Answered: DDO/3DO workflow for modular environment?

ivarhill

I'm making a sci-fi environment using a bunch of modular assets - walls, floors, props etc. all using separate texture maps. I'm now texturing these assets in DDO, and I keep thinking it'd be hugely useful if there's a way to import the entire environment in 3DO but only have one of the meshes treated as my current DDO project - rather than texture each module in a complete vacuum without context.

I know I can manually import meshes in 3DO, and I've been able to get my environment to render in 3DO complete with the texture maps I've already completed, but this process is unreliable (takes a long time plugging texture maps in and I lose that progress on a restart) and doesn't seem to play nicely with actually using DDO. Maybe there is a better workflow? The target platform of this environment is Sketchfab, though maybe it'd still be useful to temporarily throw it in a PBR game engine to see gradual progress. Definitely would be the most useful if it could all be kept to 3DO though - anyone got any ideas?

Sythen

Hey there Ivarhill,

Right now there is no way to import a full scene into 3DO, however you can utilize a few methods here:

1 - Use mesh groups and bring the meshes in so that you can contain them within an entire project, though this can get performance heavy very quickly.

2 - Keep a consistent ID map throughout your project i.e: (Red - chrome etc...) whenever you've created or modified a material for a particular surface, saving it as a smart material will allow for quick application to meshes in other projects.

Kind regards,

Scott.