Model and texture resources for student projects?

Hi, I am thinking of using jME in a game development course I am teaching this Spring.  This particular course focuses on technical issues (such as AI, networking, physics, etc.) so the students are neither particularly artistically oriented nor have the time to design a lot of textures or models.  However, they are still going to build complete playable games, so they want them to look at least a bit interesting. 



I notice that there is a Resources section in the wiki, which includes some sites for textures, but only one for models, http://www.logicalnetwork.com, which does not appear to exist at the moment.



I would appreciate advice or pointers to pre-made models that will work with jME and general advice on resources of this kind for use with jME.



Thank you, C. Rich


Charles Rich, Professor of Computer Science
Interactive Media and Game Development
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Fuller Laboratories 143
100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280

Email: rich@wpi.edu  Phone: 508-831-5945  Fax: 508-831-5776
Home: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~rich

There are many online resources with free 3D models. It is important to bear in mind that jME is able to import several types of models. What might be difficult is to obtain animated models, specially ones with good quality.



However, if your students are willing to either use MD2, MD3 or MD5 models (Quake formats, that include animations almost always), or simply be clever with their resources (like making cartoonish models with weapons and the like being static independent models that can be animated via rigid transformations and using spatial structures and use of the SceneGraph) they can still create visually appealing games.



I took a 3D Networked Games Programming class one year ago (programming in Ogre3D), and most of the games were developed with free models from the internet, and some looked quite impressive. (I remember one in which characters were floating oversized heads with very cool bobing animations for actions using just rigid transformations).



I think using jME is a great idea, and will certainly boost the community and/or the global awareness in jME. The only thing that we might regret is having to pay for 10 times as much bandwidth.  :wink:

In general, the free models you can find are often less good than the free textures. That probably has something to do with the fact that they take longer. The models you can find that are good are, by and large, custom "skins" or player characters for various popular games (mostly first person shooters).



You could consider spending a little bit of budget on paying for some models on a place like turbosquid.com. Those can be re-used year after year. You could also consider spending a bit of budget on some students at a school where game art is the focus – again, to acquire some models that you can re-use in the class year after year. There's also some free stuff on turbosquid, but it's not generally of very good quality.



A tool I would recommend for building levels/houses/etc (not animated models) is DeleD Lite (www.delgine.com), which is free and fairly easy to use. There's also an affordable shareware "pro" version which adds some more modeling commands. DeleD can export to some formats you can import into jME.

I have added my favorite model resources to the wiki page - few but good animated character models included.

Thanks very much to all who responded so quickly:



(1) Part of my hidden agenda was to see how responsive the forum is, and the good news is that other users are very helpful—thanks again.



(2) To clarify, and reply to the suggestion about finding art students, the IMGD program at WPI is in fact well balanced between art and tech (the current crop of freshman majors is almost 50/50).  The program is jointly taught between the Humanities and Arts Dept. and the Computer Science Dept.  In most of our courses, games are developed in teams that include both art and tech.  For various scheduling reasons, however, the particular course I am teaching this spring will involve mostly tech track students (though there are some double-trackers, too).



(3) If I do assign projects using jME, there may be a minor flood of newbie questions in the first few weeks of the 7-week term.  There are about 20 students in the course, so it shouldn't be too bad, and I will put a warning message on the forum.  Thinking of it, here's a suggestion:  I have seen other similar forums which have a separate category called "For Beginners", which is to field real newbie questions.  It might be a good way of partitioning such things?



Best wishes for the holidays, -Chuck

duenez said:

There are many online resources with free 3D models. It is important to bear in mind that jME is able to import several types of models. What might be difficult is to obtain animated models, specially ones with good quality.

However, if your students are willing to either use MD2, MD3 or MD5 models (Quake formats, that include animations almost always), or simply be clever with their resources (like making cartoonish models with weapons and the like being static independent models that can be animated via rigid transformations and using spatial structures and use of the SceneGraph) they can still create visually appealing games.

I took a 3D Networked Games Programming class one year ago (programming in Ogre3D), and most of the games were developed with free models from the internet, and some looked quite impressive. (I remember one in which characters were floating oversized heads with very cool bobing animations for actions using just rigid transformations).

I think using jME is a great idea, and will certainly boost the community and/or the global awareness in jME. The only thing that we might regret is having to pay for 10 times as much bandwidth.  ;)

Hi, do you know where to download the quake models?

hello professor, welcome to our great community haha  :smiley:

Here are some links:



http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Modeloftheweek.List&game=5&category_select_id=2



http://polycount.com/models/quake2/



http://www.fileplanet.com/63901/60000/fileinfo/Quake-3-Model-Pack-1

duenez: do any of those models have copyright on them? If not, could you put them in the jME resources wiki?

Also, this thread is 3 months old, if you want to post a question do in a new thread instead.

Momoko_Fan said:

duenez: do any of those models have copyright on them?

Argh!, I don't know... Why don't you ask easy questions like how to create a perfect importer/exporter for any model format into jME and back that works completely with the animation system and integrates flawlessly into any game type... But no, you had to go about asking nearly impossible to answer questions, huh?  :P

Seriously though, I believe all those models are simple free for use... with the underlying as-is assumption.