At 10:58 AM -0500 5/24/05, Stephen Tallent wrote:
My primary platform that I will be developing on is win32, and while
own several modeling apps, of course none support 3DMF. Googling
for days hasn't turned up any reasonable options for win32 tools for
converting from any of the major formats to 3DMF. My only option
currently appears to be to export from my win32 modeler and move it
over to my ancient and slow mac to do the conversion and then move
it back.
Another alternative would be to write your own converter, or
collaborate with others.
This is a recurring problem and is only going to get bigger as more
Windows and Linux users get into the game. Quite some time ago, I
started a 3D model converter app, but I'm sorry to say I didn't get
very far with it before getting distracted by other things. I'd be
happy to donate it as a starting-point, such as it is.
Or, instead of trying to write a general converter, a much easier
task would be to write one specific to your needs. Survey the file
formats your preferred modeling tools can export. Find one that has
all the information you need (some formats will drop UV coordinates,
for example), and yet is fairly simple and easy to parse, at least in
your usage of it (many formats -- like 3DMF -- are 900-pound gorillas
that support a lot more stuff than you probably use; you only care
about the subset you're using). Write code to parse this data, and
produce an in-memory description of the model.
Then, once you have that, we can discuss how to either export it as
3DMF, or just generate Object3Ds on the fly so you can use those
models directly.
Best,
- Joe
--
Joe Strout REAL Software, Inc.
Vote for REALbasic (twice!) in the LinuxWorld Reader's Choice Awards:
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