I’m currently learning OpenGL while reading the OpenGL Programming Guide 1.4, using xCode to develope a Cocoa application. A question I have that hasn’t been answered yet is: is there a SANE way to make and animate complex 3D models without having to type in every vertext one by one? I use Lightwave 3D for modeling and animation projects and want to convert my models for use in a game.
The best I’ve been able to do is export a .dxf file, which seems to give me all the vertex data, but looks like it would still take some work converting it all to use in my programming. I downloaded a trial version of Cheetah 3D, which has an export option to make a header (.h) file. It’s only a demo, so I haven’t been able to try that out. Any suggestions for resources or literature on practical, complex 3D programming, specifically for game design on a Mac?
There are plenty of tutorials on how to load .obj files (and other formats, but .obj is probably easiest to begin) out there on the web. Google is your friend.
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I would go with the obj file format. I started with vrml but its rather difficult because there are so many options to the file format. obj is drop dead simple. You’ll need to parse mtl files also that describe the coloring.
The same file is posted at many different site. Most modeling programs I’ve used only produce the vertex type models and not the freeform ones. So, if you can handle vertex information your pretty well covered.