The Ogre COLLADA plugin

Discussion area about developing or extending OGRE, adding plugins for it or building applications on it. No newbie questions please, use the Help forum for that.
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Jezze
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Post by Jezze »

It would be nice to be able to have a modelling tool like Maya and an ogre render window open at the same time so the changes you do within Maya appears in the ogre window in realtime...
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Post by Praetor »

Jezze wrote:It would be nice to be able to have a modelling tool like Maya and an ogre render window open at the same time so the changes you do within Maya appears in the ogre window in realtime...
Maya would have to be constantly exporting your work into the COLLADA format. Kinda an expensive operation.
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Jezze
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Post by Jezze »

Im not sure of the mechanics of collada but i dont think it would be impossible to only update the changes made in order for it to work?
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Post by Praetor »

Possible, perhaps. I believe the way COLLADA works currently is as an exported format. This suggests to me a significant time to put out the result with any non trivial scene. Detecting and writing only changes to this format, without writing too much and/or traversing too much of the COLLADA structure might be too hard.
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Post by machinimist »

Jezze wrote:It would be nice to be able to have a modelling tool like Maya and an ogre render window open at the same time so the changes you do within Maya appears in the ogre window in realtime...
http://verse.blender.org

there already is a verse maya plugin and blender got a verse implementation too. you can have maya and blender open at the same time and work on the same model in realtime.

someone just would have to write a verse ogre plugin! :)
nfz
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Post by nfz »

A Blender COLLADA project was started on sourceforge about a month ago and the first release of the python source has been made. Checkout http://sourceforge.net/projects/colladablender/. I am going to send patches to this project for the work I have done on the Blender side rather than have two developments of the same thing going on.
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Post by Fup »

@nfz
You said, that you will release your plugin and source on Oct. 31, no matter what state it is in. Are there any news?
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Post by nfz »

The source is in a bad state right now since I changed the whole structure and design around mid October. I'll be setting up the Collada plugin in OgreAddons cvs in a couple of days but unfortunately the code does not work in its current state.
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Post by Bontakun »

@nfz
How is progress going now?
- Bonta (eveonline:Dentad)
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Post by nfz »

its going :lol: In mid October I decided to restructure the whole code base and seriously improve my non-existant UML skills at the same time. Some of the code is in Ogre addons cvs along with the UML diagrams. The code doesn't do much except load in a COLLADA document, scan for dae libraries, and load some dae objects. The Ogre resource converters which convert dae objects to Ogre resources (meshs, animations, lights, cameras, materials, scenes etc) haven't been commited to cvs yet. You'll need Bouml to view the diagrams which are a WIP right now and are proof to how much I still have to learn about UML (I'm still stuck on flow charts that I tried to learn in the mid 70's). I'm a pen and paper guy used to scratching on pieces of paper and are not readable by other people.

I am way behind where I wanted to be but each day or couple of days I make a little progress with the new code base and commit to cvs. In a couple of years I should have something that people can use :P .
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Post by Olex »

Keep it up, nfz! :D

We know it is hard work, and takes time, when we, open source/indie developers, don't have much of time to spare. I am sure there are plenty of others like me who appreciate what you are doing for Ogre community by writing an important COLLADA plugin for the future of Ogre pipeline.

8)
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Post by Bontakun »

nfz wrote:In a couple of years I should have something that people can use :P .
I just can't hold my breath that long... :)
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Post by nfz »

cheat and take a few :wink:
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Post by jfaust »

nfz, did you ever get access to the 1.4 beta? If not, you can apply for access at http://www.khronos.org/developers/revie ... signup.php. I'm just a student and I was accepted, so I'm sure they'd accept yours.
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Post by nfz »

yes I did, thanks.
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Post by nikki »

So, hows the progress. :)
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Post by nfz »

its been slow over the holidays.
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Post by nikki »

Oh. :) .

No problem, holidays are to have fun anyway! :)
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Post by Injector »

FYI: Collada 1.4 has been released.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... _id=367866
filou
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Post by filou »

What is the current state of this plugin ? I mean, currently what can I import with it ?
I tried to use it to import a 1.3 collada file but I'm not sure about how I should use it since the buildScene is empty. Do I need to get all the objects names with getObjectNames first and ask for this objects with getMesh and getLight ?

Do you have a little sample to show how to use it ?

thanks :)
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Post by nfz »

Sorry, the plugin doesn't do anything and development is on hold until after Dagon (Ogre 1.1) is released. Unfortunately right now I have a very limited amount of time during the week that I can code due to my day job interfering and on the weekend I spend most of my time working on Ogre so the next release can finally get out the door.
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Post by filou »

Ok, no pb. I would like to help you on this actually but it looks like I won't have time either.

I have another question though, I think it would make sense to have converter from collada to the ogre binary format. Because on one hand collada is nice, well for many reasons, but on the other hand it's not the best solution to parse a collada file each time you load your scene. With a converter we could use a lot of dcc tools to create the scene in collada and then convert it to be used efficiently with Ogre. Has this problem been discussed yet ?

Actually we also have the option to create a collada conditioner to prepare the collada data to be read efficiently by the plugin. So the tricky part is done once (offline) by the conditioner, and the plugin can then be much easier to write.
I know we are not there yet, but collada looks cool and it could be useful to address some of the issues that are often raised against its use in an engine.
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Post by the_python »

Has any progress been made on this? Any source we can have a look at?

Cheers
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Post by Fup »

I've written a simple collada importer too. Maybe it is possible that ogre dev-team would take it into addons account.

Here are some pics.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
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Post by the_python »

That's looks great Fup! I can try to help with the source (even if my XML experience is small) if you want. Do you have any public location for your source?

Cheers,
Pablo
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