I'm going to try to be as clear as I possibility can. I have absolutely no experience in making games of any sort. My Maya skills are alright though. I want to do the following:
I have a model of a building and would like to make it interactive so that someone can walk through it (like a first person shooter only without the shooting.) What is the process to do this. I need answers in English. Not the gibberish on the websites for all the game engines out there. I'm willing to take the time to learn what I need for this. But I need information in English.
you want an easy-to-use game engine that comes with an example game, where you can remove the existing building model and put in your own. right now I like these too:
OGRE (www.ogre3d.org)
and
Panda (www.panda3d.org)
for OGRE, you should actually get the version called "Python Ogre"
If you are not scared of learning some light programming then head over to http://creators.xna.com and give XNA a whirl. You can simply export your models in maya via .FBX and add them to the content pipeline with ease. With a few more lines of code (which have numerous tutorials on that site or around the web so you can probably just copy and paste) you can have your scene rendering in no time.
I know this is old and forgotten and the original poster will never read this, but this might be of use to anyone with the same question who comes along.
So my understanding is that you do not want to use an existing 3D engine. If you do, read the above posts and stop there; the rest depends on the engine and nothing more.
But for any who want to make this work all from scratch for any reason (perhaps as a learning quest) then you will find daunting but not insurmountable tasks ahead of you.
Firstly, yours (and anyone else's) idea of simply taking a 3D model of a building and generating some kind of data to use to be able to collide with the walls and walk around in it is simply wrong. It will never happen. Sorry for the bad news, but your model is completely useless.
Terrain, static objects (including buildings), and movable characters are distinctly separated in the game world and for a very good reason. Each one has certain known properties that allow certain types of shortcuts to work on them. These shortcuts are not just good at improving the performance of the game, they are vital.
The shortcuts/methods of dealing with the static data that you have involve a series of tests against closed polyhedra such that the polyhedra are of a known class (sphere, box, etc.) and are known to be convex. Map editors typically allow you to create blocks, chop parts away or modify them a bit, then either remove that shape from space or add it to it. If you ever create a concave shape the editor will whine. The map editor stores both the final result in plain polygons and also the history of additions and subtractions. When it comes time to perform hit detection against any part of the building, it runs down the history of the building and performs simple "inside of" and "outside of" tests on the simple shapes you used to create the map.
It becomes clear that in order to do any kind of hit-testing on the walls of the building you need a lot more information than what you have. Your simple model is nothing but image data. There is nothing there you can use to create a stable/decent/more-than-1-frame-per-second hit-test.
If u are an artist you might check dxstudio is very user friendly and great community.. www.dxstudio.com you can find lots of tutorials on wiki and you migh be able to get something to show in about a day or two its a real simple engine almost everything is drag and drop to make what u want you just need to check physics enalble box and add a camara if u need help u can pm here or on dx forum serialkiler. hope it helps.
I'd reccomend Unreal 3 for this. The game is under 20 bucks now, ships with Unreal editor 3 (latest Version) Then pickup a copy of the book Mastering Unreal Volume 1 (Busby,Parrish,Wilson) and d'load the actorX plugin from Unreal's site, need to go form Maya->unreal edit. maybe google Hourence's Unreal Tutorials. and check out Beyond unreal forums for the good advice.
the unspoken secret of game level design is this: Most pro levels are laid out, textured ect in Max/Maya, and imported into the engine. Sadly, 99.9% of tutotrials online are aimed at using ONLY the level editor to create content, and not actually the "real" way it's done.
The quick summary fo what you'd need to do: Maya: Set up a Maya scene that mathces the units ect for unreal. Prep your model for unreal (Be sure it's UV mapped polygons) possibly build collison geometry over your "visual" geometry. In unreal, this means simple convex blocks, correctly named Use the actorX plugin to export your geo UnrealEdit: Import the geometry Create the unreal shaders to hold your materials import/recrate the textures of your maya scenes apply your recreated materials to the imported geo place player data (start point), and build.
for working doors and other interactives, youi'll need to learn more about the editor.
if u need help u can pm here or on dx forum serialkiler. hope it helps.