Dead Deer

Behind the many hours spent fully living a tale told by a video game are countless more hours spent working with specialized applications in order to create the environment, populate it with objects and characters, and finally bring it to life. With a lot of programming knowledge required, game creation is not for everyone, but Dead Deer aims to change this with an intuitive environment and comprehensive tools for 3D modeling, animating and scripting.

Although the application comes equipped with an abundance of tools, ranging from object creation, modeling and bone editing to texture mapping, animations, simplicity was one of the key elements in designing the application. Serving as an interactive preview section, the center area is large enough, with intuitive navigation controls and all options stored in a side panel.

Most tools need to be selected and only work while active, so that no accidental errors occur. What's more, the rich context menu provides quick access to creating objects, various operations for face, vertex or mesh, morphing, texture mapper and more.

However, there's also some scripting involved if you want to create complex interactions. Luckily, the application grants you access to a decent amount of learning material and examples to get you acquainted. Practicability is further increased when writing code, thanks to a syntax highlighter, code suggestion, as well as a functional compiler and debugger to test out your scripts.

The application can be used to prepare all your objects for the main project and later on import them to create connections and scripts. These can be exported to files of common formats in case you want to process them in other applications, types that include 3DS, ASC or PCB.

Options to create highly detailed objects are at your disposal, with advanced lighting tools and texture effects for transparency, reflection and even the possibility to create bumps. This can easily be modified with the help of a 2D mapper where you can thoroughly add your artistic touch.

To end with, Dead Deer is a powerful tool with the help of which you can generate highly-detailed 3D models and objects, with the possibility to bring everything to live through scripts and animations. The overall design lets you quickly accommodate regardless of your experience. It's both a means to learn the basic steps in game design and use it to create thorough products.