[disc]

Goku, on 14 December 2016 - 11:29 AM, said:

It depends on quality of blender exporter.

Not everyone using blender. That's why it would be nice if OR would read OBJ, and DAE or if we have an obj/dae -> .s converter.

[James Ross]

disc, on 16 November 2016 - 06:58 AM, said:

Many highpoly 3D cab, and exterior models still rotting in TS20xx because it would be a real pain to convert them to .s format to load in OR...

Do they use a proprietary format, or is it something we could potentially support? Alternatively, what do people create models in? What would people like to create models in?

Just the other day I decided to check out the formats supported by Sketch Up, Blender and FreeCAD (sorted by export count, total count, then alphabetically):

http://james-ross.co.uk/temp/orts_146.png

What I meant to add, but didn't yet, is which ones are text vs binary and which ones we could freely and realistically implement.

[longiron]

James Ross, on 15 December 2016 - 08:19 AM, said:

Just the other day I decided to check out the formats supported by Sketch Up, Blender and FreeCAD (sorted by export count, total count, then alphabetically):

James,
I would add 3dc and Gmax to the list of tools as they are reasonably popular within the train sim content creation community
chris

[Goku]

These tools are so old that it makes no sense comparing them. You won't add new features in these apps.

I think .obj is worth supporting because it is very easy and fast to load.
But it doesn't support hierarchy and animations so it can't be .s file replacement.

[SP 0-6-0]

Please see my original post on the subject of new formats. My link

I think I and Lindsay made several valid points that just fell on deaf ears in the ORTS development community.

Robert

[conductorchris]

Robert, it seems that you and Linsay and Goku and James, I think, were suggesting that obj and COLLADA rise to the top - COLLADA because it's supported by so many programs (so it's not a dead end) and obj because it's simple. You and Linsay were asserting that it is important to select a format that will be supported by other open source exporters. Have I understood correctly?
Christopher

[thegrindre]

Does this mean that 3DC, Gmax and TSM will no longer be supported??? I didn't see them listed.

http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/oldstry.gif

[Jovet]

thegrindre, on 15 December 2016 - 08:19 PM, said:

Does this mean that 3DC, Gmax and TSM will no longer be supported??? I didn't see them listed.

I think only the most-common freeware/open-source general modeling tools were listed. Gmax is definitely unsupported and is no longer developed. I think TSM is the same.

[disc]

James Ross, on 15 December 2016 - 08:19 AM, said:

Do they use a proprietary format, or is it something we could potentially support? Alternatively, what do people create models in? What would people like to create models

They use for example ts20xx igs files, and dont like to use the painful msts 3ds-.s converter.
Most of modelers are using 3ds max, which support many formats, and some use blender and gmax.

Others who know how to export to .s, say that exporting a high poly model to msts is a real pain, problems, bugs, etc.
Me for example i didn't exported models to MSTS ever after i've heard the problems, only to TS20xx. Also the required materials are missing, like "TrainSpecEnvMask.fx" (32bit texture diffuse specularity mask alpha and environment mapping effect), or "TrainGlass.fx" (32bit texture diffuse transparency alpha and fixed specularity plus envmap effects), or "TrainLightBumpSpecMask" (32bit bit diffuse texture with specularity mask alpha + 24 bit lightmap texture (ambient occulusion map rendered to texture) + normal map)

[Lindsayts]

conductorchris, on 15 December 2016 - 07:56 PM, said:

Robert, it seems that you and Linsay and Goku and James, I think, were suggesting that obj and COLLADA rise to the top - COLLADA because it's supported by so many programs (so it's not a dead end) and obj because it's simple. You and Linsay were asserting that it is important to select a format that will be supported by other open source exporters. Have I understood correctly?
Christopher

I of course cannot speak for Robert but the reason for using opensource programs for content development means there will be a much greater chance that new people will get involved. Like How many people will fork out a significant sum of money just to try model development.

It appears COLLADA and obj files would be a reasonable choice, both are exported by all 3 progarms and both are text files. As far as I am concerned its very important one can export to the format that is to be used in the sim. I found using a separate exporter was a pain in the neck all over.

I also believe it would be worth considering a separate animation file format, this will amongst other things make it easier to implement animations of all sorts of objects. To this end in another thread I have posted both the docs and the source for OpenBVE's animation file format. I will all so put up OpenBVE's terms of use Doc.

A point I will put up is the more complex and flexible a shape file format is the less likely all of its functionality can be exported by any given program, and the shape file simply has to be relatively easy to use so the maximum number of objects can be created.

Lindsay