[Verse-dev] 3DS loader in Python

[Emil Brink]

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 18:45:15 +0100
Thorsten Jordan <Thorsten_Jordan at gmx.de> wrote:

[...]
> > 0x4140 (parse_3ds_tex_verts)	- Loaded, uploaded to geometry layers "map_[uv]".
> official names for texture coord layer are "tex_u" and "tex_v". My 
> loader uses that as names...

Hm, that's confusing for sure. :) Perhaps there is an error in the spec;
I checked in Eskil's Quel Solaar sources, and both Connector and the UV
Editor seem to use "map_" as the prefix. I'll leave this question hanging,
hoping for a definitive response by Eskil.

[...]
> > Obviously, a lot more complicated material graphs are needed to
> > properly
> that's roughly like my loader also does it.

I pretty much guessed that to be the case. :)

[...]
> I just wonder why you reinvented the wheel? my pusher can load and 
> upload geometry data, also 3ds files. With textures/bitmaps etc.
> Of course anybody is free to write his own loader, but it seems a bit 
> wasted work here?

Well, good question I guess... It only took on the order of 6-7 days,
and I did squeeze in some other minor tasks during that time. Plus, I
needed to get to grips with PyVerse, which got a lot of (specialized)
feedback from my using it, helping Brecht to nail some bugs both in it
and in the Verse core as well (1-bit per pixel bitmaps most specific-
ally). I consider this worthwhile.

Also, I wanted to see how troublesome it was after all your problems with
dropped data, and found the aforementioned flush-mechanism to work very
well; my loader does no application-level resends of data. It is reason-
ably quick, uploading the battleship model takes about 3-4 seconds.

Having a loader in Python might be useful since it is sometimes easier
to get Python programs running in various environments, it has a slighly
loser coupling to the Verse core code, and so on. In short, I find it
was worth it. :)

Regards,

/Emil