Model Creator for Game Maker (v5.0)

Page on Dutch GMC

Open source!
Model Creator v5 is now open source! I am not planning to make any changes to the program anymore (not in v5 at least).

Model Creator v5 by Maarten Baert is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Belgium License.
This means:

• You are free:
  
  • to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to Remix — to adapt the work
• Under the following conditions:
  
  • Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
  • Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Attribution
If you want to redistribute the original or modified versions of Model Creator v5, you must include my name (Maarten Baert) and a link to http://model_creator.matrebatre.be/ (or the url itself).

This program allows you to create 3D models for Game Maker. This is not the first version, it's just the first time I created a topic for it on this forum. Older versions can be found on the Dutch GMC: link.

Video tutorial on YouTube: Modeling a chair (matrebatre)
Video tutorial on YouTube: Texturing (matrebatre)
Video tutorial on YouTube: Basic shapes (kake_fisk)
If you have no idea how to start, it is a good idea to watch these first.


This is a screenshot of the main program. It shows the entire menu and two views.

Online documentation

The program is a lot easier to use than most professional modeling programs. It is designed for creating low-poly models (<1000 triangles) as Game Maker would slow down anyway if you tried to use models that are too complicated. However, it is perfectly possible to create high-poly models with it as well.

My article about Model Creator has appeared in GMtech issue 15!
http://gamemakertech.info/2009/03/13/issue-fifteen-out-now/
It's on the last page.

Statistics:
Number of scripts: 223 (dll's not included)
Lines of code: 14462 (14000+ )

Download Model Creator v5.0 (1.80MB)
Download Model Creator v5.0 source code (418KB)
Yoyogames page (if you liked the program, please rate)

Features:
- Supports the GM model file format
- Supports File Association to open the models more quickly
- Supports triangles and all basic shapes
- Supports color, alpha and texture (with UV mapping)
- Supports lots of transformations to edit your models
- Supports undo/redo (up to 20 times!)
- Uses my calculator DLL for all user input (you can use expressions)
- Uses Max WinAPI for all popup menus

Banner:
You can put this in your signature if you like the program.
(links to this page)

Looks interesting and I've been meaning to learn some sort of model program (not to mention learning how to put models in my game in the first place). I'll give it a try.

It works well and I might be able to put it to use sometime. I've got to read the documentation though...

THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU

Finally someone has made a professional 3d modeling program specifically for gamemaker. I can give up on animor8 now and use your program to make all my models from now on. Being able to color individual faces is awesome iv'e been waiting along time for a program that allowed it. From my short playtest it seems just about perfect there where no errors or bad design choices at all.

Bloody well done mate!!!
(Australian thankyou of the highest order)

cheers, jepie0

I love you ! Thats all I have to say.

Edit:
Wow, it gets really easy after you get used to it. This is my very first model I've made that is textured and imported into Game Maker:


It's a penguin!

Perfect! Just curious, how long did it take you to make this??

This version took about four months, but I made the first version more than a year ago.

Dude, I hope to use this for my first 3d game (Well 2nd really), thanks.

nice job, congratulations!

this is awesome, and has a nice professional feel to it! it would be even better if you could export as a GML script!

EDIT:
i found it bit hard to get make what you want, is there a way to reverse faces?

Yes there is. Select the face and click the 'reverse face' button .

I really like this, I tried making models with another program and exporting them as an .obj and loading them with a script a guy made and that was really hard to get working in game. However if yours does what it says it does then this should make things a lot easier.

Are the right and middle mouse buttons being used to do anything? Because one thing one thing I would really, really like to be added is that pressing them would allows you to rotate the view, without having to select "move view", then left click to move it, then unselect "move view" to continue working.

http://model_creator.matrebatre.be/shortkeys/

There is a shortkey for rotating the view .

