Hey Guys,

I was curious to hear about any formats you guys prefer for 3D models. I'm familiar with ms3d and .x files on windows but I haven't written a loader in eternity. It might be time for me to do so

Are there any formats that work particularly good for the iPhone? I'd like to hear good stories and bad so I can make an educated decision.

I'm all ears!

Your own format is generally the best plan for a game as it means you can tweak to your hearts content to optimise it to suit what you're doing with the data.

Having said that, .obj and .fbx are usually popular (even if you use them as starting points for data to convert to your format) as they're both pretty universal now. obj is simpler, fbx is more comprehensive.

Yeah I understand that your own format would give you the added flexibility of tweaking the format to your spec, however that also would mean I'd need to write an exporter for the likes of maya, max, xsi, or whatever format the artist is familiar with.

I also must admit I don't really understand what benefits a unique structure would give me. Can you give me a better example?

Between obj and fbx I assume any of the major modeling packages can export into those formats? Is one better than the other?

My end goal is to create a fairly "generic" engine that I can use to build a few different 3d game ideas I had.

haudio Wrote:Hey Guys,

I was curious to hear about any formats you guys prefer for 3D models. I'm familiar with ms3d and .x files on windows but I haven't written a loader in eternity. It might be time for me to do so

Are there any formats that work particularly good for the iPhone? I'd like to hear good stories and bad so I can make an educated decision.

I'm all ears!

Read this (so I don't write it twice)
http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16526

In addition to riruilo's post in the other thread, Cheetah3D also has a .h export to paste the geometry right into your code.

haudio Wrote:Between obj and fbx I assume any of the major modeling packages can export into those formats? Is one better than the other?

fbx is starting to be used everywhere, but Maya/Max for sure, since fbx was developed by Autodesk. fbx is best if you can figure out how to use it, and perhaps convert data for your own needs.

obj is literally everywhere (originally developed by Alias, who used to own Maya). obj has been around forever and is still widely used in games. I use it myself for static geometry.

The difference between the two is vast. obj only handles static geometry and is simple, whereas fbx handles all kinds of stuff and is complicated, but the biggest advantage for games in fbx is skeletal animation info.

The problem with any existing format is that you have to process it on load. If you use your own format you can store it and load it much more efficiently.

Cool thanks for the info. Has anyone had any experience with Collada? I hear it's a pretty good format and is quickly becoming the favorite format for many people... Any pros & cons using Collada?

haudio Wrote:Cool thanks for the info. Has anyone had any experience with Collada? I hear it's a pretty good format and is quickly becoming the favorite format for many people... Any pros & cons using Collada?

If you want to know something about COLLADA, you may start reading my Master Thesis and testing my program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/colladaloader/

Hope this helps.