[DONE] Grimrock Model Tookit

[JohnWordsworth]

@Neikun: Thanks for the reminder, have now added to the Pivotal Tacker. As it's an easy change, expect to see it very soon!

One more question I meant to ask - what do people think of the COLLADA (dae) file format? Looks like it could be a win for the next format to support as it's easy to parse and the Managed FBX library looks like a bit of a pain (as it's not C# or VS2012 compatible yet!).

[Phitt]

@Neikun: Thanks for the reminder, have now added to the Pivotal Tacker. As it's an easy change, expect to see it very soon!

One more question I meant to ask - what do people think of the COLLADA (dae) file format? Looks like it could be a win for the next format to support as it's easy to parse and the Managed FBX library looks like a bit of a pain (as it's not C# or VS2012 compatible yet!).

Apparently Collada is dead as it seems. Later versions of Max don't support it properly anymore and I can't even find a download for the max 8 plugin (which exists, but no download link I could find - only looked for a few minutes though). From all I could see everyone uses fbx instead, which is widely supported and used.

Personally I would prefer if you could use fbx, but then I have no idea about programming and how hard it is to write a converter compared to dae. I can hardly make any claims. As long as it works in the end somehow I don't care about the format anyway.

[wallasaurus]

http://opencollada.org/

Did you try here?

[Isaac]

@Neikun: Thanks for the reminder, have now added to the Pivotal Tacker. As it's an easy change, expect to see it very soon!

One more question I meant to ask - what do people think of the COLLADA (dae) file format? Looks like it could be a win for the next format to support as it's easy to parse and the Managed FBX library looks like a bit of a pain (as it's not C# or VS2012 compatible yet!).

I would use Collada. Both Blender and TrueSpace export to it; I use both. I have used TrueSpace since the early 90's.
(Also: both are free, powerful, and are of radically different styles. Someone who cannot wrap their head around Blender's UI, might really enjoy TrueSpace's UI (and Vice Versa).

SpoilerShow

** It should be said that thanks to Micro$oft TrueSpace is a dead App (except for it's user community). M$ bought the company and fired the developers ~killing the App so they could release it free with an extra plugin to export to their (apparently now defunct) Virtual Earth service. TrueSpace had high potential indeed. It's still available free from Download.com; but no longer at the developer's website (dead/ new owners).

[JohnWordsworth]

Having given this some thought, I think I will next add the 'Assimp' library to the GMT, which will allow us to import models from an obscene number of model formats. Unfortunately, one of the few that isn't listed there is FBX - which is a shame, because that is the one I would most like to support! Still, adding Assimp support will still be awesome and I'll look at the FBX SDK properly after that. As there is already a managed (C#) wrapper for Assimp, adding support through this system should be a doddle.

[JohnWordsworth]

Another teaser post... I've got import of vertices, faces, uvs, normals, tangents and bitangents from about 20 file formats through the Assimp library. Formats include .dae, .blend, .3ds, .ase, .obj, .dxf, .lwo, .x, .ms3d, .cob, .irrmesh, .xml (ogre), Quake .mdl -> .md5, Unreal .3d.

Here's a little picture of the Collada duck!



I'm pretty confident that, by the end of the weekend at the latest, I will have added import for animations using Assimp. Still no exporting from Grimrock, but importing will be supported .

[Neikun]

The most terrifying monster in all of the custom dungeons..
Rubber Ducky, you're the one~

[Isaac]

That's wondrous.

What version of Collada does it import, and with respect to Blend files... how does that work exactly?
Do you have to carefully include only what you want imported from the file ~when saving it, or can you pick what you want to import from within it?

[Phitt]

Nice! Any chance for node manipulation soon? Like renaming nodes, adding nodes? Can we import multiple nodes with the new formats? Can we export collapsed models and still get mesh segments?

[JKos]

@Jkos: You could probably just get away with Retexturing the apprentice orb or a gem or something if you really just want a plain white projectile. Check out the model Retexturing tutorial on GrimWiki!

try the white_light material

Thanks, it works beautifully. blue_gem textured with white_light material + glow particle effect = perfect magic missile.