I'm considering making a desktop pet dragon.

For those of you unfamiliar with desktop pets, they are basically like small animated critters than run around on your pc's desktop doing random things and sometimes interacting with you. There are quite a few, and for some time there was even a desktop pet that would read your emails to you (they went out of business and I lost the installer). Think [what ever those little cheap electronic key chain pets doohickies were called that I played with when I was 15]. I could go so far as to make you feed it and take care of it, but I was really only considering it being just a decoration or a novelty instead of an actual game. I could have it read your emails to you, but that would be complicated to say the least (unless, of course, you want your dragon to have the voice of microsoft sam ). I have dragon wallpapers and I usually put dragon themes on my website (which is down currently). Even my high school's mascot was a blue and gold dragon (my university's mascot is a bowl weavil lol... thats an insect the size of an aphid for you who don't know).

Basically, I'm posting this because I'm a programmer who is bad at drawing and creating 3d models (ever hear of the term, programmers artwork?). I could easily make the program and make it work, I could even create the sounds and the animation sequences. I am horrible at drawing and especially at turning a drawing into an actual polygonal model. I have a registered copy of Milkshape3d, and I would need it in one of the many formats it can import. I could wrap or make textures for you need me to.

And of course, you'd get credit for your work, as well as a free copy.
When I'm done I'd gladly give out free copies to whomever wanted it.

photoshop... yes...and no. You could create a drawing of a dragon in photoshop from which to use as a blueprint to create the 3d model from. You could defiantly create the texture in photoshop.

When you think of 3d modeling, think of what they use to create video game characters and things you see in 3d animated cgi movies like Shrek (or Saphira in the movie). When you create a 3d model, you basically draw out polygons, and then morph and move them around until they ressemble what you are making. Its like making something from clay, you break off chunks of clay (in 3d modeling you start with blocks or spheres) and stick them onto the model, then you shape the clay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_modeling

I'm bad at modeling, so I was hoping to find someone who wasn't .
But like i said, any 2d drawing would be helpful as we could derrive a 3d model from it. Modelers often set the workspace background to a 2d picture and trace over it with polygons. They then have to rotate it and give it depth.

Hmm... I have some art skills, mostly on the digital side of things, and I've been looking for a 3D modelling tutorial for a while now, so I can help my friend with characters for her Anime server on San Andres Multiplayer.

So I'm willing to help in any way possible, and hopefully learn some things along the way

Google does have a free modeling program and even has the option to search for models just like images, video, or websites.

I have Milkshape3d, its very popular among Counter-strike and Unreal modders. Its not free, but its only twenty-five dollars and is loaded with features. It imports and exports to alot of formats, including 50 or so video game file formats (even exports for the sims).
http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/
Its not a package released by some large company, it was created by some programmer. He runs his own forums and there is alot of help available.

Now basically what I do as a programmer is take the final model and texture, render it at its current frame (or frames for blended animation.. ie walking and roaring at the same time) into a texture buffer. I then force the underlying windows to repaint themselves (either by invalidating thier rectangles-flickers, or by sending them the print screen command which would not be noticeable to the user), copy the current area into a texture buffer (ie i take a screen shot), render the dragon on top, then repaint the final scene over the area. The dragon will not exist in a typical window (from the user's perspective)- he will appear to roam freely on your screen. From the programmer's perspective this is really just a window without borders or a title bar that gets painted to match the objects below it to appear transparent. The dragon will have right click menus, and will interact with the user. He will eat, sleep, chase your cursor, breath fire spontaneously (teacher, the dragon torched my homework!), and do other unspecified dragon things. He will have an optional icon in the taskbar as well as a right click menu (don't poke the dragon too hard, he bites) with the option to disable as well as other features and settings.

lol, why is the synonym for shaky or flashy or nonsmooth animation that starts with f (think old style films that could give someone a siesure) and the synonym for maw, chew that starts with b censored?

I've started working on the program.

I'll have these parts done today or tomorrow:

1. Screen Capture: In order to make the window the dragon is drawn in appear transparent, I'm going to have to take a snapshot of every window below it every frame (similar to print screen command) so I can draw that to the background of the dragons window before drawing the dragon on top.

2. Window Polling: basically in order to identify places for the dragons to land, walk, or sit I make an array of all windows on your desktop so I can identify all of the title bars as suitable landing surfaces (think mario brothers, lol).

Here is a primitive list of features I plan on throwing in:

1: multiple dragons (and they'll interact with each other)
2: dragon personalities (you set thresholds for anger, happiness, loneliness, etc)
3: dragon ai's/moods (hungry, angry, lonely, fear, etc)
4: dragon files (so you can save your dragons and use them on other desktops)
5: 3d acceleration- faster and less cpu use (probably opengl for simplicity)

Your dragon will do random actions based on an array of numbers corresponding to its mood compared to its personality array (ie, numbers for happiness, anger, hunger, shyness, etc).
Basically the dragon performs an action based upon the largest number in his attitude array. Different attitudes have weights in his personality array (attitude * personality weight = final score).
So if your dragon has an angry number of 10, and a hunger number of 20, he'll eat something first, and probably roar at you and look mad after (not to mention increase his sleepiness number because he ate and is full).
Every action he does influences his attitude numbers (like eating increases sleepiness and reduces hunger, playing with you increases happiness and reduces anger, boredom, etc).

I hope I'm not too vague.

As far as the model, I'm not sure what I'll do, I once made a fish for a demo by imagining grid coordinates in my head and typing them into my code (but it was very ugly....lol).

I know a little about 3d modeling, I am using Blender 3D.
A modeled a dragon head a few days ago.
It isn't textured, but after I'm done modeling it I will add a texture to it.

Here's an image of it:

Not bad.

Sorry about not checking this thread is so long.

Yes, arya_shur'tugal Blender 3D is free.

I am glad someone has finally replied.

They link to the website to download Blender 3D is http://www.blender3d.org.

There are many tutorials out there, and a few books.
Check out the BlenderArtists forum if you can.