Member Joat Posted June 11, 2008 Member Report Share Posted June 11, 2008 It would be cool to have blender import / export. It's an open format, so all the necessary information should be there. But is it possible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Scott Posted June 12, 2008 Member Report Share Posted June 12, 2008 It would be cool to have blender import / export. It's an open format, so all the necessary information should be there. But is it possible? Blender already has importers for .Obj, .Fbx and .LWO.. The Blender format, is not a good format and is actually a hex dump, which is only useful to Blender itself, other applications could not use the format, outside of Blender. Also Blender is protected by the GPL, Andrew would be forced to make his code open source via the GPL. So I'm afraid it's not likely the best of ideas currently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Joat Posted June 13, 2008 Author Member Report Share Posted June 13, 2008 No. Importer and exporter coded in 3D-coat would in no way be binded by Blender's GPL lisence. Same as with any other format. Is 3D-coat affected by Lightwave's or Softimage's lisence? I really doubt it. And as it comes to Blender import / export, i think when there's a will, there's a way. After I wrote my first post I noticed there is already an SDK for 3D-Coat. I will ask if there's someone in Blender community willing to do the import / export for 3D-coat. They have done marvellous integration job also with Indigorenderer, an I see the situation between Blender and Indigo and Blender and 3D-coat pretty similar. Indigo has certainly gained momentum from Blender userbase, and Blender has had it's "de facto" unbiased renderer in Indigo. I was willing to pay to have 3D-coat as part of my workflow. If and when Indigo gets to be commercial software, I am willing to pay for it too. But I would propably not be if there would not be the excellent Blendigo exporter. It really makes a difference there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Scott Posted June 14, 2008 Member Report Share Posted June 14, 2008 No. Importer and exporter coded in 3D-coat would in no way be binded by Blender's GPL lisence. Same as with any other format. Is 3D-coat affected by Lightwave's or Softimage's lisence? I really doubt it. Lightwave and XSI are not GPL based, nor is 3DC, But Blender is... Name one other application than can import .blend files and use the geometry? Lightwave?, XSI?, Max? Houdini? Sorry, it's more likely you can export a .lwo or .obj and .fbx, or a .3DC importer/exporter was coded under GPL inside of Blender. Like i said a .blend file is a hex dump, and is too hard for anything except Blender to use any information from. Similar to how 3DSMax's format is a closed format, or Maya's Binary file format. Here is a quote from the Wiki: "However, a ".blend" file is less a structured specification of objects and relationships and closer to a direct binary dump of the program's memory space. This makes it very hard to convert a ".blend" file to another format using external tools, although dozens of import/export scripts that run inside Blender itself, accessing the object data via API, make it possible to inter-operate with other 3D tools." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor bwtr Posted June 14, 2008 Contributor Report Share Posted June 14, 2008 http://moi3d.com/resources#Blender_importer This may be of interest. Brian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Joat Posted June 14, 2008 Author Member Report Share Posted June 14, 2008 Scott, you seem to have a misunderstanding about GPL license. I'd take you haven't read one. GPL requires that any derivative work made from GPL'ed applications source code to be GPL'd too. It says nothing of using GPL'd software's file format specification and building import / export functionality to other program, be it commercial or GPL-software. That kind of limitation would simply be insane. Exactly the same goes to other formats discussed here. Altough .obj and .lwo are formats of commercial software, it is of everyone's interest they can be used to transform models between applications. Both are also free to implement. Andrew has published SDK for 3D-coat for the same reasons. GPL license's purpose is to secure the efforts of software's developers against derivative works built on top of their code. They are not (generally) paid for their work, so I think this kind of license is fair to say the least. GPL's intention is certainly not to restrict the usability of the software itself. Restricting the implementation of import / export functionality to other software would do just that. I think no-one in their right mind, could consider 3D-coat a derivative work of Blender, no matter how smooth and comprehensive import / export it would have. If uncertain, ask from the source in question. Blender head developer Ton Rosendaal can be contacted, and his address can be found from www.blender.org. I am pretty sure he backs me up on this. As it comes to the format of .blend, I know nothing about it. It might as well be just as you said. But still, it can be done. And I made a wish to Andrew to do so. Given what he's capable of, I think it's not even a tall order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Shpagin Posted June 15, 2008 Report Share Posted June 15, 2008 Do you expect import/export only geomemetry/normals/uv? If so, obj/fbx using could be good. What advantage do you expect from blend import/export? