I split my available time this evening between Xcode and Blender.
Early in my 90 day wanderings, I skimmed through multiple 3D modeling programs, both free and for purchase, trying to find something I could use. Initially I was turned off by Blender’s interface, but tonight I took the plunge and worked through some tutorials on Blender.org. The Blender User Interface Tutorial gave a good, brief overview of Blender’s user interface style, and the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro wikibook was very helpful as well.
Building complex, beautiful 3D models is probably not on the horizon for me — but being able to make rough models for prototyping is a definite plus, and I now will uninstall several 3D modeling trial applications and reclaim some disk space. There were several other tools that looked good, but for my needs, Blender is plenty good enough.
I also spent time reexamining some OBJ loading utilities I received from Noel Llopsis during his iPhone OpenGL class, and downloaded Jeff LeMarche’s loader class he put up on google code. I am certainly no expert, but I am now understand enough of Noel’s code and Jeff’s code to snarf part of it and roll my own semi-custom loader.
Day T-80 Accomplishments (Thursday, January 21, 2010)
- Became comfortable enough with Blender to generate some 3D models to use in prototyping
- Worked through Mr_Rob’s Blender Hillside Tutorial and built my own landscape file to use
- Played with Jeff LeMarche’s iPhone WaveFront Loader to gain better understanding of OBJ format and usage
