alternatives

[JONO]

until somebody at newtek can offer a solution to our problems by updating or providing a fix for the exporter, can we think of any other ways to get around this .

perhaps exporting to max and then to shockwave - bothersome but maybe !

in one of the other threads someone mentioned something about blender.i dont have anything to do with the programming side of things so i dont know if this is viable for my company but can you explain more about the blender story. besides the fact that lightwave can export to it without error ( i think thats what you stated ) why is blender better to use? does it require an export plugin for lightwave? etc.

[Sam_Horton]

Blender is...was a free 3d program -I had a friend who used to swear by it. Recently, Not A Number (NAN) the company that was managing it went bankrupt or something to that effect so i'm not even sure if the program is still viable. They were touting blender as a game creation package that allowed you to model, animate, and script using python scripting language. They even had a web plugin that would play their content, some of which was pretty cool. THIS (http://www.blender.nu) used to be their website but I don't know what the heck it is now, try a google search perhaps.

A few side notes:

The main reason to use shockwave 3D is because macromedia is perhaps the only company to successfully get their plugins installed on end user's machines -almost to the point where their products become web standards (flash).

Shockwave 3D is an extremely robust engine. Much more so than other alternatives. and it's integrated into a package that developers already use.

Shockwave 3D has an exporter for every single good 3D package on the market.

Director comes with Havok (http://www.havok.com) (If only Lightwave had havok integrated!) This is one of the best features that Shockwave 3d has to offer over the competition. If you are going to do any serious 3D work then you will be using havok I promise.

There aren't any weird licensing issues with Director or Shockwave 3D. you buy it and you use it as many times as you like period. Other web 3d packages require you to pay on a per project basis.

The exporter for lightwave does in fact work, It just has a few quirks that require some working around. I've used bones in several projects and after like 500 times I think I finally have the process down. *hint, start with a simple 1-bone cylinder or something and see for yourself what works and what doesn't before you try a full character.


If you still need alternatives then here are a few:

Jamagic (http://www.clickteam.com)
Cult 3D (http://www.cycore.com)
X3D (vrml here we go again) (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-844985.html):rolleyes:

Viewpoint (http://developer.viewpoint.com)
Viewpoint would be ok but their licensing options are horrible.
Wild Tangent (http://www.wildtangent.com)
Again, horrible licensing options.

So the bottom line is that Shockwave 3D is by far the best option for 3d on the Web, it has the largest feature set as well as the largest installed plugin base. I just hope Macromedia decides to continue developing a truly awesome product for us 3d artists and programmers. Then perhaps Newtek would follow up and re-vamp the exporter!