Horde3D

What with both blender and FBXConverter both exporting collada files that are generally incompatible with Horde's ColladaConverter, I think it may be time for me to write an additional converter tool.

Firstly, there isn't any sign of specifications for the .geom and .anim files, and while I can of course reverse engineer them from the engine's loading code, we probably want to work up formal specifications anyway, for future proofing.

Secondly, I need to pick which file format to convert, possibly several. My current candidates in order of preference:

• OGRE '.mesh.xml' -widely supported/exported, very flexible, used in many games (and multiverse)
• DirectX '.x' - widely supported/exported, a bit tricky to work with
• Wavefront '.obj' - suuported/exported everywhere, lacks flexibility and animation
• Irrlicht '.irr' - lots of converters in the works, fairly flexible, new and untested
• Max '.3ds' - widely supported/exported, hard to work with, animation tricky/impossible

Comments/suggestions requested.

I have dealt with all of these formats at one time or another, so none of them should take that long to work up. Any of them would make the engine far friendlier to everyone - artists especially.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

sounds like a great idea. i like the formats you decided to support, could only add one FBX perhpas in place of 3ds. I used to use it allot, not so much these days (don't use motionbuilder anymore), but since it has Autodesk behind it now, it's opened and has some relevant support, might want to add it to the fold.

Autodesk has a nice FBXConverter tool, that spits out Collada files. With a little work, I am hoping we can get Horde's ColladaCOnverter to be compatible with that, which gives us FBX for free.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

I have already written an exporter from a proprietary format to .geo. I could also give you same sample code for python.

Edit: Attached format description.
I have not yet written a converter for morphed / animated models. That part must be proof read by someone who knows more about these parts.

I noticed that the format does not define anything related to endianness. We can deduce if it's big or little endian using the version number for now:

This just assumes that the version number is smaller than 65536.

Good stuff, thanks!

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

swiftcoder, have you thought about writing an extendable converter which could read several formats and transform them to Horde3D? Maybe you can even use ColladaConverter as a starting point since there's some usefull code for things like mesh optimization.

The updated documentation is really good. I would really appreciate it if someone has the time to write additional converter support.

My intention is to create a framework with plug-able converters. Whether they will be distributed as one executable or a cluster of executables, I have not decided.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

It would be really good if you could provide me with the details for your plugins, when you are ready. If you use a public repository for your code, that would be even better. Then I could help writing a plugin for some formats.

Ja, once I have the initial system up and running, I will put up straight away.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

Thanks a lot for the updated documentation, I have integrated it now in the official version.
We have now started with the writing of a python script to export model data from blender. It looks quite possible to be realized, although we have just started.

A working blender exporter would be really useful. Good luck.

Excellent! I am afraid my converter project is on hold for the moment (too much going on for now), but I will be happy to help with testing, etc. if you need.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]