Loading .sbm 3D model

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hello.

I am following a tutorial from the OpenGL superbible 6 book and I am working through one that requires me to “load” data from an sbm model.

I have been struggling to find much info at all on sbm models, especially anything like a starting point for loading one into java opengl (LWJGL).

My question is then, would I be losing any data or be at a disadvantage if I converted the sbm model to obj (through blender) ?
Also if anyone knows any Java resources for loading an sbm model that would be an interesting read aswell.

Thanks

#2

If you are getting few replies as seen its probably because no one has knowledge on the subject. What i would do if i was you is experiment! ;D give it a try and see if any data is lost after conversion, if it works well done you will have learnt something new and other people with the same issue will thankyou for starting a thread on the subject ;D remember dont be afraid to experiement

#3

I don’t know anything about .smb (or is it .sbm ?) but I highly doubt that wavefront (.obj) will be insufficient. The wavefront format supports position, tex-coords, normal and material data (via the .mtl format). And more importantly for a beginner it is probably the simplest format you will find to parse 3D model info. The big thing it doesn’t do is any animation stuff so if that’s what you need then bad idea. But I think what it has is more than enough for a beginner to get their teeth into.

Edit: According to @trollwarrior1 (all credit there) it does vertex colour info as well. Did not know that.

#4

Same what quew said…

obj is a very very simple format. It tells you vertex position, texture coordinates and color. It also tells you faces and face normals if I’m correct.

Decide on your own if obj is enough for you.

#5

Thanks for the replies,

I’ve managed to load an obj model into LWJGL and they useful as you said that do have the tex-coords and normals. I guess I was wondering whether .sbm had any additional properties or better compressed which made it stand apart from obj.

I’ll be sticking to obj then for now, I am more familiar with this format anyway.
I was surprised to see how little info there is on sbm though.

#6

I would think that you have .sbm or .smb or whatever it’s name is, on your computer. Is it binary format? Or is it xml / json? If its xml/json, you could try writing your own loader for it. If you know how xml/json works, its pretty easy to do.

If it is binary, the only viable thing I would suggest is to search for a converter that would convert .smb format to some kind of other common format.

Maybe .smb format is really old, just like the book you are reading? (Thats the logical conclusion, because if the book author isn’t dumb, he wouldn’t use some kind of format that is not popular when writing the book)