The import code for the Ogex looks easy to implement OpenGex-Import.zip into OSG interpreter.Chris wrote:AFAIK, all we'd need is an OSG loader for OpenGEX files. Anything OSG can load, OpenMW should be able to use.
What will be more difficult is things like animation, since the engine relies on custom data being supplied in certain nodes of the model. With NIF, these are done with specific Node types and extra data containers stored in the nodes. I don't know enough about how OSG (or OpenGEX) is designed to know how easy it is work with that. I know there was some talk before about needing to have custom node types to support particles and animation in .osg files, which would obviously cause a problem with modeling software that doesn't know about those node types (which thusly can't create particles or animations, kinda defeating the purpose of supporting them in the format).
Anyway, i think the basic feature of the .nif - node system with unique flags and tags are disadvantage, if we are look into the universal and wide supportable future of the engine. Where all important features are stick to the long abandoned plugins in a third-party software with need to edit in another third-party software before the Game Engine. If we will look into the Unity3d for example, it have a importing menu for the raw data. This Import menu used to set up the unique flags and tags, names for the animation sequences and materials, same as we did in .nif. In this case we have a great advantage - we can use any kind of RAW data - mesh data or animation data and than we can set the needed settings and the tags inside the Engine, where Any software can be used to create the assets and then exported it in the unified raw data, such a OpenGEX and than natively load via engine.
In same way will be easy to implement other formats if it will be needed. For example .OSG with animation (in future) can be loaded in same way with the Import Settings in the middle and will have same features as .nif can have.