How to have 3D characters?

I'm a novice programmer trying to make a game for fun and I really want to have 3D characters in my game but I have no idea what i'm doing. Can someone please, please make a tutorial on how to put 3D characters in a game?

It's so confusing--there are so many different formats, and meshes and bone structures and blending? o.O I created an animated character and animated it to say a bit of text in the program iclone, I wish I could just somehow put that in my game but I cannot figure out how.

Tutorial PLEASE!! There's really no information on this--I found a couple of lines on the visionaire wiki and that's it.

Hmm that's a bit like asking for the location of the holy grail... The 3D modeling side is entirely up to you. All I can say is that you should direct any 3d (visioaire studio) related questions to m0fl.

As I just mentioned in the other post, the 3d system is currently very buggy. I would instead recommend exporting your 3d animations from your 3d program as .png files with alpha masks, or whatever. & then adding them as you would normally add general animations.

Still get the 3d character look; minus dynamic lighting & shading mind.

Well all I really want at this point is to just successfully get a 3D character--any 3D character--into my game. I created a brand-new game with nothing in it and right now am just trying to accomplish getting a 3D character to even show up. Surely someone who's had success can explain? I mean I get that the 3D modeling is up to the user, but right now I'll use anyone's method, just want to get it to work at all lol

I might try the .png method you mentioned (although I don't even know what alpha masks are lol) but if I have to use that that's kinda disappointing, I'd prefer to have legit 3D characters. Also why are they selling this if it's in Beta, didn't see that it was in beta on the product page :/

The 3d character model support was a recent edition to the game engine. & currently Visionaire Studio 4.0 is a beta edition until the final edition is released in the near future. It's unlikely that the 3d model system will become stable for that edition though... It's actually being coded by a third party (not one of the vs devs), as & when they can. It was added (I guess) to show that progress was being made on it.

Youtube would be a good place to start for learning how to create stuff in 3d programs such as blender, cinema4d etc.

As for the .png with alpha mask: it's essentially just a .png with transparent background.

I don't think there's any easy tutorials for simply creating 3d stuff, it's quite technical, which you can probably by looking at all the options & windows in blender or 3ds max etc. I had a go with blender & soon gave up on trying to make anything, but that's just me. I'm more of a coder than anything else.

Also final point: Visionaire Studio is primarily a 2D game engine. The 3d support was a recent addition & as all new features, it takes a while to iron out the kinks.

Plenty of people on here have made their graphics in 3d software & exported the 3d animations/frames as .png files & imported them into VS that way. Check out Stasis, which is a very impressive looking isometric horror game being developed in VS.

I am doing all my 3D characters in Blender and they are working just fine.

@afrlme right but I already was able to create an animated .dae file that plays in assimp viewer (whether I created it correctly I can't say) what I want to do now is have it show up in the game and I want to know the steps to do that. Might try the png method tho. Also jw how do you know all this about how the software is being developed?

@brut69 can you explain to me the steps of how you put a 3D character in the game? I have an animated file I'm just not sure how to actually get it into the game. Also is the .dae or .x file we put in the 3D model file supposed to be animated or just supposed to be a model? Sorry I'm clueless!

Hmm because I'm a part of the Visionaire Studio Team. I provide English support for Visionaire Studio Editor & lua script related questions. Unfortunately my knowledge is a bit limited on the 3D side of things as I have no interest in using it myself; I prefer 2D adventure games & artwork.

I'm not part of the actual programming team, but I often talk to the devs on here via pm, skype & email etc, which is how I know certain things.

Animated files do not work idealy, you need to have single .png files that will play in order.

This means a 2 second animation that will be 24 fps will have to be 48 images of .png files.

You create the animation you want in Blender or the program of your choice but instead of exporting it into a video file you export it to single .png files.

@AFRLme ah okay cool.

@brut69 - oh so you didn't actually load anything into where it says "3D model file" on the outfit properties tab, then?

No. When I did that in the past the file turned out huge and it was doing basically what I am saying above.
The best and fastest way to do it is to render your 3D character into single .pngs the same way a 2D character is added. You still get the 3D effect with half the hassle.