A Quick Kudos to Blender

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently developing another Blackberry game, one I hope that turns out fun enough that people will want to play. As with most games, it requires graphics – which has actually always been somewhat of a road block for me. I don’t have many acquaintances that are able / have time / are interested in doing the artwork for a game, especially one that isn’t going to make much, if any, money. I myself love art, but I’m not very good at it. That leaves the options of buying stock art for obscene amounts of money (due to rights to use it commercially – I try to always play by the book), or finding royalty free art – which is usually difficult and I can never find exactly what I’m looking for.

3D packages are a good middle ground for me. Granted – it takes a boatload of talent and experience to get professional looking results, but you can get respectable art with a little practice. Most 3D packages are fairly expensive, which can again be a roadblock – but this is where Blender comes in. Blender is an open source 3D rendering application available for pretty much all platforms. I’ve heard the learning curve is a little steeper with Blender than with other packages like 3DS (I’ve only used 3DS once so I don’t quite remember), but after you use it for a week or so, you get into the rhythm and it’s not bad at all – and then from there you start learning cool tricks for lighting and textures, and things look better and better.

Below are a few objects that may appear in the game in one form or another. They’re not great by any means, especially compared to what Blender pros have put out (Check out the cream of the crop from the Blender site), but it’s not bad for a day or twos work, and after getting shrunk down for a mobile platform, is acceptable.

SR-13

Enemy Drone

Tetron Mine

And, Blender is just fun to play around with – especially when you start getting into animations. So if you get a chance, definitely check it out, for fun – or for your next project.

Blender Website

3 Responses to A Quick Kudos to Blender

  1. David says:

    I love your first BB game tutorial! You’ve taught me a lot and I thank you! When are you planning on releasing your next game? Will it be a tutorial also? Either way I appreciate you sharing your knowledge! Thanks Toni!

  2. Toni says:

    Thanks David! Glad I could help – I know reading other people’s posts helped me a lot. I will be releasing my next game fairly soon (next 2-3 months – the majority of it’s done, I just need to do the level design). There are definitely some new ideas and strategies I used for developing that game, so I will probably post a few to the blog. Thanks again!

  3. Danbanna says:

    Can you use any OBJ’s in BB development? Like can I use sketchup and export it as an ONJ?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.