Meshwork is a 3D triangle-mesh modeling program for MacOS. It is designed especially for making compact, efficient objects for use in 3D games or on the web. It imports and exports several file formats, including DXF and optimized 3DMF. It can also be used to produce VRML for the web, models for POV-Ray, sprites, models for OpenGL applications, and more. What Users Are Saying About Meshwork ... "Great work you are doing. I really love Meshwork! ... Do you realize, I have wanted and waited 15 years for this?" -- K.R. "I want to thank you for this incredible piece of software... The mesh modeler inside INFINI-D is very limited and I was glad when I found the existence of MESHWORK." -- R.A. "It is a tool no Mac 3D game developer should be without. I also make use of Lightwave and Ray Dream Studio for modeling but your application looks much better suited to my needs." -- G.B. "Finally, a simple 3d program to create Quake-like models in!!! WAHOO!" -- J.B. View the 1999 Pumpkin Carving Contest Results

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Download Meshwork

The latest version is 2.0.1 . It is available in for OS X (or OS 8/9 with CarbonLib), classic PowerPC, or 68k Macs. By default, Meshwork runs in English, but it also supports several other languages (see the "Language Support" folder in the distribution). (Note: If you're interested in translating Meshwork into other languages, please contact me.)

Users of OS X should download the standard version of Meshwork:

Users of MacOS 8-9 should download the Classic version of Meshwork:

Finally, all users should probably download the Documentation & Sample Files:

Note: some Meshwork functionality requires an external library: Quesa for the standard version, or QuickDraw 3D for the Classic version. These are both freely available, and it is highly recommended that you install the appropriate one to get the most out of Meshwork.

See the Release Notes for information on how this version differs from previous releases.

Meshwork is a shareware application; you can use it for evaluation purposes for 30 days, but after that, please purchase a licence for continued use. Single-user licenses cost $30, and may be purchased via the "Register" application included with Meshwork, or on the web via Kagi's secure server.

Meshwork Documentation

There is also a tutorial on pinned-mode texture mapping by Jeff Quan.

Another excellent tutorial (also by Jeff Quan!) explains how alpha masks work in Meshwork/Quesa/QD3D.

(If you'd like to write your own tutorial on some aspect of Meshwork, or know of one I've missed, just let me know!)

Meshwork Mailing List

Known Bugs & Limitations

• The Undo command is having serious problems. Avoid it for now; I'll be reworking the underlying code over the next several releases.
• You currently can't safely have more than four Poses windows open at once. This is an ugly technical limitation which I expect to remove soon.
• Texture mapping may not work correctly with POV-Ray export of posed models. This is because POV-Ray does not (easily) support vertex-level texture mapping, without which keeping the texture in place on a deformed mesh is impossible. This problem only affects POV-Ray export with texture mapping on a posed model -- all other combinations works just fine.
• Meshwork's display may get confused (points drawn in the wrong place) if any points are more than 32,768 units away from the origin.
• Users of 3dfx cards (like the Voodoo and Voodoo2) with the RAVE extension set will have problems with Meshwork's 3D Preview. I'm working on this, but so far have been unsuccessful in making it work properly. Until it's fixed, users with this setup will need to avoid the 3D Preview (export to 3DMF and view with SimpleText instead), or disable your 3dfx extensions while using Meshwork.
• Under Mac OS 8.0 and 8.1, the Poses window will crash Meshwork. I can only support MacOS 8.6 and higher.
• Meshwork may quit abruptly when it runs out of memory. It won't crash your computer, but you will lose any work in Meshwork you haven't saved. This typically happens when attempting to open or import a very large model. As a work-around, allocate more memory to Meshwork, or use smaller models.

See Also

• REALbasic developers will find that the 3DMF files generated by Meshwork operate very well with the 3D technology built into REALbasic.

• Meshwork's DXF files can be read by Render-Boy, a great interactive ray-tracing program. Check it out if you haven't yet -- it's a lot of fun!

• Check out D-Form, a utility that applies various deformations to a mesh. The author of D-Form and I are working together to ensure that it and Meshwork can be used together smoothly.

• If you play Avara, you can use Meshwork and DXF import/export to create new game objects (see the Level Design Guide for details). As of 1.6.1, Meshwork supports full color in Avara models!

• The cool new TACS (20th Century Air Combat Simulator) game allows you to import Meshwork models to replace the default biplanes.

• You may find use for Anatas, a free little drag-and-drop app that converts text 3DMF files to binary form and vice versa. (Handy because Meshwork writes 3DMF only in text form.)

• If you are an OpenGL developer you'll want to look at Using Meshwork with OpenGL, which links to sample code and a utility for converting Meshwork 3DMF files into an OpenGL-friendly format.