What should go in Irrlicht 2.0?

[juliusctw]

I'd love to see a single unified mesh format. Convert the existing mesh loaders into offline conversion tools to the unified format (either settle on XFile or some new custom mesh format).

Oh, i would love that soooo much.

If anything else I want Mupolis integrated into irrlicht

[Spintz]

[Baal Cadar]

Unless, of course, you write exporters for various 3D drawing programs like Blender, Milkshape, etc.

One of the more difficult parts of implementing a custom format is to get it started. The modelling tools allow export of the other types, but not a new one. Till community creates the exporters, one can still use the current loading code as the basis for converters.

That's the idea. The converters are just there, to ease the transition. They don't help with new features, as these formats don't support them. But at least you still had the other advantages till exporters are available.

[TheRLG]

pfft who needs a new format? why not just push the use of a better format? like COLLADA! there are loads of COLLADA exporters for programs, and it's a very well-made format.

[gmcbay]

I agree collada would be ideal. There is already some support for it in irrlicht and it solves the modeling tool export problem because just about every modeler out there has support for collada now, or support planned in the near future.

[Electron]

Collada is an xml format (unless there's a binary version I'm unaware of). This makes it ideal for interchange, but has been mentioned numerous times before a binary format tailored to the structure of the engine's intenral mesh representation will always be faster to load

[niko]

Thanks for all those suggestions. I think some of them will be put into one of the next releases, and an own file format for sure. At least one for storing scenes, scene node relations, materials and animators. That's why I'm currently writing an editor. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to create my own mesh format for animated and static meshes or stick to COLLADA. But you can be sure that the currently weired and limited system for animated meshes will be replaced by a modular, well designed new animation playbacksystem.

[andrei25ni]

Wow, niko that sound great.

Guess we're all now busy,busy,busy

[Katsankat]

Great!

A question about Terrain. Sometimes triangles close to the camera disappear depending on the camera angle. Was this fixed in 1.0?

[buhatkj]

just a suggestion of course, but may as well stick with collada. save yourself the time and headache of defining your own format.
if possible that is, but i dunno maybe irrlicht supports something that collada does not?

[jam]

Other than Max, Maya and Blender, does any 3D modeler (that doesn't cost an arm and a leg) support Collada?

I've checked Milkshape, Anim8tor and wings3D, but none of these support or have plans to support the mesh format.

[TheRLG]

Well how many of the modelers support the Irrlicht format right now?
That's what I thought. 0.

So instead of making an entirely new format, then having to code a converter or exporters/importers, whats wrong with using COLLADA, and maybe only having to code like 2 or 3 importers/exporters for those who still hate blender

Oh.. and Anim8tor? I seriously hope this level of 3D modeling app is not deciding what format will become the Irrlicht standard...

[vermeer]

Blender doesn't have full support of collada. Ie, no bones and weights, no animation.

Softimage XSI foundation (500$) has support of collada, I'm told it's very good.

IMO, it's needed a good scene format, and a good character format.

*.md5 is proven to be great (so to get ride ofthe typical x issues) , it's very well supported by Blender(even supports pose mode output(no need to bake)!), Gmax, Max.

For scene, maybe collada. The support in Blender is starting to get interesting yet a bit basic still. I'm told Maya and XSI collada plugins are amazing, exporting every little feature.

Both formats are getting to be very much loved.

well, seing now a bit about exporters state...

collada's blender plugin... :
http://colladablender.illusoft.com/downloads.html

basicly, camera, lights, and main geometry features (materials, textures, normals info, uvmapping) What I dont know is if advanced materials like reflection, bump or specular maps are supported. Anyway, this would be giving already more than obj

The amazing XSI collada exporter :

looks like latest version, from october last yuear :
https://collada.org/public_forum/viewto ... 9f579dca43

mor info bout collada
collada.org

http://www.khronos.org/collada/
(specs)


Summarizing, looks like Blender's starting to have a nice support of collada, and XSI an amazing one.

yet though I'm doubtful about th efuture of it after reading certain collada's threads...

something about xsi 5.1 has included export for collada 1.4...BUT...support for xsi4, which is the one many of us do have as was when the price dropped crazily...is not gonna exist. No collada 1.4 support in xsi4. And there wont be, I have read.

So, users like us would only have the hope of blender, with collada, in case the engine adopts de much more advanced collada 1.4.

so, native support(of collada 1.4) in xsi 5.1, butno support in xsi4...curious...

Other option for scenery , is the evolved vrml : x3d. Included by default in Blender since several builds, looks like a very nice option, but neither have tested.

one
http://www.bitbucket.ca/~acheater/blender/

another
http://www.bitmanagement.de/products/bs ... er.en.html

Dunno the other but that above looks REALLY complete (even environment maps!)

Besides looks like blender has already one x3d plugin embeded in 2.4...

of course ,x3d plugins for other packages(max, etc)(curious thing, an standalone converter from Unreal Ed editor, towards x3d, very interesting...):

http://www.web3d.org/applications/tools ... anslators/

x3d editors:
http://www.web3d.org/applications/tools/authoring/

[TheRLG]

well, hell, it seems all the formats are a huge pain in the ass.

so, how bout this?

we use a simple but complete XML format tailored to Irrlicht, that way, you can easily build exporters/importers for modeling apps. Then, before use with irrlicht, that xml format is converted to a binary version that will be faster for the engine to use.

This way, importers/exporters will be easy to make, but the files will still be faster in irrlicht...

maybe im missing something.

[Baal Cadar]

That's what Ogre does, and it works just fine. Some exporters even export directly to the binary format, which can be more comfortable even for the programmer, when there is a C-API for exporters in the modeller. Then Meshes can just be built using Ogre's mesh API and the mesh can be stored to a file using the MeshSerializer.