dim3 Forum

Is there any way of making a modle look all shaded and stuff
but not have to use any textures?

Yes. Rendering it in a 3D application like Cinema 4D or Blender and using a lot of materials.
Oh, you mean in realtime? No. Use textures if you want detail, or try writing a GLSL shader.
Guess why every game uses textures. Probably because it's the easiest, fastest and best way, right?

Well, you absolutely NEED textures.
You could use a shader, but you'd have to know GLSL shader language.
You could kind of cheat and just give it 2x2 textures of various colors, but it wouldn't look very 3d; dim3's lighting (along with many, many other engines) is not as good as a still render. Also, you'd have to build more features into the polygons, which is more "expensive" memory-wise.

So, i'd recommend sticking with textures, because you aren't going to get anything better anywhere else. Something that may help with your textures is if you look at a professional set (or somthing close) and see what they think is important to include.

dimwit Wrote:You could use a shader, but you'd have to know GLSL shader language.

GLSL means "(Open)GL shading language". So "GLSL shader language" is kind of repeated unnecessarily.

dimwit Wrote:dim3's lighting (along with many, many other engines) is not as good as a still render.

Good is probably the wrong word here. It's just as good, but both are made for different things. There is a reason that rendering a still image with a lot of detail takes longer than rendering one frame in Dim3.
And I think Brian said this once: How good a game looks is 95% artwork, 5% engine.

dimwit Wrote:So, i'd recommend sticking with textures, because you aren't going to get anything better anywhere else. Something that may help with your textures is if you look at a professional set (or somthing close) and see what they think is important to include.

A good idea would probably getting a book on texturing.
I recommend 3D Game textures by Luke Ahearn. It's very good.

I second Bink on that book, even if you use gimp (the books for photoshop).
Even cartoony games use textures .

It would be rather hard to have a game without textures. :P Texture add the detail that the model can't. That is, unless you have a really powerful computer.

PatrickA Wrote:It would be rather hard to have a game without textures. :P Texture add the detail that the model can't. That is, unless you have a really powerful computer.

Well... you could use a cel-shader. That way you still need textures, but very simple, flat colored ones. Materials with 2x2 px color textures would be enough.
And with just a little more detail, you can create beautiful graphics.
http://www.dreamstation.cc/reviews/gamec...er_005.jpg
http://www.epilog.de/Dokumente/Spiele/Co...II_B01.jpg
http://www.iogc.net/images/iogc/Jet%20Se...re%201.jpg
http://www.gameogre.com/reviewdirectory/...Warsow.jpg

Thats pretty nice. I bet thats what they did in the Super Man Returns: The video game, They have all the civilians like that.

Bink Wrote:

PatrickA Wrote:It would be rather hard to have a game without textures. :P Texture add the detail that the model can't. That is, unless you have a really powerful computer.

Well... you could use a cel-shader. That way you still need textures, but very simple, flat colored ones. Materials with 2x2 px color textures would be enough.
And with just a little more detail, you can create beautiful graphics.

Cel shader? How do I use that?

You'll have to write one. Probably in GLSL. Use google to find a GLSL tutorial.