The middle mouse button is not used because lots of people don't have a middle mouse button. But maybe I will change this so you can rotate the view with the middle mouse button. The scroll wheel is used to change the Z value. The right mouse button is used to cancel most actions.

thanks, another question. is there a way to 'extrude' a face? eg: draw a triangle, then pull it out into a triangular prism

great tool pal
this is a great option for thoose who doesnt have any 3D experience or cannot access to professional sofware like 3dsmax or Maya ( i use 3dsmax, so i probably wont use this ) its simple and it has most modifiers you will usually use while modelling. Im pretty sure that this will be used for many 3d games with Gamemaker (Goodbye anim8or, i never liked it anyway)

You should try to add a drag system to draw basic shapes, have you ever used 3dsmax? thats what i mean

ill be watching you closely!

- Manuel777

Looks really tasty!
I`ll have to properly check this out when I get a chance.

I`ve been using 3DSMax for low poly work for years & know it like the back of my hand..
but all the export/import to GM progs were a real pain to use...

I have high hopes that this may be the perfect solution!
Keep adding more features!
Best of luck!

does it work well with vista?

Yes. I did almost all the testing on windows vista.

I'll like it. Its a little hard to get used to be it is and will be very useful.

Its a bit confusing though.

UPDATE!

I added orbiting with middle mouse button and zooming with scroll wheel. Also, vector transformations should work in the texture editor now.

Can you make animations with this? Also, can you angle different polygons? If not then that would be nice to add in.

Thanks for adding the middle mouse rotate + zoom its so much easier to look around stuff now. Also, good thinking adding in the .obj support. I've got a heap of all models I can now convert into .gmmod. Have you heard of wings 3d? http://www.wings3d.com/

have a look at it, you might get some ideas for features you can add. The main things I think its got that are really convenient are the the extrude feature where you can turn a flat face into a 3d prism and the intrude feature, how you can turn make a smaller duplicate face inside another. Its hard to explain so have a look

Perhaps you should make some tutorials. The videos help a bit but just watching how you very quickly made a model doesn't help as much as it could. I've been trying to figure out texture mapping but just going by your video, I can't get cubic mapping to work.

Also, how do the color buttons work? I've been trying to figure it out but to no avail. Yes I have read the documentation but it didn't explain every question I may have had.

Possible tutorials you can make:
Texture mapping.
Better explanation of the coloring buttons.

Dang, this was such a cool program. i made a figure i gonna post soon.
but i got error




and then the program closed :/

good work there anyway

/ kubanen

This looks like a nice 3d model editor/creator.

Does this program allow poly-by-poly model creation? (As in, you create a polygon, then assign/drag it's vertices's to make up the model)

yeah, you make a square or whatever and convert it to triangles and click move vertex...

how do i colour my things, and how do i add windows,lol...i need loads of windows( i made a skyscraper)


BTW, Yay first post in 7 months

it looks like it's very well done, except it looks like it takes way too many steps to do a simple task. vertex editing is good, but not so much entirely vertex modeling.

- rotating basic shapes: Because of a limitation in the GM model system this is not possible. Models don't support transformations.

- wings3D: I will have a look at it.

- error: Someone else had discovered that error already. It is fixed in the current version of Model Creator.

- poly-by-poly modeling: Yes, this is possible. This is why I made this program. I couldn't find any program that allows me to create polygons this way.

- color buttons: you can click the colored rectangle to change the color. Select something, then click the 'apply color' button to apply the color to the selected faces. It is not possible to change the color of basic shaptes (limitation in Game Maker, again). Basic shapes will always use the color set by draw_set_color (in your game).

- adding windows: I think the easiest way to add windows is to use a wall texture with a window (with alpha if you want transparent windows) and tile it on the wall.

Very good program, I didn't know such programs can be made with GM!
At the moment, I don't really need 3d models, or know how to...
But I think, that in the future, I will use this program, as it seems really nice and comfortable comparing to other programs I saw, and it 100% does models that will work on GM.
I'm rating this 5/5 for sure!
One of the best 3d programs made with GM (if not the only )

Congratulations!
Tamper

Texturing only works on triangles.
But this is a really nice application, good work, this can replace anim8or.

