R: [Plib-users] Re: Plib as a Model Loader

[Paolo L. <p.l...@ci...>]

Juhana Sadeharju wrote:
> ...
> Do all this discussion mean that there is no standard 
> scenegraph nor good object/scenegraph loader which Tyler 
> could have used in the first place?

Try looking at http://lib3ds.sourceforge.net/. It is a library which
loads a 3DS model file with a single call, returning a (very complex)
structure with all information/data read. Then one have to walk down
this structure and generate <your-scenegraph> nodes accordingly. It's
something similar to the work to use Plib/SSG just as a model loader.

> How SSG compares to www.opensg.org or www.openscenegraph.{org,com}?

Lib3DS is *the* 3DS loader in OpenSceneGraph, don't know about OpenSG.

An accurate comparison with Plib/SSG is out of my capability, yet I
think SSG is generally simpler to use, it has a neat interface,
employes, yet doesn't stress, the OO paradigm, thus allowing non-top
skilled programmers to approach it with easy and success. On my opinion
having too much resources in a large library leads to disorientation at
startup, making you feeling to miss the better way to do your task.
Nevertheless Plib/SSG has a lot of useful possibilities behind the
scenes (i.e. no need to complicate the first approach), and can/will
certainly be improved.
Regarding loaders SSG is second to none, yet uses its own 3DS loader
instead of Lib3DS. The OpenFlight loader is also very good, but the
format itself is probably not devoted to low-budget games. Not to
mention the ability to save all the scene content in a single .ssg file,
which is then very efficient to load despite of the large size, and
allows to distribute an application in a compact, quite close, way.

Greetings -

Paolo