Quote:Original post by thatguyfromthething

Quote:Original post by jpetrie
I think both are interesting, but overly complex. I haven't used FBX nearly as much, but the overgeneralization of Collada (and the fact that its specification doesn't define a standard method for doing some things like linking animations to bones, at least last I looked) put me off of it.

If you don't have to use either for some reason, don't. You may as well make your own exporter as the collada exporters all have problems anyway and many of the FBX ones have issues as well. If I were making an engine I'd make my own format that is simple and keeps skeleton and mesh data separate and then make a converter from collada or fbx to that data to cover the animation tools I didn't want to waste time supporting directly.

Quote:Original post by SteveDeFacto

Quote:Original post by thatguyfromthething

Quote:Original post by jpetrie
I think both are interesting, but overly complex. I haven't used FBX nearly as much, but the overgeneralization of Collada (and the fact that its specification doesn't define a standard method for doing some things like linking animations to bones, at least last I looked) put me off of it.

If you don't have to use either for some reason, don't. You may as well make your own exporter as the collada exporters all have problems anyway and many of the FBX ones have issues as well. If I were making an engine I'd make my own format that is simple and keeps skeleton and mesh data separate and then make a converter from collada or fbx to that data to cover the animation tools I didn't want to waste time supporting directly.

I already have my own format but you don't seem to realize that you actually have to get the models into your engine from a modeling application. My plan was to load the fbx or collada mesh into my class then save it out under my format instead of writing a plug in for just one of the many modeling applications out there.

Quote:Original post by tgjones
Not that I'm professing to know much about the subject, but I too have been recently been looking into supporting various model formats in my engine. I was leaning towards COLLADA due to it's physics support (I just have a simple OBJ converter at this stage), and its apparent ubiquity.

I too was planning to convert to a native binary format (which is literally the serialised version of the internal classes - thank you Boost).

I have no experience of FBX but I have come across another format, OpenCTM, which looks interesting (http://openctm.sourceforge.net/) what do people think about this format? If anything? I am currently clueless.

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread SteveDeFacto, but I'm hoping you'll find this useful too...

Quote:Original post by doesnotcompute

Quote:
I already have my own format but you don't seem to realize that you actually have to get the models into your engine from a modeling application. My plan was to load the fbx or collada mesh into my class then save it out under my format instead of writing a plug in for just one of the many modeling applications out there.

How many modeling applications are there really, 3DS Max and Maya are probably the only ones you're going to encounter in a professional setting, and then maybe Blender for hobbyist stuff, that's about it. Even if you just wrote a script/plugin for Max *or* Maya it probably (or so I speculate) would be easy enough to save to a format they both support to get your data from the application you have a plugin for, to the one you don't.