3D Tutorial for Defold

Hi,
I’ve seen more and more people from Defold Community start to make 3D game using Defold. I’ve used Defold for 2D games, but I also want to try to make my first 3D game using Defold. Unfortunately, right now I’ve not seen so much (actually haven’t seen any) tutorials about making 3D games using Defold. Is there anywhere to start learning 3D, because I also didn’t have prior experience about making 3D, so a step-by-step tutorial is going to help very much. For developers that using Defold for 3D before, where did you find resources to learn to make 3D game with Defold, or you have experience in Defold before?

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Unfortunately, there are almost no tutorials on 3D. For me, it was more an experience of trying and researching.

If you have experience with using Defold for 2D games I guess all that you can find new here is in this short list:

  • Use the camera component to define view projection and set it to the render script with the acquire_camera_focus and use_camera_projection messages.
  • Add drawing the ‘model’ predicate to the render script because the built-in render script doesn’t have it.
  • Adapt shader programs to render materials with shading that is more suitable for 3D space.
  • Use model component for .dae files created with external tools.
  • Use mesh component for .buffer files created with external tools or scripts.
  • Undestand how the .buffer data glues with the materials, shaders and textures on some existing examples.
  • Use collision objects with primitive box collision shapes or with .convexshape files created with external tools or scripts.

Ask any question you’re interested in, and I’ll try to give you an example in existing extensions.

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I think the best entry point for 3d in Defold will be dig into these repos:

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@astrochili @AGulev
Thanks so much for your help.

I think the best entry point for 3d in Defold will be dig into these repos

Niceeee, I’m gonna take a look at these extensions, those seem to really make 3D workflow easier. Hopefully there will be 3D tutorial soon cause I think the engine seem to be very promising with the 3D capability.

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Thanks for this list. Very useful.

I wish it was a little easier to get 3D working in Defold. It’s quite unintuitive compared to other parts of the process of getting something working.

We definitely want to simplify this process. Having a good project template to start from is one thing. The other is additional improvements to the content pipeline so that it is possible to take more advanced 3D content from for instance Blender and import that into Defold without additional work.

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When it comes to templates, I believe it would be nice to have a choice between empty 2d and empty 3d. This would allow users to get started quickly. Maybe providing a bullet point of how it works in the README.md might also be a good idea. Then when PBR arrives it will be used as an extension which is perfect.

a very basic empty 3d project can be found here:

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