Mal Duffin from CanDo Interactive sent me info about this great article he wrote a while back. Creating a Shockwave 3D Game Level in 30 minutes shows you how to use the CanDo 3D Modeling Training Tool (free trial linked from article)and your favorite Shockwave 3D-compatible 3D modeling tool, to put together a simple 3D game level. I'm embarrassed about how long it's taken me to post this since he sent it back before a contest was being run in early April... I know, I suck. Sorry.

Unfortunately, the page where the winners were posted is currently down, so I'll have to pop back in here and update you with a working URL.

At any rate, if you have Director and you want to give this level-creation tutorial a try, give 'er a shot! Please feel free to post your reactions here (just sign up for a free account and log in to post comments.) Actually, you can snag a free demo of Director MX 2004 and work it out from there. You'll also need a 3D content tool that exports to Shockwave 3D format, of course.

One of the other reasons I had delayed in writing this post was that I wanted to go through the tutorial and see how it worked for me... I've just not been able to get around to it. I've been slacking in most of my chores around here, so I'll work on getting that done so I can talk more about it. That shouldn't stop you from giving it a whirl, though. Please report back on what you thought of it!

Okay, my brain is swimming in too much information right now... I wanted to post something about this bit of research, but I've still got a lot of reading to do before a solid, discussable perspective coagulates. For now, you might just want to start some research alongside mine and see where it takes you. I'll talk more about what I'm seeing later. Here's the deal real quick:

Garage Games has announced that their Constructor project has hit the beta phase. Torque Constructor is a ".map (as in the .map file format) editing and .dif (the Torque interior file format) producing program" for creating 3D content for the Torque 3D engine. It might also work for creating content for anything that uses .map, but I'm not sure yet -- like I said, I'm still underway on this voyage. If you've been using Valve's Hammer, GtkRadiant or maybe QuArK to do some level editing, you might be right on board, too... if you don't know what any of those are, you have more research to do! :P

If that's enough to pique your interest, you really ought to shoot over and start reading. Great stuff! There's a great batch of links on that post that will get you well on the way to understanding more about Constructor.

Also, that blog post serves as a fantastic introduction to concave vs. convex models, specifically how they are treated in Torque, but it's a great read for any 3D game artist, I think.