Porting 3D Movie Maker to Linux (benstoneonline.com)
136 points by speckx 4 days ago | 28 comments

• tombert 14 hours 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 11 hours 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 7 hours ago

Here's the WASM source to those interested: https://github.com/Tombert/3DMMEx_WASM

• intuxikated 6 hours ago

Doesn't work on brave on mobile, says fonts are missing Maybe you can bundle the fonts?

• Pxtl 11 hours ago

Honestly there's a huge void online for a new xtranormal

• tombert 9 hours ago

Agreed. Now that 3DMM is open source, someone should make a video about how Kubernetes is Web Scale.

• aaronbrethorst 7 hours ago

For anyone too young to catch the reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

• vintagedave 2 hours 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...

• OuterVale 8 hours 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 3 hours 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.

• adamsb6 15 hours ago

I had forgotten how much time I spent with this software until I saw the screenshot. Thanks for the port!

• hsbauauvhabzb 13 hours ago

Awesome! I can now ditch Windows. The year is finally here.

• Joel_Mckay 8 hours 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 6 hours ago

Are you suggesting there are games that are not 3D movie maker that are worth playing?

• Joel_Mckay 6 hours 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 2 hours ago

Do you find you have issues recognising sarcasm?

• Joel_Mckay 3 minutes ago

What is sarcasm?

• matthewhartmans 14 hours 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 15 hours ago

Does anyone know why the 3DMMForever project stalled? Was technical or was it just a general lack of interest?

• parlortricks 13 hours ago

This one looks to be the active fork, https://github.com/benstone/3DMMEx

i should have read the article first...

• stevebmark 6 hours ago

RIP Pozin

• ChrisRR 2 hours ago

Hold up. Pozin died? There's a name I haven't heard in a long time

• ddtaylor 14 hours ago

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

Yay!

• pulimento 14 hours 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

• rossant 14 hours ago

Brings me back! Well done!

• DParida08 15 hours ago

That's peretty cool!!

• Computer0 15 hours ago

I had never heard of this piece of software before. I would be very interested in trying it out on Linux.