All views fully editable, including perspective views (significant improvement on Milkshape)
  • Fully customizable keyboard shortcut system for all actions, selections etc

Not sure what kind of market there is for low-poly modellers these days. Mine is far simpler than Blender obviously but personally I don't find Blender easy to use so this simpler application may be of use to others.

Doesn't matter though, mainly written for my own use and for fun. Will need some models now I've started getting somewhere with 3D physics.
3 likes 5 comments

Comments

Aardvajk

Oh yeah, I remember why I don't post here any more. Nobody comments. Shame, we used to have such a good journal community before they turned it into a free-for-all crapfest of bogus tutorials and first-entry-only introduction crap.

March 26, 2013 12:53 PM
eppo

This looks like it could be a very useful character rigging and animation tool.

What file formats does it support?

How do you store orientations (matrix, quaternion, euler)?

March 26, 2013 02:41 PM
Aardvajk

Hi eppo,

Just its own format at the moment. Plan to expand this, maybe by using something like AssImp, later down the line.

At the moment, bone rotations are stored using quaternions as this makes it easiest to edit the positions live in the editor. Presumably easy enough to convert to and from other formats on importing and exporting though, not really looked into that in a lot of detail.

Thanks for the comment :)

March 26, 2013 03:03 PM
CC Ricers

Very clean looking interface. What's the API for the interface? The controls don't look like the default-ish Windows Forms, and overall the look and feel is better than a bunch of home-made editors I've seen.

March 26, 2013 08:56 PM
Aardvajk

Very clean looking interface. What's the API for the interface? The controls don't look like the default-ish Windows Forms, and overall the look and feel is better than a bunch of home-made editors I've seen.

Hi CC Ricers,

I've written this application in Qt (using DirectX9 for the rendering). The controls are all actually custom-written for this application. Qt makes this quite easy.

Thanks for saying it looks clean, that was the idea.

March 26, 2013 11:14 PM
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