captain_bazza, on 13 October 2015 - 03:08 AM, said:
which formats are likely to be a long term format, for example, like 3ds mesh?
All formats are long term that are supported in major CAD softwares. So collada is one of these, which is supported by everything. 3DS is too old, and there are various problems with it(parts fall apart at import, and the shape is rotated 90 degrees, and every CAD software reads 3ds differently).
captain_bazza, on 13 October 2015 - 03:08 AM, said:
That is interesting! I had not heard of that being possible.
Why wouldn't be? Every game is using the same triangular uv mapped shapes, just the materials and the naming conventions differ. Every game's 3d models can be added to every other game. One guy that i know converted building 3d shapes from Stalker games to TS20xx.
Zaza's 424 steam loco with 3d cab was imported first to Railworks, then to Openrails. I would be able to convert 6 locomotives that are made for TS20xx to OR, but i don't want to learn the tricks of the .s format, because it's obsolete, and also there are missing materials, like texture with specularity and fake environment maps+mask, or the same with lightmap, or glass materials (blendatexdiff is not how the glass looks like). Of course i can use texdiff and blendatexdiff instead, but these would make the models look dull, and so 2001-ish :)
Goku, on 13 October 2015 - 04:19 AM, said:
Does TS20xx uses open source format with free tools? I think not.
I didn't wrote that we should use TS20xx format. Those format is a real *censored* (bad), and most of all, it's proprietary, closed source, and not an abadonware.
Goku, on 13 October 2015 - 04:19 AM, said:
S format is simple and it should be easy to write new importers.
And yet there are no new importers, people are still struggling with the kuju .3ds to .s converter, and some very old CAD softwares that are able to export to this format. Or are there .s exporter plugins for 3Ds max, or blender?
Yes. .obj can be used for static objects, but wouldn't be better if we have a signle format for all?
However in TS20xx they made a shape format(.GeoPcDx), and each animations are saved to seperate files (.ban), which makes easy to select which animation should be played in game, and if only animations should be changed, then no need for shape re-export. What these animation files are contain is: names of the animated nodes and the animations for each nodes.
Like this:
Perhaps .obj expanded with separate animation animation files would be a way.