Hi, I'd like to create a simple .NET application that generates a 3D model (which should be a combination of a number of other models, with possible texture changes), and that can export this. I'm not picky about what format, as long as it's something that's reasonably supported. Does anyone know if there is a library available that can do this? Thanks!

Not directly, but there are libraries available that provide some of the supporting infrastructure (MDX or XNA, for example, which both include model loading and rendering capability; once you have the models' geometry loaded you can assemble them into your final model for export).

File format information for just about anything is easily available via Google.

Thanks for your reply. I know I can get the specs of most file formats off the net, and if I don't find another solution, I'll (try to) do it that way.

However, it doesn't make much sense. There's a plethora of 3d engines out there to create games, which mask all the low end stuff like 3D file formats. But if you want to write some simple 3d tools to facilitate the content creation, you have to get your hands dirty with this stuff.

I think it would be a good idea to create an open source library that can import, manipulate, and export a wide number of formats. Would be useful for just about everybody who's working on tools or even engines. If I weren't a total noob when it comes to 3D programming and at running open source projects, I would get this off the ground myself...

You're basically describing a modelling tool, then. There are already plenty of these, both free (Blender), near-free (Milkshape), and not-quite-so-free (Max, Maya).

There is a pathetically limited subset of interesting "manipulation" you can do purely programmatically, and a lot of this manipulation is academic in nature (computational geometry stuff); there exist libraries for it, but it doesn't tend to have a lot of benefit for game developers so they're not high-profile.

Content-related issues are among the most project-specific types of issues, and they're very hard to solve in a useful fashion generically. XNA tries, and does a passable job so far, but I suspect as we get more and more experience with it the content pipeline and manipulation is going to become something people get frustrated with the most frequently.

Hi,

I think you don't really understand what I mean. I'm not talking about modelers. I'm talking about a library that you can use in your own projects that allows you to read models into memory, manipulate them (like merging, rotating stuff, etc), and then writing the model back to disk.

I did find this : http://www.ribbonsoft.com/dxflib.html which seems to be kind of what I need, but it's C++ so I don't know if it will be useful.


EDIT : Wellwhadayaknow, found something similar for .net : http://www.woutware.com/cadlib.html - but I haven't tested it yet. It's a bit pricey though...

VTK is a C++ library that offers a number of mesh (PolyData) manipulation filters, but you seem to want to avoid interop. It's got a bit of a learning curve, but it may have what you're looking for.

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for but I used it to output some models written in code. OrangyTang suggested it and it works.

http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/

Here is the thread.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=427630

It requires you are using OpenGL.

[Edited by - NealC on December 16, 2006 9:28:05 PM]