There are tons of questions about how to get models from whatever 3D modeler into XNA, and all of the replies (that I've read) are "hack this, edit that, but unfortunately your textures still won't work" etc...

Can someone tell us how Microsoft gets their models in? Tiny.x from the DirectX SDK and dude.fbx from the XNA Skinning Sample are great examples of what I think a lot of us would like to be able to do (textured properly, animated with bones) so we know it's possible, but can't seem to get right. I could understand if DirectX left everyone out in the cold and said "Write you own import and export code for your own proprietary formats" but XNA is pushing its content pipeline (which is either almost very cool, or I don't understand it well enough yet) and then not telling us how they themselves use it.

There's lots of modeling tutorials and coding tutorials, it would be nice to have that one "in between" tutorial.

Go bump this thread:

http://forums.xna.com/thread/7104.aspx

I don't know how Tiny was built - that's from way before my time :-)

The dude in the skinning sample was modelled, textured, skinned, and animated entirely in Maya if I remember right. We exported him using the latest version of the FBX exporter plugin from Autodesk (not the one that ships built in to Maya, beacuse that was quite old, so we downloaded the latest release instead), and that was that: we didn't have to do any manual editing or hacking around after the export.

Very cool and much appreciated! Thank you!

What about the texture locations, I have found that with Max and the locations of textures inside the fbx file I had to manually edit the locations. I have forwarded this onto Autodesk to see if the product can have an option added to change the paths to a new location reletive to the model.

Glenn Wilson:

What about the texture locations, I have found that with Max and the locations of textures inside the fbx file I had to manually edit the locations. I have forwarded this onto Autodesk to see if the product can have an option added to change the paths to a new location reletive to the model.

Use the free Panda .x exporter for Max.  It allows you to output your models with relative texture paths.

http://www.andytather.co.uk/Panda/directxmax.aspx

Nod I can agree on that, but having the ability in the one application would make it easier, and produce less hastles.

the latest .fbx exporter from Autodesk for Maya allows you to export in ascii format. If you export in ascii, the file is human-readable and you can huntdown the texture path and change it yourself.

Most of the formats have been readable, but having the ability to remove the need to manually edit the file would be better. It would reduce the risk.

 

That's why I like simple blender with python and open scripts clearly readable and editable.

Scripts are fine and dandy and at the end of the day, working on a commercial project, most likely the way to go. The point of this thread was that XNA (which is great! don't take this as bashing) is being touted as a way for "hobbyists" to get into the scene, but writing scripts to import and export models is still a pretty steep learning curve.

Going from creating a colored triangle and importing a model snagged from the SpaceWar starter kit to exporting and animating a skinned mesh is a huge jump. Someone somewhere at Microsoft knows how to successfully export a model from some program; learning how to do this the way those who created XNA had in mind will be the least likely to be broken in future releases, and is probably the simplest way as well. Then, once you've got the basics down, you can choose whether you just want to do something cool or go for deeper understanding of a particular aspect of the process.

I have to say that I agree, 3d content creation (and importing) is very tricky.

I have plumped for blender, and I have gradually got together a process for making models, texturing them and exporting them, but it has been tricky.

(very very simple models, no bones, single mesh)

Although the information is out there on how to do stuff, it is very dispersed. If someone started an XNA-Blender site, that had end to end examples and documented the odd little nuances, I could see the combination quickly becoming very attractive to newer developers. 

Good luck with your modelling!

J

What gets me is this: Ok, all you hobbyists who just got a free compiler and free framework, now it's time to shell out a grand on a modelling package so you can write your hobbyist games. I don't think so. I don't have that kind of money to spend on a hobby. Convincing my wife I needed a new computer was bad enough. ;)

What we need is a workable way to get models