Iphone development? 3D Engines?

Parnell

Just curious if anyone here is doing Iphone apps or Android Apps in their spare time.
I remember seeing the Free DS 3D model viewer/engine stuff get posted and was hoping there was some way to easily get some low poly models into a viewer or something into the Iphone.

Are there any good forums that talk about Iphone/Android?

Sorry if this is in the wrong area.
Thanks!
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seforin

Well not so much on the free time but im currently working on a Iphone game for work. What exactly you want to know about it?

Parnell

I guess I'm interested in toying around with making some silly apps with some 3D models.
I heard that Unity their iphone 3d engine and I was just wondering if there are any free 3d engine's or model viewers available to work with.
It doesn't even have to be 3D...I used to be pretty savy with actionscript and could code up some cool stuff with Flash.
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kwakkie

I am currently working on an iPhone project. I havent heard about any other free model viewers, but you should definately check out unity3d: http://unity3d.com/

You probably need to be a registered iPhone dev tho, my current experience is that it is pretty hard to get stuff on the actual iPhone without it. It would cost you 70€ to register as a dev.


Edit: yeah, I just watched the unity iphone video and it mentions that it builds 'xcode' behind the scenes, which probably means you need to configure xcode beforehand. You need to have a certificate for your iPhone if you want to build the code and put it on your iPhone(you can only request certificates if you are registered developer). ANyway, to make things simple: no, unity wouldnt be much help to you unless you're willing to pay 70€ for the dev registration +200$ for the cheapest unity version.

seforin

well currently we developed our own 3d importer we recently talked with our developer and they wanted us to start looking into the unity engine to see if the development time is easier or not.

What I do know is that the Iphone support pixel shading so its a bit better then a DS' as far at the texture side goes (no anti alising to my knowledge)


and when we were running tests,

As we are now, we only have 10 textures, (ranging from different 128 sizes) that's with 3 different models roughly around 600-1000 tris each, a font bitmap at max resolution being at a 1024X1024, and roughly 65,536 vertices on screen and it runs smoothly.34,848 (tris)


If your doing just the geo you can run I saw a midsize model without a issue but you cant really get textures above a 1024 to work correctly (We tried)

Edit: reason why your limited on texture is due to a 24 mb limit! Forgot to mention!

flaagan

This thread is relevant to my interests... now if I can just find a local coder who wont slack off when I'm ready to work. :P

Parnell

Does the unity3d development tools only work with a mac?
I just want to make a character and have it run around a little world...just like in the 3D unity demo. Or even just a viewer that plays animations and lets me spin around the model.
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kwakkie

modeling_man wrote: »

Does the unity3d development tools only work with a mac?
I just want to make a character and have it run around a little world...just like in the 3D unity demo. Or even just a viewer that plays animations and lets me spin around the model.
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Yeah, but I heard something about a windows based version coming soon... Anyway, in order to get xcode working, you need to have a mac as well. It IS possible to code and publish for an iphone without a mac, but involves a shitload of workarounds. The easiest route to go would probably to find a coder and convince him of the benefits of selling a modelviewer on the appstore. It shouldnt be too hard to make for a programmer, since the iPhone is capable of running openGL stuff with ease.

Richard Kain

I actually ran across this link in the Unity 3D forums. (in a thread discussing various iPhone game solutions)

http://www.sio2interactive.com/HOME/HOME.html

It seems to be a working iPhone 3D rendering engine. It's apparently built with Blender in mind. A potentially good solution for any Blender-heads who want to make an iPhone game for cheaps. (the engine is currently open-source and free to use for commercial projects) You do still need an Intel Mac for compiling. But then, that just makes sense. As nice as it would be to produce iPhone apps on a PC, I just don't see it happening in the near future.