New to Alice with a suggestion !

[Mike Lucey]

Hi All,

I'm a total Newbie to Alice and have only yet explored this wonderful program. I hope in time to get to grips with it and be able to produce some useful stuff.

I have a suggestion that may be interesting to some users that might be wish to create their own 3D models with some ease. I have been using SketchUp for some time now and find it marvelous when it comes to building 3D models, mostly buildings.

I have been able to import these models via 3DS export in SketchUp and the program advised by Alice. The only draw back is that SketchUp Pro exports 3DS but the free Google SketchUp could be used for learning, which I might add will not take too long for the average user. There are also a huge number of free SketchUp models on the SketchUp site. www.sketchup.com

Mike

[DrJim]

In theory, you can convert a file from SketchUp to Alice import format (.ase) through Blender and then 4D Blue. Both are free - I’ve attached screen shots of the import and export options for each.

I say “in theory” because I haven’t actually tried that particular conversion and my overall success rate going through both programs is poor. When it does work, however, the results can be very nice.

I also have been unsuccessful in importing textures with meshes - believe I’ve read that that is a limitation of the .ase format but can’t find the reference right now.

If you are successful, please post the results. I agree that SketchUp is a good, user friendly 3D graphics program.

[Mike Lucey]

Hi Dr Jim,

I think there may be an easier way to import. I read on this forum that Biturn does the job well and have tried it out.

Biturn may be downloaded here,
http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1

I managed to import an SU model, its the motorbike in SU Components. I was having a bit of trouble with scale but when I stuck with (in SketchUp) Units > Engineering > Feet, there was no problem.

I'm attaching a Screen Shot showing the bike

Mike

[DrJim]

Given the 1970's nature of the Blender interface, the prototype status of 4D Blue and the difficulty (for me, at least) of getting a model from SketchUp to Goggle Earth - I can't imagine a more complex route.

However Bitturn doesn't list the SketchUp/GoggleEarth native file types (.kml/.kmz) as types that it handles. Have you been able to use it with those files or some other file type from the free program?

[LetterRip]

1970's? pffffttt

There is a new ASE importer and exporter for Blender which is different from the one I originally referenced, you can find download links here

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Pipeline

LetterRip

[Mike Lucey]

Given the 1970's nature of the Blender interface, the prototype status of 4D Blue and the difficulty (for me, at least) of getting a model from SketchUp to Goggle Earth - I can't imagine a more complex route.

However Bitturn doesn't list the SketchUp/GoggleEarth native file types (.kml/.kmz) as types that it handles. Have you been able to use it with those files or some other file type from the free program?

Hi Jim,

Only possible with the Pro SketchUp prgram via the 3DS export. You could of course download the demo and give that a try.

Mike

[paulw]

I've been experimenting with Caligari Truespace 3.2 (http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS3/resources/default.html) This is a pretty groovy 3D editor. I've only just found it and have only briefly experimented but have successfully saved as .asc fileand then used biturn (http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1) to convert the file to .ase so that it can be imported into Alice. A bit messy but I'll keep trying as this seems to be a doable work around. I'm a primary school teacher so I'm looking for something 10 year olds can handle.

[lanceA]

Wow - 10 year olds? I'm impressed.

Have you looked at SQUEAK (www.squeak.org/Download (http://www.squeak.org/Download))? Also, Mark Guzdial & Barbara Ericson have a nice "lead-in" to ALICE in their book INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTING & PROGRAMMING WITH JAVA: A MULTIMEDIA APPROACH.

Good luck! :)

[I have no idea why this is red]

[Mr Nemo]

I've got a lot of questions, but I'll start with this one: Is biturn safe to download? The site looks like it might be crawling with viruses and trojans.

[paulw]

Mmmmmm? I'm no expert on judging a websites content or risk. I downloaded biturn and couldn't work out how to use it so emailed the author and had two prompt replies to my questions. My virus software didn't pick up anything. It does the conversion from .asc to .ase files really easily. But I really am no expert on this so have no idea what else is available.

I was blown away with what these 10 year olds were able to do. I made them do the first two tutorials but they didn't want to do the last two they just wanted to get into it. It was fantastic to watch them solve problems and discover features themselves. They found all sorts of things I had no idea about.

Thanks for the tip on Squeak. It looks a bit complicated? The website didn't really give me much of an idea of how it would help me with Alice? Can I make models with it?

[DrJim]

Re Biturn and virus's, etc. - think you're OK - at least I was this morning. I just downloaded bi088.rar, extracted the files and ran it on three machines, followed by a full virus scan on all three with two different virus protection programs. Nothing found on two and a couple of spyware programs on the third, which I hadn't scanned for a while. Sadly:( , that's about as good as it's going to get.

I've also extracted the .rar files using both 7-Zip, which you may have if you're running Windows XP, and the standard .rar compress/extract program (WinRar or something close). 7-Zip has the advantage of being free. Both work fine.

Haven't looked at Truespace 3.2 in detail yet but it's worth downloading, since it's free, just for the tutorials. They are detailed and animated and, in my opinion, really good. They really doen't cover anything related to learing to program - but they do illustrate why Alice is not the final tool to use for games, film animation, etc. It does seem to need quite a bit of memory and speed - don't have it running on my old laptop yet and it wasn’t real quick on the other machine I tried.

One added note, if you're looking for 3-D graphics and animation programs, you might take a look at MilkShape, http://www.milkshape3d.com/ . This had been mentioned in an earlier post and I only looked at it quickly, but if you want to convert gamers to programmers this might be a start. (I did like the slogan on one ad, "Hast du Root4Gamers, Hast du Alles" - pretty much sums up the whole thrust of the effort.)

Jim

[Mr Nemo]

Second question, what is the name of the program that you are using biturn to convert files from?

[DrJim]

I had a batch of .3ds and .lwo files from previous work and just tried a few of them - just enough to try it out. Probably got 70% through which is OK for random files from disk - I have many bad habits when creating files - forgetting to select the object to be saved among them. Haven't really spent much time importing new objects into Alice - mostly running Alice itself and/or trying to generate something worth importing.

Also remember that even if you are paranoid, they still may be after you.:eek: In the case of viruses, etc., I'm sure that's true.

Jim

[m0u53m4t]

If you're unsure about viruses, just test it here: http://virusscan.jotti.org/ If that picks up nothing, then its clean, I assure you.

[Heart_Flame]

Wings 3D is an awesome & simple 3D modeling program.

[Link]

As a user of milkshape myself I'd say I favor it over other 3D model programs, because it is exact. It deals more with numbers on coordinate planes than molding a model together. Then again, I've only used two programs for 3D modeling. Also I'd point out Milkshape requires you to purchase it after a 30 day free trial.

[DrJim]

I've recently been working some with five different free/shareware 3D modeling package - Wings3D, Milkshape, TrueSpace, Rhinegold 3D and Google SketchUp - all seem very useable. :) (There is also Blender, which is in a class by itself, but also unfortunately is only "expert friendly." I'd still recommend checking out their site just for tutorials.) Only one thing is fairly clear - the world really doesn't need another such 3D package. :eek:

I've personally found Wings3D to be the best overall match to Alice - but then I'm not very interested in games and thus I'm probably short changing Milkshape a bit. Even so, Milkshape would be my second choice.

Also, Wings3D does seems to have occasional quirks about being not connected to the Internet which I don't really understand yet, :confused: but which might be a problem for some users.

Re Milkshape - have you had any success importing into Alice from it?

Also, both times I tried to register my copy of Milkshape, the attempt failed. (It runs fine unregistered after 30 days - you just can't save.) A shareware program that makes it hard to register leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth - guess I need a milkshake. :D