ANN: Universal model support. Testers wanted

[SpliFF]

Attention artists and modellers frustrated with UpSpring!

I'm happy to announce the first release of Spring with the new Assimp model import. This allows Spring to directly handle models in a large variety of formats without the use of UpSpring. Supported formats include Collada (dae), 3D Studio Max (3ds), Milkshape 3D (ms3d), Blender (.blend - currently buggy), Quake1/2/3 (md3), Doom (md5), and many others.

This code is not currently part of the official Spring source. To make that happen it needs to be tested across a range of systems, mods and models.

Please assist by downloading and testing the prebuilt Windows or linux source version found in this development forum post. There are also instructions there.

[scifi]

great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! testing it rigth now!!!! posting feedback ina few days

[Wartender]

Great!

does this mean armatures :3?

[MidKnight]

Great!

does this mean armatures :3?

Unfortunately not.
This is one case in which WARTENDER LOGIC would actually be a very good thing.
Man, I've been wanting to use that term in so long... I haven't seen you around the lobby much lately. Am I just bad at seeing things?

[Wartender]

FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

but yeah i haven't played spring in quite a while... college applications... but mostly LoL

tryin to stay at least a little active in the forums though

[MElvinVM]

I would like it very much if this could have wavefront support! (.obj)

[koshi]

Follow the 'and many others' link in the first post.

[Guessmyname]

Oh hell yes!

[FLOZi]

I would like it very much if this could have wavefront support! (.obj)

Spring (0.82+) already supports models in .obj format.

[Guessmyname]

Will test when the download finishes... in several hours time (8kb/s ftw...)

[SpliFF]

OBJ is not an ideal format since it has no hierarchy support. that means you must have a metadata file to specify piece relationships. You'll also be limited if animations get supported later on. The only reason you should be using OBJ is if your preferred editor supports nothing better.

The ideal format is Collada. You should use it wherever possible.

[Guessmyname]

What's the advantage of .dae over .3ds?

[MidKnight]

For one, 3ds isn't all that great with preserving normal order, and (If I recall correctly), COLLADA is a more open format.

[SpliFF]

Not a lot right now, but only because Spring lacks an implementation of some modern model features. For example, Assimp will happily import lights, cameras, bones, animations, material properties, embedded textures and other features of a modern model format.

I cannot say for certain which of these are supported by 3DS but I know that all are supported by Collada (Collada even supports physics properties and Application-specific extensions). If Spring were, for example, to support dynamic lighting or mesh deformations at some point you might find yourself having to switch to a format that supports those features.

Another reason is that Collada is fast establishing itself as an open industry standard, which should see it become universally supported. By contrast 3DS is a dated propriety standard with a more limited feature set which may lead to support falling off over time. That wouldn't happen over night though as 3DS is still a defacto standard.

For now though I guess it simply comes down to the tools you use.

[Guessmyname]

...of course it would help if had remembered that 3ds is not 3ds Max's default file format, so I'll still have to export models anyway...

I'll use dae. Thanks for the advice!

[SpliFF]

This still needs more testers. Please donate a few minutes of your time to download the archive and try out the included ModelTest mod. At this stage I really only need to know if it crashes on your setup but any experimentation with the included models (or your own) would also be appreciated.

The model support is a major stepping stone to improving the ease of use and quality of Spring models, and enabling future features like improved animation support. Without testing I cannot get this into mainline Spring.

Download and instructions here

[SpliFF]

New release. This release is a merge with the latest changes to Spring. Forbodding Angel has uploaded it to FileFront and his own server for faster access from US / EU.

I've also seperated the test mod and removed a lot of unused or broken models and units. /give all will no longer crash.

I'm hoping to have this code merged to spring master in the next 2 weeks. More testing is important.

Full details

[caldera]

give all crashes:
[ 225] /give all
[ 225] couldn't find a parser for model named "objects3d/3ds/jeep1.3ds"
[ 225] Spring 0.82.6.1 (0.82.6.1) has crashed.
[ 225] Exception: Access violation (0xc0000005)
[ 225] Exception Address: 0x00bec8b8

[Andrej]

I pretty much cant run the release you linked here, and if I compile from source, crash in different ways depending on CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE O_o
Attached some infologs also readme.txt
Dont think it's very useful though just blame it on windows 2000.

[SpliFF]

give all crashes:
[ 225] /give all
[ 225] couldn't find a parser for model named "objects3d/3ds/jeep1.3ds"
[ 225] Spring 0.82.6.1 (0.82.6.1) has crashed.
[ 225] Exception: Access violation (0xc0000005)
[ 225] Exception Address: 0x00bec8b8

You're running the assimp test mod on a normal version of Spring. You need to download the spring-assimp.7z version of spring to test the model support.