Re: [Plib-devel] PLIB/PPE loaders/writers

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Devrim Erdem wrote:
> 
> > I don't think it would be hard to write a large pile of #define's
> > to make SSG look like Performer (at least to the degree needed by
> > Performer's loaders).
> >
> > #define pfGroup  ssgBranck
> > #define addChild addKid
> >
> > ...and so on.  There are 'political' reasons why I'll never do
> > this - but someone else could easily do so.
> 
> Unfortunately source code for the most important loader OpenFlight ( in my opinion ) lacks. I don't beileve that other formats ( 3ds, obj etc ) would
> work like OpenFlight. And VRML is a neverending story.

We dumped the OpenFLight loader and wrote our own - but I can't opensource it.

At one time, there were TWO OpenFlight loaders - one was from Multigen
and the other was from the Performer team themselves.  Once Multigen put
effort into their (binary-only) loader, the Performer team seem to have
stopped working on theirs - but it was released as source code at one
stage.

I agree about VRML - VRML-1 was a great disappointment to me - VRML-2/97
made it all a lot worse.  However, it is the ONLY independent standard
format that I can think of - and it is pretty widely supported as an
import/export format.  Every other format on the planet is based
on the native format of some specific toolkit or modeller (AFAIK).

Of course VRML-1 was essentially just SGI's Inventor '.iv' native
format...so in that sense, it too is just the native format of an
existing tool.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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