anybody know where I can get an exporter for blender that will export everything (vertex info, material info, texture info, animation key frames, the whole ball of wax) ????? I wouldn't mind working on this myself, but if somebody else has completed it & its open source... why reinvent the wheel :) ~~~ if you don't know of a complete package... maybe you know of a good one that I can start from? thanks Luke

What format? Blender 2.34 comes with quite a few exporters built in.

I'm aware of all the formats that the new blender comes with (I'm using v2.34 right now). However... I can't find any information or tutorials about how to load any of those formats into an openGL program. Granted... I haven't look too hard, I was kinda hoping for either the MD2 format or the 3DS format. Any hints?

Thanks

" I was kinda hoping for either the MD2 format or the 3DS format. "

I export my Blender Models as AC3D, because this format is human readable and therefore it's easy to write an importer for it. ( The file format is well documented as well - google for it )
Otherwise, check gametutorials.com for 3Ds and MD2 import tutorials...

It is so ridiculously easy to make your own exporter in blender 2.34.

Go to the scripts directory in your blender install, and look at the raw triangles exporter. You may need to learn a little python, but it is easy to create your own model format, alter a script to export to it, and then because you know exactly how the information is stored, it is easy to import it into your engine.

I wrote an exporter for my format in 20 minutes (granted it doesn't handle animation, but I dont need it to do that... yet).

Ya I know, I've already exported the vertex info... but I kinda wanted to do vertex info, material info, texture info, animation key frames & everything. For anybody who cares, here is a good resource:

http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/blender/

The Ogre export script for Blender exports everything, and it works well.

It exports the mesh to a mesh.xml format, and the skeleton (including animations) to a skeleton.xml format. If nothing else, it is a place to start.

J.W.

Quote: Original post by Luke Miklos
I'm aware of all the formats that the new blender comes with (I'm using v2.34 right now). However... I can't find any information or tutorials about how to load any of those formats into an openGL program. Granted... I haven't look too hard, I was kinda hoping for either the MD2 format or the 3DS format. Any hints?

Thanks

I'm sorry, I may be a little confused as to what you're asking. To me, it sounds like you're asking for tutorials on loading MD2 and 3DS files and displaying them in an OpenGL window. If that's the case, I would suggest looking here
for some tutorials (just scroll down the page). I can't speak for the MD2 tutorial, but the 3DS tutorial is pretty good.

If I interpreted the question incorrectly, please forgive me.

sorry, let me be more explicit. I'm aware of tutorials (especially those at GameTutorials.com) that show me how to load 3DS & MD2 models. Thats why I want a blender exporter that supports either of those two formats well. Not just the vertex data though, I want everything exported: texture info, keyframe info, material info, & color info.

So in a nutshell, I have no problems finding out how to load popular model types into openGL. I have a problem exporting the models I made in blender into a known format.

thanks guys - I'll definitely check out that "Ogre export script", however... I don't think 3DS or MD2 is stored as xml files.

Luke