OBJ or 3DS loader?

OpenGL Development
#1

Hey guys, I want to include 3D models in my game using LWJGL, but I don’t want to deal with JME or some other completely new type of interface. I have a pretty good grasp of LWJGL and have some simple 3D in my game (basically manually drawn basic 3D shapes), but I would like to use models I have made in Poser and Maya.

I found an OBJ loader here: http://lwjgl.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6474&sid=e45e1606d3176c9948ff448402bdf16d but it doesn’t seem to work with textures at all (do any OBJs, by the way?), and I can’t get it to work right with my game for some reason.

It seems to me 3DS files are significantly better than OBJs because they take up a lot less memory, load faster, and can have animations and textures, but I couldn’t find 3DS loaders anywhere.

Do you guys know where I could find any of these loaders, what’s best, etc.? I could adapt a C++ OpenGL loader if need be, as long as it is simple and I can plug it into my program easily.

Thanks.

#2

Id advise to write an obj loader, its simple to do. I dont know about 3ds, i think there are quite a lot more complex.

The again, if you need animation ive found md2s (quake2) to be simple to use.

yes

#3

So do you know of a good md2 loader, then?

And how do I get texture information out of an .obj file? It seems to be a list of vertexes and points only.

#4

google -> result

#5

the 3ds file format have a lot of advantages : it can handle full scene including mesh,camera,light, animations,material, hierarchie, pivot, instance (safe a lot of size), and also many more things

and a lot of disadvantage : file name must be in 8.3 dos format (even if some converter allow more, it is not allowed by 3ds format and 3ds max will only export 8.3 file name), I dont think it can allow more than one UV set, and normal mapping

if you only want to load a mesh it is quite simple just look at chunk 0x4100, you can find some good sample by google : 3ds chunk

the interristing things in 3ds file is because it handle full scene and it make your favorite 3d modeler software become your game level editor.