For those of you who don't know, Spider3D is a Game Development Kit(GDK), and version 3 has quite a few features that might interest you. The beta is planned to come out this weekend. Please visit the beta thread for details on how to obtain Spider3D v3 Beta 1.0. Features: http://www.spider3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=14 Beta thread: http://www.spider3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22 Go to this URL to see the requirments: http://www.spider3d.com Thanks, Aaron Taylor aka weat [edited by - WhatEver on October 18, 2002 5:05:13 PM]

Gah, I feel like releasing this GDK is premature. It was originally suppose to include full skeletal support but real life kicked in and I have to spend time on other stuff...so I decided to release what I have so far.

Anyway, Spider3D v3 can be used in many ways. Basicly it tries to simplify such things as: loading models, drawing models, initializing opengl, in game console processing, entity placement(can be used for camera placement and assist with collision detection), sound, dynamicly animated skins(like Q3A), collision detection and more. It can also do simple dynamic animations...ie you can choose a bone and modify it at runtime...no hierarchy yet though.

Models can have multiple texture layers, multiple objects, multiple surfaces and surface properties. The 3ds and md2 file format is supported. You can even animate the md2 model.

I'll tell you what, if you get used to the GDK now, then when v4 comes out you should understand it imidiately.

LightWave3D[7] is the program you can use to export the Spider3D model format s3d. The plugin isn't included in the beta though. I want to make sure the final release works fine before I go releasing the plugin.

Well, I hope you like it. This has been a 2 year project and a great learning experience for me. I made it just for people who don't want to get into the real complicated stuff and want to just start making a game as fast as possible.

Later,
Aaron Taylor

[edited by - WhatEver on October 16, 2002 10:23:24 PM]

Here''s a sneak peak of the sample lesson programs.

http://www.spider3d.com/dl/spider3d_v3_samples.zip

I forgot that I had released this about a week ago.

My copyrighted materal arived sooner than expected :D. Please email me at aaron@spider3d.com if you want to beta test Spider3D v3.

If you''ve dled and tried to compile Spider3D v3 and recieved errors, they''re fixed.

You can learn how to fix them by visiting this thread:

http://www.spider3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=26