Only on triangles...that would explain my troubles.

Holy crap! Finally! Thank you!

WOW i remember the first version that you gave to me does this support multiple textures per model.. i would guess not due to game makers limitations anyways awesome work i have a few ideas you could probably add

-Lathe like in anim8or you can extrude a path around a center point which makes making vases and pots easier

-extrude would be very useful!

-resize faces uniformly

a few of these features would be really appreciated

very nice work!

by the way how do you get the vertexes from a model when loading the models o.0
been trying to figure this out for a while now, Thanks!

edit: btw magnet was kinda misleading thought it did something else XD

There is a way to "multitexture" - Well fake it anyways (I've used it before). Get all the textures you want onto your model and merge them into one bigger background (four 256x256 = one 512x512 with the 4 textures in it). Then U.V. map the textures correctly and you got 4 textures on one model... "sorta"...

er, I meant like bump mapping and stuff
would be cool i had an idea of coloring the texture with the bump map rather than at run time.. that would work i suppose

however U3D supports multiple textures o.0
well either way really great work hes done here
just stating a few ideas

edit: OMG just noticed the re sizable grid this is what was missing in the first version Thank You!
I will now remake my plane with more precise detail

edit:
lol made a really quick pencil model to test the new program

oh and i found a bug when previewing the model you can only zoom in o.0
also do you think you can include an option for lighting control like the lighting is a little too powerful
being able to place lights in the model would be a great idea too

again thanks this app should come in very useful in the future

I uploaded a new version. The bugs are fixed now.

- Real multitexturing is not possible in GM. But you can generate textures (backgrounds) at game start, maybe it is possible that way.

- I am currently working on some kind of plugin system. This would allow me to add tools like extrude, revolution (=lathe?), subdivision, expressions, matrix transformation, ...

- 'resize faces uniformly': what do you mean? If you use the same values for x,y,z , the scaling is uniform.

- currently you can only turn lighting on or off. Why do you need less powerful lighting?

- "by the way how do you get the vertexes from a model when loading the models": do you mean the loading script? It is not that hard, the model file is almost identical to GML. It uses numbers instead of function names.

- Texture mapping is only possible for triangles because basic shapes don't support texture coordinates (only texture repeat). You should convert the basic shape to triangles first.

i noticed the scaling thing after I'de posted that anyways a plugin system would be great would you release it to public so that they could make their own plugins?

revolution/lathe think of it like an extrude around an axis you draw the outside shape then select lathe and it completes the shape so that it creates a vase or glass etc

an even further example would be if you had the extrude functionality u can lathe it yourself by extruding the face then using rotate for every (360/steps) so for instance 16 steps

extrude, rotate selected axis by 22.5 degrees, extrude again, rotate the next selected face by 22.5 degrees... etc
(btw the rotation is that relative or global angle? I'm pretty sure its relative considering 180 degrees flips the object)

anyways if it was possible for me to create the plugin i would gladly make a lathe tool or if you would rather write one yourself thats fine too

about the loading script I'm trying to get the vertexes from a GM Model file so that i can use those positions for something I'm making like for instance like you said in the manual "drawing the icons is not an original function of game maker" exactly so i was wondering how you get the positions of the vertexes to even draw at
if it helps I'm trying to create a sort of model collision

edit: sweet subdivision would be nice as well!

and about the lighting you could create scenes inside the editor for showing off the rendered image 'test model' and it would be nie to get the effect your looking for
also whats 'projection mapping' is that just basically saying it unwraps the model based on its projection?

if you were to make a plugin system what language would it be in if it were released to public

btw what does this mean exactly?
"- Uses my calculator DLL for all user input (you can use expressions)"
does that mean i can input 360/16 into like the rotation fields
another suggestion would be a 'copy to all' button so you dont have to input the same value over and over if u wanted to rotate all axises the same though its not a big problem it would be nice

another thing just to make sure would loops be available in this plugin system
loops would be necessary in the plugin system in order to make lathe :0

You can convert your other shapes to triangles before texturing or flipping faces.

