E3D was written because I was having great difficulty finding a useable free 3D Model Editor on the web. Because I needed a 3D model editor to create 3D objects for a game I was writing ("low poly count" objects), I decided I may as well just write one quickly! That was a while ago...
When I started hacking a little demo together for the PSX, I decided that it would be nice to include support for .TMD files. See TMD.txt for more details.
Please note that the program is not complete (alpha or beta?). Some functions may not work properly, or at all. The program also uses an 800 x 600 x 16-bit video mode, which I assume most semi-modern video cards and monitors can handle. If it doesn't work on your system, then tough...
It's also a good idea to save your model frequently, to avoid much swearing and smashing of keyboard if the program crashes or you make a change that messes up your model.
Note: This program may not run on Windows 2000!!!
(I haven't tested it yet!)
This program assumes some knowledge of how 3D models are put together. The program was written specifically with 3D game development in mind, as a way of creating 3D objects/models that can easily be used by a 3D game engine. The .3DO file format is used by my 3D game engine. (Details of this format can be found in "3do.txt").
E3D can also load and save .3DO, PSX .TMD, Truespace ascii .COB, and 3DStudio ascii .ASC files, which means you can use it to convert from one format to the other (see Notes on Loading/Saving).
The two top windows in the editor are used to view different projections of the model (top, front or side views) and to select and move vertices. The current 3D cursor position is shown in these windows as a diagonal crosshair (X). The 3D cursor can be positioned anywhere in 3D space by clicking in these windows, providing the windows are not showing the same view.
The perspective window shows an (almost) fully rendered view of the model. The view of the model in the perspective window can be changed using the buttons next to the window. Holding the left mouse button down and dragging in the perpective window will also rotate the model and move it up and down. The "centroid" of every polygon in the object (even polygons that are not visible) is displayed as a white dot. Right-clicking the white dot will also select the polygon (and all the vertices that comprise the polygon) for editing.
There are 3 basic steps to create a 3D model with E3D:
1. Position the 3D cursor where you want your new vertex to
appear in 3D space. (Switch on "SnapGrid" if you want to
make the cursor stick to the grid points).
2. Select a colour using the RGB colour sliders.
3. Click on "Add Vert" to add this vertex to the vertex list.
The vertex will appear as a tiny coloured square in the 2 view windows (Note: the vertex colour here is only used for editing purposes, and is not used or saved in the model).
To create a polygon (or "face"):
1. Select the vertices that you want to use to define the "corners" of this polygon. Vertices must be selected in anticlockwise order (as is the usual fashion), when looking at the object from the outside. Vertices are selected by positioning the 3D cursor near a vertex, then pressing the SPACE bar. Up to 6 vertices can be selected. The last selected vertex can be unselected with the BACKSPACE key. Pressing the C key will unselect all.
2. Click the "Add Poly" button.
The polygon will appear in the perspective window (assuming
that it is facing towards the perspective window "camera").
A wireframe outline of the polygon will also be shown in the
two edit windows.
Tip 1: If you messed up and the polygon is facing the wrong way,
you can "reverse" the polygon by clicking the "Rev Poly"
button. Or you can click on "Del Poly" to delete it, then
create it again.
Tip 2: When creating TMD models, create the polys in the
reverse order that you want them to be drawn (ie: create the
polys you want to be drawn last, first, and vice-versa). This
will help prevent glitches in the object when it is displayed
on a PSX.
Tip 3: To set the grid colour, choose the colour with the
colour sliders, then right-click the "Grid" button.
Other functions to create vertices:
The "Mirror" button will mirror all selected vertices "along" one of the 3 axes.
The "Arc" button will create an arc of n vertices through m degrees. These verts can then be rotated and xlated to their final position. Select the left view window before doing this operation, since it uses the left window view to orientate the arc. (Finally complete!).
To move a vertex: select it, then drag it with the right mouse button.
Individual vertex parameters can be modified by using the "Edit Vert" dialog box. First select a vertex as explained above, then click "Edit Vert". The dialog box that pops up will allow you to edit the X, Y and Z co-ordinates of the vertex, and the RGB components of the vertex's editing colour).
Vertices can be removed from the model by selecting the vertex you want to remove, and clicking "Del Vert". Note that the program checks whether the vertex "belongs" to any of the model's polygons, and if so, will not allow you to delete it (otherwise the model would be "broken"). To delete a vertex, you will first have to delete all the polygons it belongs to.
