Porting 3D Movie Maker to Linux(benstoneonline.com)
161 points by speckx 29 days ago | 15 comments
tombert 25 days 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 25 days 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 25 days ago
Here's the WASM source to those interested: https://github.com/Tombert/3DMMEx_WASM
intuxikated 25 days ago
Doesn't work on brave on mobile, says fonts are missing Maybe you can bundle the fonts?
tombert 25 days ago
You can actually click "ok" and just continue anyway.

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

tombert 24 days ago
Just an update, fixed this by using the Comic Relief font and placing that in there.
replete 25 days 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 25 days ago
Honestly there's a huge void online for a new xtranormal
tombert 25 days ago
Agreed. Now that 3DMM is open source, someone should make a video about how Kubernetes is Web Scale.
aaronbrethorst 25 days ago
For anyone too young to catch the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
ksi23 25 days ago
[flagged]
OuterVale 25 days 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 25 days 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.

The_President 24 days ago
This was probably made by a couple sixth graders with too much caffeine using the parents' computer on a Friday night.
cindyllm 24 days ago
[dead]
hsbauauvhabzb 25 days ago
Awesome! I can now ditch Windows. The year is finally here.
resonanttoe 25 days 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 25 days 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 25 days ago
Are you suggesting there are games that are not 3D movie maker that are worth playing?
Joel_Mckay 25 days 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

anthk 25 days 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 25 days ago
I don’t care about products, I just want my 3D movie maker at a silky smooth 120fps as it was intended
ChrisRR 25 days ago
Do you find you have issues recognising sarcasm?
Joel_Mckay 25 days ago
Who is sarcasm?
lproven 25 days ago
adamsb6 25 days ago
I had forgotten how much time I spent with this software until I saw the screenshot. Thanks for the port!
halflife 25 days ago
Kid pix was the time sink for me

And then there’s this: https://kidpix.app/

vintagedave 25 days 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...
matthewhartmans 25 days 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 26 days ago
Does anyone know why the 3DMMForever project stalled? Was technical or was it just a general lack of interest?
parlortricks 25 days ago
This one looks to be the active fork, https://github.com/benstone/3DMMEx

i should have read the article first...

ddtaylor 25 days ago
I remember this source was released a while back and some people hacked it together to run on modern Windows.

Yay!

pulimento 25 days 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
halflife 25 days ago
That’s excellent. Now do comic chat!
resonanttoe 25 days ago
Man, that client was the bane of any IRC Chan-op's existence when it came out.
halflife 24 days ago
As a kid without internet, I didn’t even know it was a chat! I liked printing stupid comics
Computer0 26 days ago
I had never heard of this piece of software before. I would be very interested in trying it out on Linux.
stevebmark 25 days ago
RIP Pozin
ChrisRR 25 days ago
Hold up. Pozin died? There's a name I haven't heard in a long time
rossant 25 days ago
Brings me back! Well done!
DParida08 25 days ago
That's peretty cool!!