interactive city
 

What is the best way to make this city I modeled interactive. Like on Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

we`d need more detail on this one. are u on the PLE ?

No I'm using a computer with Maya 6.0. I just want to make a city that you can browse through as in Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

I'm really no expert on this, but I would imagine you would need to export your city into some sort of game engine.

Although if there was some way of making an interactive scene inside maya alone I would really like to now it.

I found a pretty neat program called Virtools that lets you make your maya scenes interactive. But unless you want to cough up 9,000 dollars I suggest you find another way lol. Which I am still looking for.

You'll need some kind or rendering engine to do this if you want someone to be able to "navigate" through your city without Maya. Either a game engine or possibly a VRML engine.

If you're just trying to show the city from different vantage points, you might considered rendering an animated flythrough of the city.

If a sense of motion is not required, then you might also render out selected views and create an hmtl doc with links.

Yea I want to navigate through it. Is this VRML engine for free by the way?

You should be able to export to VRML using the VRML2 plugin. You'll still need a VRML Player, but you can find these free. Cosmo is a popular one.

Found the steps below on a college web site...

"To be able to export your model in VRML format from Maya, you need to load the VRMLExport plug-in via Window->Settings/Preferences->Plug-in Manager. Select both check boxes for vrml2Export.mll at the end of the list and close the window.

Hint: Before exporting, you should consider where to place the origin of your model. If you export your model from Maya, it uses the scene origin (0,0,0) as the origin for your model. This might have some consequences when using your model in other systems. Usually, models are placed, based on their origin, into the target world when they are imported._ If your model, for instance,_ is located 2 meters left from the Maya scene origin, it will be placed 2 meters left of the import-position in the CVE. Another important fact is, that the origin of a model is often used as reference point for transformations (like the pivot in Maya). So, when you rotate your imported model in a CVE, it is rotated around its origin. If the origin is not in a defined position in the model, it might lead to unexpected behaviour. Therefore, you should think about a suitable position for the origin. For most cases you want to move your model back into the origin of Maya, before you export it.

Export your model to VRML via File->Export All and use a web browser with Cosmo Player to test it."

I tried the vrml thing but its just the same thing looking at it in maya. I think I am just going to find a free version of Virtools. If I ever get it off the ground I'll post an example version.

try asking mtmickenly questions things u want to do lyk in games he covers tht part he`ll tell ya better then many of us

Yeah, mickenly is awsome!