# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > 3D modeling (map elements and height maps) >  Pokemon Stadium 3D [WIP]

## RecklessEnthusiasm

I have been fiddling around with sketchup in my free time lately, and I thought I'd post my progress on a recent project.

I am enjoying working in 3d, but sketchup feels pretty basic--I think I might nab the trial for Zbrush to attempt the sculpting of the actual pokemon. I have no experience doing 3d work, but I am always open for trying something new!

Still doing the actual layouts, so please forgive the rough looking textures...

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## Ramah

This just leaves the question....  why?

Pokemon? :S

Hehe. Looking good so far though.

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## NeonKnight

> This just leaves the question....  why?


Hahahahaaaaa. I was thinking the same thing. Never got Pokemon. But the stadium looks cool though

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## Steel General

PIKA-PIKA?  :Very Happy: 


Sorry, couldn't resist... The stadium looks quite nice so far.

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## Crayons

There appears to be an age "gap" in my experience! Pokemon is another one of those areas where I must have been on some other planet somewhere! :Very Happy:   Just call me old.
On the subject of 3D, well, I was "sold" a while ago, chose POVray and never really tried anything else. I've looked at some of the tools but I don't feel qualified to comment all that much - but I guess I will !   :Very Happy: 
What I can say is that most tools seem to be GUI based and that can be frustrating since there is that additional "layer" between you, the creator, and the virtual "thing" you are creating. I'm an old electronics engineer and I learned stuff when chips were things in a box. I was happy converting to ABEL to write logic in boulean code and managed the leapfrog to VHDL where the software people decided to make it all "look like" software but when they started plunking a GUI on top I started to lose my "feeling" of control. There's places where a GUI is indispendisble and the VHDL GUI I used had a couple of bits I used but the real design stuff I did "by hand" as it were.
POVray being a language allows you to model with the best feeling for "control" that I know of, there may be others. Somebody produced a GUI or two for it, one was Moray and I tried that and hated it. When I make a box I know precisely where it is and I can't accidently select it and move it on a screen, I know when I group things that I haven't missed something and that my textures inside are exactly as I wrote it. GUI progs can do all the same things but my level of "confidence" is much lower. Again, just call me old!
Being a language rather than a screen for pushing shapes around on means that you can write reasonably complex trigonometric functions, have randomness, and conditional loops and the like. Your crowd in the stands could be randomly generated little figures in a while loop allowing them all to be in different positions and actions. I've been modelling my parents' house (on and off) and I could have done the roof slopes as a single flat surface with a "normal" and a bitmap texture but I coded it with individual roof tiles. The house is old and the tiles are all a bit wonky and differing shades - if I worked at it I could randomly place randomly chipped/broken tiles in the mix, it would just be a few more lines of code...

Sketchup looks easy (and I'm guessing it has complexities) but when I've deconstructed some I was a tad dissapointed with the level of texturing seen, maybe that was just the application they were made for... hrm. 

Ultimately you have to look at the results of the product and decide if that's what you want to create. By default, Sketchup seems to be used usually with a line around all the edges, POV doesn't do that (and I'm not sure it can, easily) - on the other hand POV can produce brilliantly realistic effects for very little work (by you).

Damn! I sound like a salesman! Sadly there's no commission for a free product!! 
cheers!

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## RecklessEnthusiasm

Crayons,

I really enjoyed reading that! I would like to start learning more about 3d modeling in my free time. I was thinking about asking about 3d programs, but it looks like I didn't have to.  :Smile: 

I actually know absolutely nothing about programming, so maybe jumping into POVray would be premature. I am interested in fiddling with zbrush (like I said) and that feels like a huge undertaking at the moment. It has taken me maybe three years to feel like I "know" photoshop, and I imagine 3d programs will be far more complex. I like Sketchup because I basically felt like I was up and running in about five minutes. So far none of the other 3d programs have felt the same--thousands of buttons, all of them unfamiliar. I'm sure I'll start branching out each time I hit a wall of 'some thing I really want to do but can't' in any particular program. I've hit that in sketchup, since I can't effectively sculpt people or animals, or add light sources. I keep finding myself wishing I'd gone to school for these things!

Oh well, there is always more to learn, so at least I'll never get bored.

Slapped on a background and added some stadium lightning.

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## Crayons

Don't let me lead you astray but POV isn't really "software" in a traditional sense - not a "serious" language like C or the like. I know, I'm still wrestling with learning Python and that's supposed to be *easy*!  
POVRay is more like "make a box this by this by this...size, rotate it thus, move it over there and paint it that colour" but all in text.
box{ < -1, -2, -1>, < 1, 2, 1>  rotate 30*y translate < 100, 50, 24> pigment {Pink} }  
 done! The rest is just "other shapes" and a few BASIC style commands and functions. As you progress you start playing with the more esoteric bits

Animals and people, well, yah, POV doesn't do that implicitly either. I've bought Poser 8 but only really played with it a little. Looking at the Bryce people you could do well to get DAZ Studio which looks rather free at the moment. I loaded it all but I've not played with any of it yet. There's just SO much out there! :Confused: 

if you ever feel like POVving it, here's a starter file with a basic workshop environment to play with if you want?
starter.zip
It's a zip file just to get it past the uploader  :Very Happy: 

One thing though. Keep an eye on import/export options available. Most of the progs out there can share "produce" in some form or other but POV is a tad "selfish" - it doesn't export much but can import a fair amount (meshes basically).

