OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

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Methelina
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OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by Methelina »

http://opengex.org/
Image

The main idea to solve the Huge .Nif problem that follow the community for decades XD
1. Back-compatibility
2. Lack of support from modern 3D software. Only old build of Blender can do a job.
3. Complex architecture some parts of the format still unknown.
4. not universal
5. Original developers not support'em more... :( deadend

Resolve:
Use a OpenGEX as side alternative. Its not a resemblance of the nif pipeline just an addon. Anyway Engine read the decoded data as triangles, keyframes and so on. Same happen with .osg but it have no rig/anim support yet.
The OpenGEX format was created because Collada, the open standard that we all hoped would provide a well-supported asset exchange format, has proven to be an unreliable mess. The most common source of problems has been the poor quality of the Collada export plugins available for software such as 3D Studio Max and Maya, and we attribute this to Collada’s over-engineered design and its mutating under-specified format.
With use of GEX we solve all problems and will have and advantages:
1. Official OpenGEX export plugins for 3D Studio Max, Maya, and Blender all of them are OpenSource.
2. Support from developers.
3. Format are open and can be modified for our needs.
4. Easy for implementation, its made as intermediate selfefficient module. implementation.PDF

Hope the community agreed with me.
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Capostrophic
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by Capostrophic »

More modelling support is always nice, however since OpenMW already has support of .osg mesh file format native to OpenSceneGraph isn't it more effective to just use this at least until after 1.0?
Last edited by Capostrophic on 25 Aug 2016, 16:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Methelina
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by Methelina »

Honestly i don,t know. i think it will lasts a lot of time for OSG - support of all plugins for the editors, bugfixes bugfixes, patches, mb changing the scene compatibility in the next version etc. Im stick to the old in run systems. We use ogex in Crossout game, ogex is a main internal format of hi-universal C4 game engine made of Terathon inc. and so on. Ogex already pass the time of hotfixes, bug fixes and version run. Mb im wrong. Its close to the linux ideology - one function for one need.

Anyway alternative is always welcomed if it will help people to made more content Right now. Without destiny to wait a time when the anim support will be added, bugfixed and stabilised in .osg.

Main goal to lure more people to OMW community that will able to make a hi-quality animated content without skills in .nif and Blender.
Last edited by Methelina on 24 Aug 2016, 08:49, edited 1 time in total.
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DestinedToDie
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by DestinedToDie »

OpenGEX could be nice. But as tempting something like OpenGEX is, there are other things that I am anxiously waiting for.

Version 1.0 Goals:

Be a full-featured reimplementation of the Morrowind engine.
Be able to create and build your own game from scratch, free of Bethesda’s intellectual property (Morrowind).

Post 1.0 Wishlist:

Allow much greater modability: change game rules, create new spell effects, etc. through scripting.
Improved game mechanics and combat.

Also a fully functional OpenMW-CS so we can edit the game better. We almost got that, but I think right now you can´t edit books or landscape? Anyway, I would take any of these changes over a new format. There are many features and only a few consistently active developers.
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psi29a
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by psi29a »

Capostrophic wrote:More modelling support is always nice, however since OpenMW already has support of .osg mesh file format native to OpenSceneGraph isn't it more effective to just expand its functional at least until after 1.0?
OSG is a native format, but still doesn't support animation. Great for statics however!

OpenGEX to OSG for statics is something that is doable for OpenMW pre 1.0

Supporting OpenGEX natively in OpenMW (thus via OSG) should be a post 1.0 goal.

Even Scrawl wants to support OpenGEX: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2775&start=20#p31876

OpenGEX has been talked about before all over the place:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3155&start=20
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2723&start=20#p30566

So don't dismiss it out of hand. She is 100% right, we need this.

http://opengex.org/
"Official OpenGEX export plugins for 3D Studio Max, Maya, and Blender can be downloaded here. The source code for these plugins is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
@Zini and @Scrawl: do you have a position on this?
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Zini
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by Zini »

I haven't put any thought into this topic yet. Too early to make a decision anyway IMO.
GeorgeTheWarp
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by GeorgeTheWarp »

I think it's a quite fabulous idea, as it would permit to transfer scenes directly to and from the modeling software. And that is for the modders and game designer a wonderful tool, as it would permit to do more work on the same platform, without having to switch often, if at all.

Myself liking Blender's interface, I find it would be good to be able to do the whole scene directly into it, as I by far prefer the blender hotkeys over the CS'. And this format being already feature complete, we may implement it and have all the features we wanted from the OSG format, which is also good.

That being said, the OSG format already was a big improvement over the native NIF format, so perphaps we might prefer sticking to it, and not changing too often of formats, or adding new ones,
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psi29a
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by psi29a »

The main motivation is animation support.

OSG native format doesn't currently have animation support and NIF is shit to work with.
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MiroslavXO
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by MiroslavXO »

So basically I can create custom rig and do animation, and then import that into a game?
If this is true +1 from me.
Chris
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Re: OpenGEX as .Nif alternative for OpenMW

Post by Chris »

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).
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