DeleD Community Edition

[Spk]

Hey there, Im currently trying to write an XML exporter for DeleD that matches my engine's needs a bit more (and yes Im aware that the Ogre Exporte plugin can export to XML).

Ive downloaded and installed the C++ plugin wizard and started skimming through the exemple code. I understood the data exchange system that is used to communicate between DeleD and the plugins, but when it comes to extracting the useful data out of the strings returned by the editor, I could really use a specification document where the format of each string is clearly defined. I can guess some of it by looking at the exemple code but it's a bit messy so it doesnt make things really easy.

Ive searched on the webite and forums for such a document and havent found any. So did I look in the wrong place or there's just no documentation available yet?

Also, does DeleD sends the vertex normals to the plugins along with the xyz/uvs? I basically need access to each vertex position, normal and texture coords (for both base & lightmap).

Is the Ogre Mesh exporter plugin source code available somewhere btw?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[CMe]

I used the help file which comes with deled. It has a section on the file format which deled uses. The data returned in the plugin is virtually identical to what is stored in the dmf files except for a few of the header strings. Other than that, the only resource is to look at the sample code on the site. I have some code written in C which does a whole bunch of stuff with deled files including importing and exporting with plugins. I'll upload it and put the link here in a bit.

As of right now, vertex and/or face normal data is not returned with position and uv data so you'll have to compute this yourself if you need it. If you need an idea on how to generate these, just ask. As I understand it, vertex normals are going to be added soon in a newer file format.

EDIT:
ok here is some sample code. It loads and writes through the plugin system and to file. It can create face and vertex normals, triangulate, scale, translate and a bunch of other stuff.

It's kinda messy being straight c, but it does work. My .obj exporter uses this code at it's core.
http://rmfx.50webs.com/plugin_template.zip
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[Spk]

Thanks mate Ill give it a look this evening!

[Spk]

Ok I've restarted my exporter from scratch user your code as base and things are going smoothly now. Many thanks for sharing your DMF utility functions with me, they're really making my life easier!

The only litlle difficulty im facing at the moment is accessing each vertex's texture coordinates (for each texture layer) but Im going to figure this out soon enough. I'll post the plugin and source code here once Im done with it.

[CMe]

Good. hope it works well for you. Yeah a few people (including myself) have found the way the tex coordinates are structured cumbersome to use. I might change this some time.

Just make sure you don't try to access uv data if it's not a texture layer as no memory is allocated for that layer. Check the layer type for DMF_LAYER_TYPE_UNUSED before you access them. There's an example in the header file which does this.
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[Paul-Jan]

And in response to your original post: unfortunately, besides the notes in the help file, there aren't any detailed specifications available at the moment. We know this is cumbersome, and we are sorry.

We strive to improve things in the future, but in the meanwhile, if you have any questions... please ask away! What we lack in documentation, we make up for in "great community"