I've rambled on again.
Lights, yes, your arena seems to have lost its shadows!

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## Jaxilon

> This just leaves the question....  why?


Man did this make me laugh. I'm still laughing even after reading all of Crayons technical jargon about POV. I only know about pokemon because my friends had kids of the right age when that came along but I never got it. 

The stadium is looking good though and it does give the idea of being there what with the bright lights and the huge crowd so nice job on that even if it is pokemon.

WWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYY?, ROFL

PS. FYI, Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" was based on Pokemon and the lost Roman Legion for those of you who didn't know. It's only about the best series I think I've ever read.

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## Crayons

S'OK, I've finished now!
So, Pokemon, that's the little blobby monster things you collect or something, yes? 
After that it all gets a tad fuzzy, so the "Why?" question was rather more swamped by the "What the...?" - it's something of a leap from blobby monsters to an arena with people on sticks and a giant looking pool table and I was loath to exhibit further ignorance!

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## RecklessEnthusiasm

Pokemon is far more intense than you might think. It is a world thick with wild animals that can do everything from shooting fire or causing earthquakes to controlling your mind. Add to this the fact that the people in the pokemon world never seemed to have never really discovered handheld weaponry. So, basically, whether you're walking through the neighborhood forest preserve or engaging in a political/religious ideological disagreements with a militant group bent on global unification under one fascist banner (team rocket), it is going to involve viscous dogfights between your subdued beasts and theirs--these beasts can be dragons, reanimated fossils, ghosts, just about anything. Anyhow, these dogfights are so ubiquitous that it has become a popular spectator sport. It is truly a terrifying and brutal setting.

Anyhow, I turned the shadows off since being surrounded by giant floodlights would produce some shadow effects that sketchup is not equipped to produce. I'll have to add them on myself in PS after I finish up the last of the modelling.

Thanks again for the advice, Crayons. And I might have to check out that series if it is as good as you say, Jax.

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## Jaxilon

Oh dude...everyone I have turned onto these books went gaga over them. I can't think of a series I would recommend more. 
I happened to hit a book signing here where he was speaking, not that I'm big on book signing but I figured why not...anyway he was talking about how he created this story. He had an argument with a blogger about a good novel being based upon the writer or a good idea. Jim was saying a good writer could write about anything and make it good. The other guy was saying no way, a bad idea couldn't be made great. Anyway, he told Jim that he would give him a bad idea and see if he could do anything with it. So Jim came back with, "No, you give me two bad ideas and I'll write it." The guy then said he was sick of all these Lost Legion stories and that he hated Pokemon.  Now, that probably doesn't sound like much of an idea to write about but boy he blew the doors off as far as I'm concerned. 

Don't want to hijack your WIP. We had a thread about good books to read a few months ago that you might want to check out as well.

Keep up the good work.

Ha! Found the thread

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## tilt

nice stadium...  never had the patience for 3D myself ... use to work a little with 3D Studio Max, took some classes (costed wayyyyy to much) and basicly found out that I'd stick to 2D and leave 3D for the pro's ... one thing I did learn was that in the pro 3D world you often don't make it all, but you specialize in building stuff, animating it, texturing, lights etc... that is if you wanna be really good  :Smile: 
And as a funny little side remark it takes an average of 7 hours to render a frame in a Pixar movie - some frames up to 30 hours - at 24 frames a second - thats a lot of rendertime  :Smile:

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## mearrin69

Cool stadium. Looking good.

I never really got Pokemon either (except to know that it means Pocket Monster or something) but I never really get anything of Japanese origin. Why are their cartoon characters always shouting? And Japanese anime/game names are truly befuddling. I think it started out as a "lost in translation thing" but has become some sort of meme...a lot of stuff with funky names is actually American (like Aqua Teen Hungerforce, I think). Yeah. I don't get the Japanese...  :Smile: 

Povray is cool stuff...used it back in like 1991-1993 before I got trueSpace. Seems like later on there was an actual modelling interface for it - Moray or something like that? My favorite modeling tool these days is Silo, which has (for me) a very intuitive interface (less CAD-like than some) and is completely customizable. Maybe give the demo a go if you get a chance. It's not really a renderer but, I think, you can probably use one of its output formats to render it in Povray (you can load objects/scenes in it now, right?)
M

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## Redrobes

I am a pretty seasoned 3D guy with not a lot of broadness and certainly not up to speed with the later apps. I.e. I can do a lot of stuff but in just a few packages. Still, most of them are all similar since the ideas behind them are similar. Usually there is a mode of thinking that once you have worked out what it is, all of it makes more sense. Some apps make this transition nice and easy and others seem to obfuscate it and say they want one thing but actually what they really want is something else. I think POVray is definitely of the former as its in your face about the language and control but you have to do a lot of work to do anything. I found Blender right at the other end of the scale. Its the sort of app that if you already know how to do stuff then it would appear easy to you and noone else. I found it annoying but powerful.

If I were a wiz at POV and liked the scripty text nature with all the control it gives then I would look into Renderman as I think its somewhat on the same lines. Gelato was nVidia's accelerated version on similar lines as well and they dropped dev of that but made it (Pro version) a free download. Its supposed to do POV like stuff in near real time assuming you have a doozy nvidia card to run it on.

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