[Solved]General comments about .scene

[iblues1976]

Hi,

I'm using DotSceneLoader and exporting either with blender or 3ds max (OgreMax 3ds) scene files with its meshes. The parser is rapidxml.
I'm getting my models either from blendswap or turbosquid. I'm artistic challenge. I sow Ogitor, but I have found the .scene very simple and easy to use. I wish it would just work right out of the box... meaning, right after the export.

I do run into trouble when parsing the files. One of them was easy for me to fix and other ones I have yet not fixed.

My question is, what are people using for the scene, should I be using something else than rapidxml to parse... do you think are the exporters.

There is the alternative to create a .scene by hand, but some models have too many parts and create too many meshes...

I would like to hear comments and opinions about this... and I hope this is the right forum

thanks
Francisco

[metaldev]

My question is, what are people using for the scene, should I be using something else than rapidxml to parse

i like to use tinyXML. very simple, very easy.
you even have some loaders in the wiki that are ready to go that use it.

There is the alternative to create a .scene by hand, but some models have too many parts and create too many meshes...

I definitely would NOT recommend maintaining a .scene by hand. If your scene is so simple that you could do this, then you probably should not be using .scene at all.

[iblues1976]

when you guys get 3d models ,do you ran into trouble when reading the .scene file?

[madmarx]

Never need to write the ".scene" by hand here either.
My sceness always very few complexity. Everything is cleaned before export. Then loading is ok.

[Kojack]

I do run into trouble when parsing the files. One of them was easy for me to fix and other ones I have yet not fixed.

What was the problem and how did you fix it?

.scene isn't an official ogre file format (it's not understood by ogre itself), it's an addon format. There may be differences between some of the exporters and the loaders (different features exposed, different versions of the .scene over time, etc).

[iblues1976]

Hi,

For example, one error I corrected was http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68579 when using the blender exporter.

Another problem when using OgreMax for 3ds, is that it was pointed out to me that I should be using the dotscene loader from them. (Or I read that somewhere) I'm going to try that next week and see how it goes.

thanks,
Francisco

[Kojack]

Hmm, the nearPlaneDist and farPlaneDist are the attributes defined in the .scene's dtd document.
https://ogreaddons.svn.sourceforge.net/ ... tScene.dtd

While .scene isn't officially part of ogre, the addons version is near official. If other exporters/loaders aren't following it's standard, we need to fix it (having multiple conflicting implementations of the same file format for the same engine sucks).

Someone should probably look at the addon's loader code and see if it needs updating or improvement (argh, fighting the urge to volunteer, got too much work to do already). The current maintainer for it hasn't logged onto the forum for nearly 3 years.

From what I've seen, the ogremax scene loader has the most features, but I don't know how compatible with the original .scene spec it is.
oFusion had it's own scene format called .osm (I think, been years since I touched it).

[metaldev]

@iblues1976

I just wanted to add a little bit to what Kojack said.

In practice, I think most people end up customizing their .scene files a little bit. You should be ready to get a little bit dirty with both the .scene exporter and the loader you choose.
The reason is that every application is a bit like its own world, and the .scene and it's loader are the translators between this 'world' (your application) and your content creation tools.... there really won't ever be a way to make this translation perfectly generic.
I think this is the reason the standard is a little bit funny and imperfect; it is expected that most people will use it simply as a starting point.
As you begin working you might understand when you find that your application needs some kind of meta-data that no other application has ever needed or will ever need.

[iblues1976]

@Kojack

While I'm also busy with time and I'm new at this, I can volunteer to look at the loaders dealing with .scene. I can start in a week or two, while I make space for this.

Francisco

[iblues1976]

Hi, I think using the "dotsceneloader" from ogremax, should be the standard, or close to... that one is working very well.. of course using the ogremax export tool.