Right-click in the middle of a polygon in the perspective view. The polygon will be selected, and the properties of the polygon will be displayed in the poly properties area. Click the cycle-buttons to change the poly light-shading (on/off) [not implemented yet], gouraud-shading (on/off) [not implemented yet], and filling type (flat, colour-interpolated, or textured). The "To All" buttons copy the currently selected property to all the polygons in the model. USE WITH CARE!
The polygon's "flat-shaded" colour, and vertex colours (for colour-interpolated rendering modes), are also displayed as 7 colour bars. Left-click a bar to copy the current RGB slider colour to that bar. Right-click a bar to copy it's colour top the RGB sliders.
Note that colours can be selected from a texture by right-clicking on the texture.
All changes to a poly's properties take effect immediately.
Polygons can be deleted by clicking the "Del Poly" button. First select a polygon by right-clicking in the middle of the polygon in the perspective window (you might have to rotate the perspective window view). The vertices of the selected polygon will be highlighted in the two edit windows. Then click "Del Poly" to remove the highlighted polygon.
If you don't select a polygon before clicking "Del Poly", the last polygon created will be removed. This is useful for undoing a mistake when creating polygons, but is probably not too wise to use on loaded models.
The "Rotate", "Scale" and "Xlate" buttons bring up dialogs that allow you to transform the model in 3 dimensions. They are pretty straightforward. Rotate works with degrees. All transformations work on selected vertices (you can select all vertices with SHIFT-SPACE). Other transformations (shear, noise, etc) will be included in future versions on request. A user-definable "transformation matrix" function might be a good idea too. Hmmm...
To bring up the texture-mapping window, click the "Texture" button in the right-hand view window. The current texture is shown in the top-left corner of this window (max. size of texture = 256x256). Below are shown the "thumbnail" previews of the textures in the other 15 "texture pages". Clicking on a thumbnail will make it the current texture. Use the "Load Texture" button to load a .TIM, .BMP or .PCX image into the current texture page. Use the "Load Texture List" button to load a whole bank of textures. Texture list file has the extension .LST, and just contains a list of image file names (max. 16), each on a seperate line.
For more info on how to use PSX TIM textures for PSX TMD models, see the text file TMD.TXT
To map a texture to a poly: Load a texture or a a texture list. Select a poly, then cycle the filling-type to "texture". Right-click a texture thumbnail to set the current poly's texture. By default, the texture coordinates will all be 0,0 (top-left corner of the texture). Drag the texture co-ordinates to their positions on the texture. The texture co-ordinates are marked with tiny circles and connected by lines of diminishing brightness (ie: texcoord 0 and 1 are at either end of the brightest line). It works, but you have to fiddle around a bit. I will improve the interface in future releases.
NB: You can right-click a thumbnail to change the selected poly's texture at any stage.
If you load a model and some of the faces (polys) are "missing", it may be that they require textures that haven't been loaded yet. Switch the poly type to solid to see the poly.
If the loaded model is "inside out", just hit the "Rev All" button to reverse all the polys.
Notes on Loading/Saving and File Formats
To save a file as a certain format, just make sure the file has the right extension (.3DO, .COB, .ASC or .TMD) in the Save Model dialog.
When loading model files, the format of the file is assumed from it's extension.
There is limited support at the moment for .COB, .ASC, and .TMD files. Total number of vertices and polygons is presently limited to 1000 each, since memory is pre-allocated (one day when I'm feeling brave I'll fix that :).
The format of .3do files may change slightly as the 3D library is developed.
When reading or writing .COB or .ASC files, the material info is limited to poly (face) colours. 3DS .ASC files are output in "tri-mesh" format.
If an imported model is too big, it will be rescaled to fit in the view window (1 x zoom).
PSX .TMD file support has been improved to support light-sourced polys. Basic support for normals has been added - ie: you are given the option of saving polygon normals (1 normal per polygon) if the model contains any shaded (light-sourced) polys. If you are converting a model, choose "No thanks" and the original normals will be saved with the model. This is a way of preserving normals for gouraud-shaded polys (those with a normal for every "corner" of the polygon).
However, since E3D doesn't handle gouraud-shaded polys internally, you can't create a gouraud-shaded poly correctly, and all "corners" of the poly will be given the same normal, effectively making it a flat-shaded poly. If all this gouraud junk doesn't make sense, don't worry, I'm getting confused just writing this...
Any suggestions regarding model file formats are welcomed. (Bear in mind that this editor is designed purely with 3D games models in mind).
If you do use the program, your comments and/or suggestions are very welcome.
Email: james7780@yahoo.com
I may update this program in the future, so please check back at my website
every once in a while for a newer version.
Hope you find E3D useful - James Higgs