RE: [Plib-devel] Model Formats

[Dave M. <dp...@ef...>]

> Dave McClurg wrote:
> > 
> > Steve wrote:
> > > Annoyingly, the current need is to be able to import models built
> > > in Blender - this would be very useful for the guys who want to
> > > build models for TuxKart under Linux.
> > >
> > > The snag appears to be (although I'm not a blender expert) that it
> > > only exports DXF (no texture - yuk!) and VRML (not supported under
> > > PLIB - ack!)
> > >
> > Interesting...  I wanted to do a "#VRML V1.0 ascii" loader for 
> PLIB a while
> > back with the specific goal of importing models created in blender.
> > End-users can grab a free copy of blender and create models for 
> our games.
> > If that makes sense to you as well, I'll put some work into it 
> and see what
> > happens.
> 
> Yes - that would be very useful.  I wonder what kind of a subset
> of VRML blender actually produces?  A totally general VRML loader
> is quite a big deal.
> 

I grabbed the latest blender (version 1.8) and the tutor files.  I
exported the spider2 and teapot models as "wrl" files (VRML 1.0).

I then built the "VRML 1.0 syntax checker" from the DIVE toolkit
which syntax checks VRML 1.0 files.  After a couple minor tweaks to
the grammar for trailing commas and empty lists, the syntax checker
successfully parsed spider2.wrl and teapot.wrl !

I looked at the wrl files and AFAICT adding semantic actions to the
parser to capture the necessary information for SSG should be *very*
do-able.  Blender spits out Coordinate3 lists followed by an
IndexedFaceList.  Looks easy enough to follow and should work well
with Mark's ssgVertexArray.cxx module.

I think I now have a clear path now to adding a VRML 1.0 loader to
SSG.  I'll try to kick it out this week.

-- Dave McClurg