Animation Model format - LWJGL 3.1

General Discussions
#1

Hello everyone,

first topic here at Java-Gaming.org. Hopefully in the correct section.

I’m a developer passionate for games and after all these years of programming I’m starting to game program (from scratch) to understand and improve concepts about game architecture, math, phisics and related stuff.

I’m using LWJGL, version 3.1 to create a simple engine, just to added models, textures, lights, whatever… Just for studies puporses for now :stuck_out_tongue:

Therefore, I’m really worried about how to added animation for this models. Let me clarify some things, I don’t want translate/rotate models… I want export an animation from Blender and run it on my openGL application.

I know that there is a lot of different format for this export, example Collada (.dae), FBX (.fbx), MD5 (.md5) and it continues… Also I had look into gLTF (GL Transmission Protocol)… Anyway, I didn’t spent a lot of time researching because I have found a lot of different comments in the web.

Finally, my questions…

  1. What can be considered the best format to work with animations using opengl?
  2. There is any Java library to work / load this models?

Sorry about the long topic for small questions, just contextualizing =)

I hope to be active in this community and, when be possible I’ll create some tutorials about what I’m doing.
Thank you all!

#2

welcome man. these are good questions. i’m curious too. what do you guys think ?

my own experience is not too good. everytime i dig into this topic i see myself running away.

#3

[quote=“vfmachado,post:1,topic:57997”]
There are many formats that can do the job. My personal favorite was dotXSI, but Autodesk bought and killed Softimage 3D, so…

The hardest part is setting up a decent pipeline between your artists and your engine. The actual format used to get data out of your DCC app is not very important.

[quote=“vfmachado,post:1,topic:57997”]
LWJGL recently added assimp bindings (currently available in the nightly builds). Here’s a tutorial on how to import Blender animations using assimp.

#4

Thanks,

this week I’m really busy at work so I won’t work in my project.

next week I’ll try animate some blender models through skeletal animation / skinning.

#5

Hi

No, it’s rather “GL Transmission Format”:

[quote]glTF™ (GL Transmission Format) is a royalty-free specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by applications. glTF minimizes both the size of 3D assets, and the runtime processing needed to unpack and use those assets. glTF defines an extensible, common publishing format for 3D content tools and services that streamlines authoring workflows and enables interoperable use of content across the industry.
[/quote]
There is no “best” format for animations and it depends on the kind of animation (key framed or skeletal). JavaBlend is a nice API to manipulate Blender models. There are tons of importers in various scenegraph APIs, you can use them as sources of inspiration too.

#6

[quote]No, it’s rather “GL Transmission Format”
[/quote]
Sorry for the mistake… I think Format and write Protocol.

Now I’m investigating about MD5 model and animation format, but certainly I’ll look into JavaBlend.

As I said in the first post, I’m using this approach to learn so I’m trying to code as much as possible without use a lot of APIs.

#7

Hi

Read my reply again:

I don’t advise you to use them, I advise you to use them as sources of inspiration to understand how their developers solved numerous problems that you’ll have to solve too and I remind you that you asked us whether there is any Java library to work / load models.