DeleD Community Edition

[Mr.Fletcher]

I'd love to have another try on import/export plugins, but I don't really know what would be the most urgent format coming up next.
I was thinking about the lightwave .lwo format or wherever .ase comes from. Or maybe an exporter for another (free) game engine? But don't they all support the major formats anyway?

What do you think? What makes sens?

O-Or should I stick to modeling and forget plugins?
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[jwatte]

I think Delgine has a preliminary Collada exporter, but is there an importer? If not, that'd be useful to some people, I'm sure.
Also, ASE comes from 3ds Max, and is a fairly high quality representation of the Max scene structure.
FBX would be the next format to tackle; it's starting to become more popular with a concerted push by Autodesk and it being used in XNA Game Studio.

Actually, if I could vote, I'd vote for an FBX exporter first.

[Paul-Jan]

Sweet! I'm with JWatte on this: I'd like to have FBX export/import too. Basically, there is a C++ SDK available that might make this an easy task (depending on the quality of the SDK and your ability to deal with 3rd party C++ code).

On the other hand, the ASE file format is relatively simple and would make a great addition, too.

Of these three, I am the least interested in the collada importer, but that is because none of the other (yeah, they are all indy and small) 3D tools I use does a proper export. This might be completely different for everybody else .

[Mr.Fletcher]

Thanks guys, I'll have a look at FBX!
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[Starnick]

Hey, Im brand new to Delgine...its a nice little piece of software. Anyways, what brought me to here is because Ive been working on a game project that's on the (in beta...although the 1.0 release just happened) Multiverse platform (www.multiverse.net) and I keep an eye out for modellers (especially little gems like Deled).

To convert into their format we use a collada file which is run under a conversion tool that extracts a .mesh, .material (yup - its based on a modified Axiom engine, so there's quite a bit of OGRE in it regarding mesh, material, particles, etc), .physics (collision), and a .skeleton (along with animations and so on).

For my purposes with Deled im interested in that collision file, unfortunately the collada file that Deled exports does not properly work with the conversion tool (I half-arsed it a bit though by modifying the collada file after the export, where the file properly converts/can be opened by the Multiverse model viewer, but the physics file is never extracted). And of course, the OGRE exporter only exports a .mesh and a .material file...

Anyways, this was a topic of discussion today over at the multiverse boards, so heh if you're bored and looking for a plugin to do...by all means!

[Paul-Jan]

Interesting suggestion! So you are saying the best solution would be a specific exporter for multiverse? The alternatives would be

1) Improve the collada exporter so the Multiverse conversion tool can read the files properly (which might be a good idea anyway).

2) Extend the Ogre exporter so it's output can be directly read into multiverse (the feasibility of this route depends on how much the multiverse and ogre formats are still the same).

About the problem with the collada file format, does the conversion tool _generate_ the physics/colission data from the files (but can't there is something wrong with the file), or does it only try to extract it (but can't because there is no physics information in it)?

[Starnick]

[Starnick]

From my half-arsing the collada file last night, I compared a DeleD collada vs a 3DS collada. At the end of the mesh/geometry information for each sub-object there's a series of lines of: <input> tags between a <polylist> tag

In the 3ds version, those tags are between a <triangles> tag. Changing the tags allowed the MV model viewer to read the file, and I was even able to convert it. However, it still didn't read the CV, which remained in the mesh file, despite the CV mesh being named properly so I only got the mesh/material file.

[Paul-Jan]

That's a whole lot of *very* useful information, thanks a lot. In the meanwhile I've signed up for multiverse and the forums, and I'll be doing some research. Will be getting back to this soon!

[ta2025]

[Paul-Jan]

I just responded to your e-mail, thanks for your inquiry! Activity has a bit slow with the holidays and the recent 1.71 release, but we are back to full speed now.

I am not sure yet how to go about this exactly, need to do more research first. With the Torque Exporter we decided to call the existing conversion tool (map2dif) from within the exporter, but I think in this case it would be wiser to avoid that step altogether and skip directly to the export of a .mesh, .material and .physics files. I'll need to find out
(a) if the .mesh format and the Ogre .mesh are 100% the same, and likely to stay the same in the foreseeable future
(b) how the .physics files work

Some experiments with the multiverse toolset will probably answer these questions... Will get back to this!

[Starnick]