Hi there.
I've been using quartz and have been using kineme stuff for a while now. I finally bought kineme3D and signed up for an account. Excited to really dive into kineme3D.
Welcome! I'm posting the link for autodesk's fbx converter/download page... scroll down a bit and you will find it.
I throw this out there, because fbx's regularly have a bit faster load time, and are probably the optimal format for working with kineme3D in QC. I would definitely run obj file and 3DS files through to convert to fbx first. Obj, 3DS, etc., do work, but aren't nearly as optimal. MD2's load very quickly, don't need to be converted (never even tried it actually, don't know if that would work)... To be clear, obj and 3ds don't "need" to be converted either, but with largish file sizes there is a considerable difference.
Checkout the most recent particle tools patch; it has some cool stuff that uses kineme3D. Download the tar/source and look in the example composition folder for some good examples of using 3D objects as "particles", and also of using particles to "collide" with 3D objects.
Spot on with the FBX Conversion Utility from Autodesk.
Great little application.
A veritable Mighty Mouse.
It will take in 3DS, OBJ, Collada, DXF & FBK.
Outputs are either binary or ASCII with options available at conversion time depending upon the input models file type.
It will not take in .md2 files.
Given the fact that .md2 are pretty efficient, thanks to the ongoing efforts of dedicated games developers and designers, possibly not much of a loss really :-)
I can't help but wonder if the inherent animation facilities of .md2 format would be lost when put through any conversion process going.
Quite a lot of models you'll probably be using will need either centering or normalizing from within the Object Loader panel of that model.
MD2's really had to be efficient considering the environment they had to run in. It's kinda ancient.
Hmm, that is an interesting speculation about md2 file conversion. If there was something to convert md2's (which as we both agree is pretty un-needed), given that each part of the "structure" is single mesh/pose... and most convertors don't tend to screw around with the actual structure order, I would tend to think it would work.
I hate to do a "hypothetical" here and not actually test :o) I notice that when I use various tools to convert (autodesk and others), structure element 0 is still "0", and so on.
Also, a note on the autodesk thing and DAE... whatever Google is doing with their DAE files that they wrap in the Sketchup KMZ file... has some kind of "funkiness" with the autodesk converter (no workee). "Standard" dae's (for lack of a better term) will work.
I wrote the MD2 loader myself, from scratch -- it does exactly what's necessary, and nothing more. This makes it extraordinarily fast, because it literally goes from On-Disk MD2 to in-memory Kineme3D object with no extra steps.
Contrast this will all the other formats (fbx, 3ds, obj, dae, dxf) -- these are all loaded via Autodesk's FBX library (at one point, I had a mostly-working 3ds loader, and a very broken OBJ loader, but those have both been discarded), which does lots of extra work (which slows it down, and takes up a bit more memory). This involves an extra conversion (on-disk whatever to in-memory fbx to in-memory kineme3D).
I'm not sure what the deal is with Google's DAEs either -- I'll probably have to write a dae loader myself sometime (unless fbx starts working) -- dae's cool because it's just xml, and it supports skeletons and some other tricks, IIRC.
Yeah, it's a drag, because there are sooooo many great dae's out there from all of that Google earth stuff. That's really cool that it's just xml!
That explains the md2 thing very "fully". I've noted that md2's are blazing fast... (in my humble opinion, your pre-autodesk era 3ds loader was really good as well).
Anybody got a current link and installation advice for the FBX Converter? The link above doesn't work anymore. I went to autodesk and downloaded some huge SDK thing that was supposed to have the converter as part of it, but I'll be darned if I can recognize any converter amongst this giant thing they sent me. I need help. heh.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=10775855
Welcome! I'm posting the link for autodesk's fbx converter/download page... scroll down a bit and you will find it.
I throw this out there, because fbx's regularly have a bit faster load time, and are probably the optimal format for working with kineme3D in QC. I would definitely run obj file and 3DS files through to convert to fbx first. Obj, 3DS, etc., do work, but aren't nearly as optimal. MD2's load very quickly, don't need to be converted (never even tried it actually, don't know if that would work)... To be clear, obj and 3ds don't "need" to be converted either, but with largish file sizes there is a considerable difference.
Checkout the most recent particle tools patch; it has some cool stuff that uses kineme3D. Download the tar/source and look in the example composition folder for some good examples of using 3D objects as "particles", and also of using particles to "collide" with 3D objects.
Spot on with the FBX Conversion Utility from Autodesk.
Great little application.
A veritable Mighty Mouse.
It will take in 3DS, OBJ, Collada, DXF & FBK.
Outputs are either binary or ASCII with options available at conversion time depending upon the input models file type.
It will not take in .md2 files.
Given the fact that .md2 are pretty efficient, thanks to the ongoing efforts of dedicated games developers and designers, possibly not much of a loss really :-)
I can't help but wonder if the inherent animation facilities of .md2 format would be lost when put through any conversion process going.
Quite a lot of models you'll probably be using will need either centering or normalizing from within the Object Loader panel of that model.
MD2's really had to be efficient considering the environment they had to run in. It's kinda ancient.
Hmm, that is an interesting speculation about md2 file conversion. If there was something to convert md2's (which as we both agree is pretty un-needed), given that each part of the "structure" is single mesh/pose... and most convertors don't tend to screw around with the actual structure order, I would tend to think it would work.
I hate to do a "hypothetical" here and not actually test :o) I notice that when I use various tools to convert (autodesk and others), structure element 0 is still "0", and so on.
Also, a note on the autodesk thing and DAE... whatever Google is doing with their DAE files that they wrap in the Sketchup KMZ file... has some kind of "funkiness" with the autodesk converter (no workee). "Standard" dae's (for lack of a better term) will work.
To fill in some details:
I wrote the MD2 loader myself, from scratch -- it does exactly what's necessary, and nothing more. This makes it extraordinarily fast, because it literally goes from On-Disk MD2 to in-memory Kineme3D object with no extra steps.
Contrast this will all the other formats (fbx, 3ds, obj, dae, dxf) -- these are all loaded via Autodesk's FBX library (at one point, I had a mostly-working 3ds loader, and a very broken OBJ loader, but those have both been discarded), which does lots of extra work (which slows it down, and takes up a bit more memory). This involves an extra conversion (on-disk whatever to in-memory fbx to in-memory kineme3D).
I'm not sure what the deal is with Google's DAEs either -- I'll probably have to write a dae loader myself sometime (unless fbx starts working) -- dae's cool because it's just xml, and it supports skeletons and some other tricks, IIRC.
Yeah, it's a drag, because there are sooooo many great dae's out there from all of that Google earth stuff. That's really cool that it's just xml!
That explains the md2 thing very "fully". I've noted that md2's are blazing fast... (in my humble opinion, your pre-autodesk era 3ds loader was really good as well).
Anybody got a current link and installation advice for the FBX Converter? The link above doesn't work anymore. I went to autodesk and downloaded some huge SDK thing that was supposed to have the converter as part of it, but I'll be darned if I can recognize any converter amongst this giant thing they sent me. I need help. heh.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=6839916
Perfect! That was it! Thanks and Happy New Year, Cybero.