Quote:Original post by shurcool

Quote:Original post by SiCrane
One thing to note is that many existing tools provide methods for customization. For example, 3D modeling tools frequently can be customized via scripting or plug-ins, often both. So if one doesn't support exporting to a file format you like, you can often write a plug-in to export to your own format.

Just one note, I heard it's better to write a format converter tool rather than an app/version-specific export script. Reasons are that the tool you use may change (different brand, different version, etc.), breaking your export script in the process. Whereas a good converter tool will always do its job and won't require (as much) maintenance in general. And you can always convert between different formats.

I haven't tested that idea myself, but it seems like good logic to me.

You can also have your game engine automatically run the converter tool in the background the first time you attempt to load a resource file in its raw format.

I do this with animations. I export the animations along with the entire skin mesh and other scene data as an .X format file (about 3MB each). When my game attempts to load this file in, it checks to see it's a standard X format file, then runs the conversion tool to strip away everything except the animation and resave the file (down to about 25KB). It also uses some scene objects to compute extra data, like placement/waypoint nodes and collision primitive shapes.

I get the impression professional dev's do both.
Depends on your game engine and content requierment and if current tools offer them.
Most game engine tools are aimd at FPS. So there is more tool choice.
Even for FPS games there could be special key features that requier special feature of the game engine and edit tools.

Crysis interactive jungle key feature, leads to a inhouse physics engine wich can use GPU a bit.
Farcry2 dunia engine uses Havok barely, but have running it's own solution on top of it.
Redfraction feature research for full destruction would lead to a new gameengine and Physics solution for there new nextgen game.
I think what the rumor made me believe.

So it depends on what your game idea is and it's requierment. If the tech behind its is very common a licensable engine or even modding will do. In such case using avaible tools on the market is a smart thing.
If you want to do something special. If it not much different you can extend tools. Like dev's claim to use a heavily modified licence game engine of firm X.
In special cases you need to make your own. If not you reduce your project.