Torque Turbo Charged with Blender Support

Jay Moore writes “GarageGames announced today the availability of an exporter tool that allows Blender, the Open Source 3D content creation suite, to be used with GarageGames’ flagship Torque Game Engine technology. The Blender exporter runs on the Mac OS X, Linux and Windows platforms.

Harnessing the powerful combination of the 3D modeling, animation and rendering features of Blender, with the rich feature set of the Torque Game Engine (TGE) will allow independent game developers and artists to further realize their creative visions. The TGE Blender exporter offers full compatibility with the Torque Game Engine DTS native file format including Level-of-Detail (LOD), and bone and mesh animation sequences.

“GarageGames is excited add the feature-rich, cross-platform modeling power of Blender to independent developers using the Torque Game Engine,” expresses Jeff Tunnell, GarageGames President. “The support for this quality, Open Source tool gives a new option for independent artists unable to afford the sticker price of single-platform commercial modeling tools.”

“Blender is a powerful tool for cross platform 3D modeling for independent game developers to consider using,” comments James Urquhart GarageGames Associate. “The Blender community focus on re-engineering the user interface and the ability to support the Torque.dts format using python script makes this an even more compelling long term art solution.”

“For an open source project to be relevant, it is crucial to get active support from professionals and companies” says Blender Foundation chairman Ton Roosendaal. “The release of the Torque Exporter will make Blender a viable and productive alternative for 3D artists in the GarageGames community, but also proves we’re on the right track with our development.

For more information the Torque Game Engine or to download the demo of TGE goto http://www.garagegames.com/torque. For more information on the TGE Blender exporter resource and links to the documentation goto http://www.garagegames.com/blender.

About Blender:
Blender is the first and only fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite allowing modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, realtime interactive 3D and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility – all in one tidy, easily and free downloadable package! Blender 2.3x is now available and can be downloaded at http://www.blender3d.com/ to review current development work goto http://www.blender.org/.

About GarageGames:
Located in Eugene, Oregon, GarageGames (http://www.garagegames.com) is a pioneering on-line game publisher. Their mission is to provide independent game makers with tools, technology, education, team-building… and, even the markets they need to sell great games. GarageGames is most famous for bringing the Torque Game Engine, the technology behind “Tribes 2,” to Independent developers for only $100.”