Irrlicht Engine

I want to make all my models the same format, and they need to be animated. I've learned that 3ds is not well supported, so I'm wondering which is the best supported format. Can I use MD3 and assume it will be well supported? I don't want to use X unless I have to.

Thanks for your reply.

Best supported animated mesh format is probably b3d, or ms3d (both for skeletal animations only). MD3 is also working, but uses vertex interpolation and requires some special API methods.

You have to experiment. You can also use for example b3d. But this always depends on what you need, which applications you use and which exporters you use. Just make a few tests and export them in all formats which can be exported by your modeler and try them in the irrlicht meshviewer.

I am just a programmer, and don't know much about modeling or animation, but where could I find a list or something that will tell me what each format can and cannot do. For example I heard that X format can only have one texture on it. I am not expert enought to just run some blind tests and then pick a format. I won't even know what those models have and don't have. The best I could do would be a smoke screen test, and just hope the unit test cover all the options I need.

If I need to add support for a model type, could I submit it for review to be added in the engine? I would hate to have to keep adding bits of code in the irrlicht engine, that is just sloppy.

Use blender 3d with the b3d exporter: http://www.gandaldf.com/

Great GUI and works like a dream.

In the same conditions, B3D gives better filesizes than other formats (they're smaller) and besides, it can store more than 1 UV coordinate set, which are correctly loaded in the engine. Not obstant, DirectX format is also very good, and it is not tied in any way with the Direct3D API, is just another skeletal mesh format (i.e. you can still use directX models in Open GL apps). Its advantage maybe the flexibility, because it doesn't seem to set anything on its own to render. So, its behavior is a bit more predictable.

Maybe you are confusing the number of textures with the number of UV coordinate sets, which, in the X files is 1, although you can use all the textures you need in a .X model (perhaps diferent heads, arms or torsos can be aplied as textures to the same model). You may have only 1 set of texture coordinates to map the textures, but you may have several textures.

No, the problem with .x is that you cannot specify multiple textures for one meshbuffer, i.e. no things like bump or detail maps are possible. Multiple texture coords are possible (via FVF codes), and are also supported in Irrlicht.

Thanks everyone, you all have given me a good direction to in. Thanks!