3D - 2

I want to develop a 3D game. Where do I start?

It's a little vague, but I would like to begin creating my first game. Is there any free software/programs I can download to begin with? Is it possible to download .NET for free? What about object/character modeling software? Rendering, etc.? Thank you..

Public Comments

1. anim8or.com you can start making 3d objects then when you write your game you can just use the files from it.
2. .net is free - either VB or C#. But learn programming first. Learning languages without having learned programming gives you a lot of languages you can't do anything with.
3. You will have to create 3d models to animate. This program is open source its called blender I'd start there. http://www.blender.org/ .net is distributed as a run-time library from microsoft. To develop software you need a compiler of some sort C/C++, visual basic, java, etc. If you want this free then you might want to start learning how to use gcc/g++ for linux. I don't think .Net is used for gaming, but you want to use DirectX (add in for Microsoft programming) or openGL (free). I've always been interested in writing a game myself, but end up writing business software instead.
4. Well first decide what your going to build your game on, some big choices are DirectX or OpenGL. Personally, I prefer openGL as it's more "open" and free and more available to different platforms, the DirectX SDK is free too I think. Once you made that choice then you can look online for some tutorials. NeHe's tutorials are very good for starting. http://nehe.gamedev.net/ DirectX and OpenGL can both take 3d models in numerous formats such as Maya or CAD. But I recommended to start creating primitive shapes by hand so you get a good feel of how the modeling process work (vertices,faces,etc). If you want to dive in then I recommend look here: http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/ ... I don't know how well that works though and I think you have to pay. Good luck.
5. You can use Blender to create your mesh characters (sprites). Then you can download microsofts visual c# edtion for free and watch how to model at the first link given below. You should also join a forum to learn even more, like gamedev or msdn forums. Find the nitch in msdn forums that relates to your nitch and post a question.
6. I would suggest you learn Visual C++ as its pretty simple to learn and very powerful once you get through the higher level programming semantics and whatnot. As per a good 3D (and even 2D) engine, I would suggest the one that I use with all my projects, named Irrlicht (google it). Its a very good engine, well documented, free, and very simple to code for. It is very simple, yet extremely powerful, and can be used with either C++ (which has very simple syntax) or .NET (not so simple syntax).