And is it possible to add a point that you can connect to the other vertex point (or something like that)?

This is... awesome! I never really took the time to learn how to use the 'professional' modeling tools properly, and so I just never really got into 3D... but this simplifies things by so much compared to other tools! You should make your own forums for this (I don't mean this thread, I mean using something like InvisionFree), so others can post their own methods, models made from it, and other things. I bet it would be pretty popular.

Just a quick question- Is it possible to merge the objects, so I don't have to edit the texture to make it look like there's one texture wrapping around the whole thing? I know that the built-in shapes (block, cylinder, ellipsoid, etc) are treated as separate objects, but when I convert them to triangles they are still not treated as being part of the main part of the model.

- The plug-in system will use GML. I don't know yet whether the plug-in system will be public or not, because it is a security risk.

- There are some DLL's that can handle 3D collisions and can load GM models. Try to use one of these, it is a lot faster.

- Projection mapping projects the vertex coordinates on a plane and uses these coordinate for the texture coordinates.

- When you convert a basic shape to triangles, the triangles are identical to the other triangles in your model.

- I will try to make a 'replicator' plug-in that allows you to create multiple copies and translate/rotate them.

- "Uses my calculator DLL for all user input (you can use expressions)": this means you can use expressions in all input fields. For example:

It supports all the math functions in GM.

about the reading vertex positions i think i figured it out for the most part i figured out X Y and Z which is all i need but I'm wondering what the other values are for

for the plugin system maybe i can help with some ideas it would be realy great if others could create their own plugins like with anim8or and others

1) you could use GML as is without security
2) you could filter the input with an allowed list (example)
3) you could try and use an external language and have a converter/compiler to compile the input code into GML then encrypt it so its not to be edited lots of work >.<
4) have people submit plugin code to you for approval or something then you can encrypt and give it back that way only you know how to decrypt it if using strong encryption password etc this would be alot of work depending on how many are submited probably very few if any..
5) I should stop rambling

anyways somehow the code has gotta be given back to the creator the 4th method would be a pain to debug though u can do a variant of that one and just take code that's submitted to you and add it to the program if it works
i wouldn't mind this method much though you might.

oh btw you can use scripts in the plugin system so u can make your own functions

also how were you planning on showing the plugins in the program like a separate toolbar or what

anyways just a few ideas on how to go about plugins.. but it would be great however you decide to make it

sigh.. i don't mean to be pushy about it but it would be nice to know how its been going along this program is really great

This is simply amazing, I never knew Game Maker was capable of this.
It's just like MilkShape without the huge export list.

8.5/10, Considering 3D is usually harder than 2D.

0.o
THIS IS AMAZING!!!
apon using this for the first time I headbutted an owl (he was ok)
this is just so amazing and simple!
thank you LOADS! for this amazing app!

I was bored and decided to make a video of me making a table model in your model creator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rhYPCAkZ9c

Wow, this keeps growing and growing
Have you ever thought about adding plugins? you know, since you are using GML, maybe users can make their own model save / load codes, that will be too helpful. And why stop on saving and loading? with the right documentation about the global variables and stuff, users might be capable of adding options, modifiers, menues, who knows? you should really consider that...

Read the previous page .

from now on ill read the previous page

i loved this.
a simple, effective animating program made with game maker.


amazing job.

Oh, wow! This sounds very good and the screenshots look great!

BOOKMARKED

hmm.. can it really animate? it would be nice though but I don't think it can.. at least not without saving each frame loading each individual frame into an animator >.>

bone structures would be an awesome idea though