[vos-d] vos needs to be easier for designers to get in

[Peter Amstutz]

The challenge with reading file formats vs writing plugins to particular 
applications is that you need to be able to parse and make sense of the 
file format.  In some cases this is quite difficult, because the file 
format often has to be reverse engineered and may be tied to specific 
implementation details of the application.  3D Studio Max files are 
particularly infamous for this, going so far as to actually include the 
names of the plugin DLLs that were used to in creating the model, which 
is why you don't see any other software that can read .max files.

The trend, hopefully, is towards interoperable file formats (like X3D 
and Collada are picking up some steam) so that modeling programs can 
export to common, well documented formats that applications like VOS can 
read in.  Vendor lock-in through file formats is especially severe in 
the world of 3D data, where unlike text documents you don't have the 
last-ditch option of exporting to plain text, or printing it out and 
scanning it back in...

On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 08:05:03PM +0000, sconzey wrote:

> Maybe a set of shell scripts, rather than plugins for the actual 
> application...
> 
> have a blend2cod, and a obj2cod and a lwo2cod etc...
> 
> On 1/21/07, Jason Heblack <heblack at ispmonsters.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:38:45 -0500, Reed Hedges wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 02:34:06PM +0100, swe wrote:
> > >
> > >> Its nice that one can use blender to convert models, but thats another
> > >> barrier to download, keeping people from attending.
> > > Are there other modeling tools that it would be nice to support?
> > > Sketchup would be a good one I think, it's really easy to use and is
> > > becoming popular and well known through its association with Google Earth.

-- 
[   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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