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Scott Posted June 16, 2008 Member Report Share Posted June 16, 2008 http://moi3d.com/resources#Blender_importerThis may be of interest. Brian You will notice that Moi does not support .Blend files, it uses a .LWO importer/exporter... Scott, you seem to have a misunderstanding about GPL license. I'd take you haven't read one. Hi Joat, obviously i do read and do develop my own code, How about you? Which is why i seem to know much more than you on this subject... While your request is good, your understanding of what it would take is seriously lacking. You really need to read up on the GPL license before trying to lecture me on something you are plainly incorrect about. If uncertain, ask from the source in question. Blender head developer Ton Rosendaal can be contacted, and his address can be found from www.blender.org. I am pretty sure he backs me up on this.As it comes to the format of .blend, I know nothing about it. It might as well be just as you said. But still, it can be done. And I made a wish to Andrew to do so. Given what he's capable of, I think it's not even a tall order. ROFL, Perhaps you should contact Ton, or perhaps anyone who develops for Blender. Again, you seem to lack any real knowledge on the subject, so i will not argue with you.... But perhaps before you try and correct me, you should learn more about the facts in the future. Good luck with you feature request... Like i said can you name ONE single application that has .Blend support? You would need a lot more knowledge about Blender, .Blend and GPL before a worthy conversation could be made between yourself and I about it. Just trying to tell you it's not feasible, sorry.... Stick to .FBX, .LWO or .OBJ all of these are legitimate file formats which work fine.... Good luck... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Joat Posted June 18, 2008 Author Member Report Share Posted June 18, 2008 You would need a lot more knowledge about Blender, .Blend and GPL before a worthy conversation could be made between yourself and I about it.Just trying to tell you it's not feasible, sorry.... Stick to .FBX, .LWO or .OBJ all of these are legitimate file formats which work fine.... Boy, am I glad you were not around when God was thinking about creating the world. The tought of Him having a conversation about the feasibility of the idea with you... Surprisingly it's not your program we are discussing about. There are those who concentrate on doing stuff, and those who spend their time spilling the juice of their infinite wisdom to us lesser mortals. Your attitude is something I am pretty familiar with amongst 14 year olds, and being an adult I refuse to take this conversation any further with you. This section of the forum is called feature requests. I started this thread to make a feature request. What's your excuse of answering it in the first place? Andrew: I take some time and study the subject a little further before I get back on this. I really hope this pointless argument fades away and we can continue with the original subject a bit later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member PoopaScoop Posted September 8, 2008 Advanced Member Report Share Posted September 8, 2008 UFC 90!! Scott - The Code Slinging Badboy VS Joat, The Blood Blending Bleeder! Grab tickets From your local vender, while hot!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Improv Posted September 8, 2008 Member Report Share Posted September 8, 2008 UFC 90!! Scott - The Code Slinging Badboy VS Joat, The Blood Blending Bleeder! Grab tickets From your local vender, while hot!! Throw in some carmel popcorn and you got the Grudge Match of the Century! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Member peer Posted September 10, 2008 New Member Report Share Posted September 10, 2008 Boy, am I glad you were not around when God was thinking about creating the world. The tought of Him having a conversation about the feasibility of the idea with you...Surprisingly it's not your program we are discussing about. There are those who concentrate on doing stuff, and those who spend their time spilling the juice of their infinite wisdom to us lesser mortals. Your attitude is something I am pretty familiar with amongst 14 year olds, and being an adult I refuse to take this conversation any further with you. Well, let's stay away from the personal attacks and all the stuff about gods. We're not on a religious board here and despite our religions or having no religion at all, we're not here to flame each other either, right? However, because I understand your thinking, I'll try to explain according to my own experiences in writing an importer for .blend files. The reason why it's nearly impossible to write an importer or exporter for .blend-files can be found in the structure of the files. The structure of a .blend-file consists of (like said before) a bunch of memory dumps from the actual data structures used in Blender itself. This means the following: not only the model data is read/saved when you load/save a .blend-file. Other things like the size of a window, the window matrix, a number of internally used constants, and a lot of other things that actually make up Blender as it runs (the program and its data structures in memory), is read/saved into these files. So to actually read or write data to or from a .blend file, you would have to "emulate" Blender itself to fill in all the right values of the DNA structures used in Blender (remember, it's a memory dump, not just actual data like with other file formats). That fact leaves one with just three options: - Use the Blender source itself and spend a lifetime to trim away unneeded parts of the code, but to keep the DNA code. - Or rewrite a part of Blender from scratch, according to the memory structures as used by Blender (those structures are GPL-ed code, so your code has to be GPL as well). - Or think up a way to fill in a lot of default values to make the .blend file a valid file, but I can assure you it's just as much work as option 2 (but you'll still need those structures to be known, and the only source is the Blender source, which is GPL). And there's the reason why no program imports or exports .blend files. It's not impossible, but definitely not worth the huge amount of work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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