Porting 3D Movie Maker to Linux

(benstoneonline.com)

155 points | by speckx 4 days ago

15 comments

  • tombert 1 day ago
    Next logical step would be WASM, I suppose. Then I could easily show everyone in the world 12-year-old-tombert's masterpiece "Fatso Man and Tarzan Baby".

    ETA: I'm gonna give it a go with Claude tonight. Need to justify my $100 membership somehow.

    • tombert 1 day ago
      UPDATE: About an hour with Claude gave me this: https://3dmmex.pages.dev/

      It actually works reasonably well from what I can tell, though I haven't thoroughly tested it.

      • tombert 1 day ago
        Here's the WASM source to those interested: https://github.com/Tombert/3DMMEx_WASM
        • intuxikated 1 day ago
          Doesn't work on brave on mobile, says fonts are missing Maybe you can bundle the fonts?
          • tombert 20 hours ago
            You can actually click "ok" and just continue anyway.

            That said, yeah, I'll see if i can bundle the fonts tonight.

            • tombert 11 hours ago
              Just an update, fixed this by using the Comic Relief font and placing that in there.
    • replete 1 day ago
      My 12 year old 3DMM masterpiece was "Super Poo in the Super Loo". I was surprised this wasn't more popular, so much fun
    • Pxtl 1 day ago
      Honestly there's a huge void online for a new xtranormal
    • ksi23 1 day ago
      [flagged]
  • OuterVale 1 day ago
    The most fantastic video I've ever seen created in Microsoft 3D Movie Maker is 'Grandpa Found the Car Keys': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGJKeESLBpQ

    A very impressive use of the tool to achieve a pretty impressive amount of style within the limitations.

    • AndrewOMartin 1 day ago
      Your point stands, it's very impressive. But Dragon in America was a cut above even that. Just look at the "chase scene" starting at 10:00 (even just 15 seconds should be enough to make my point)

      https://youtu.be/i5IJCAhiBhw?si=qsTJgv6MsfjXmEXU&t=600

      For anyone not familiar with 3DMM, there was no facility to move "the camera" to any apparent camera movement was just moving each primitive object, as far as I know, one piece at a time.

  • lproven 1 day ago
  • hsbauauvhabzb 1 day ago
    Awesome! I can now ditch Windows. The year is finally here.
    • resonanttoe 1 day ago
      Nice for you, but as a not-so-creative - I can't function without Fine Artist and at least creative writer 1.
    • Joel_Mckay 1 day ago
      TPM tamper detection and bitlocker disagree. Backup your key first...

      https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/back-up-your-bit...

      Just about any *nix platform is a better experience now, but many Steam games are still windows only. =3

      • hsbauauvhabzb 1 day ago
        Are you suggesting there are games that are not 3D movie maker that are worth playing?
        • Joel_Mckay 1 day ago
          A lot of legacy applications will not work in Wine.

          86box is a great option for old programs and games... no herculean porting efforts required. =3

          https://github.com/86Box/86Box

          • ChrisRR 1 day ago
            Do you find you have issues recognising sarcasm?
          • anthk 23 hours ago
            A lot of them will.

            And 86Box it's a joke compared to the raw performance you can get with DosBOX-X with the dynamic recompiled and some updated W98SE machine in order to RE some old games to run under ScummVM (the Spanish "Touch Games" from Bialplen made for these touch friendly arcade machines with solitaires, Trivia games and such).

            • hsbauauvhabzb 16 hours ago
              I don’t care about products, I just want my 3D movie maker at a silky smooth 120fps as it was intended
  • vintagedave 1 day ago
    Here is the blog series from the dev working on the Linux side of the port. (It was a group effort - both authors are very clear about the contributions from the other, it's really nice to read a story like this!) https://www.ilande.co.uk/2026/04/06/porting-3dmm-to-linux-pa...
  • adamsb6 1 day ago
    I had forgotten how much time I spent with this software until I saw the screenshot. Thanks for the port!
  • matthewhartmans 1 day ago
    I used 3dmm throughout my high school making movies for school projects and side projects for laughs.

    This is an absolute gem! Thank you!

  • wolpoli 1 day ago
    Does anyone know why the 3DMMForever project stalled? Was technical or was it just a general lack of interest?
  • ddtaylor 1 day ago
    I remember this source was released a while back and some people hacked it together to run on modern Windows.

    Yay!

  • halflife 1 day ago
    That’s excellent. Now do comic chat!
    • resonanttoe 23 hours ago
      Man, that client was the bane of any IRC Chan-op's existence when it came out.
      • halflife 13 hours ago
        As a kid without internet, I didn’t even know it was a chat! I liked printing stupid comics
  • pulimento 1 day ago
    wow, such an amazing job! really a gymkhana of libraries to port/change. makes me think in the (unknown future) portability of the software I create today
  • stevebmark 1 day ago
    RIP Pozin
    • ChrisRR 1 day ago
      Hold up. Pozin died? There's a name I haven't heard in a long time
  • rossant 1 day ago
    Brings me back! Well done!
  • DParida08 1 day ago
    That's peretty cool!!
  • Computer0 1 day ago
    I had never heard of this piece of software before. I would be very interested in trying it out on Linux.