Fbx support

[Deadlytoad]

Hi I am new to using the engine and read up on some stuff. Question is will fbx file types be acceptable in the future. I use lightwave 3d to do alot of modeling why I ask.

Thanks

[dragonlord]

Welcome Deadlytoad.

From a quick look the file format is undocumented but there seems to be information about Blender having reverse engineered important parts of the file format (for their import/export plugin). So I think it would be possible to add an FBX module to the game engine.

If you have a GitHub account you can create an issue for adding an FBX module. Otherwise I can add that issue instead so you can keep an eye on it.

[Deadlytoad]

Could you please put it on github. Thanks. I had another question dragon script is fully object programming. Would procedural programming also be supported down the road. They both have their places to me when making a game. Hero script is both procedural and objective and its really nice to use both for different things when needed.

[dragonlord]

The issue is now on github: https://github.com/LordOfDragons/dragengine/issues/3

You can do programming in a procedural style in DragonScript using static function calls. So you could do something like this:

Code: Select all

class MyFunctions
   static public func int multiply(int a, int b)
      return a * b
   end
end

class MoreFunctions
   static public func int calculate(int something)
      return MyFunctions.multiply(something, something)
   end
end

This is the closest you get to procedural programming in DragonScript. This way you can mix OOP and Procedural if you want.

[Deadlytoad]

Ok cool, can you show us how to use the dragonscript in the game engine?(Maybe a quick youtube video). Also I read that you could you use other languages also?

[dragonlord]

Ok cool, can you show us how to use the dragonscript in the game engine?(Maybe a quick youtube video). Also I read that you could you use other languages also?

The wiki contains Getting Started articles. While creating a new project you choose the "Script Module" you would like to use. Right now only the DragonScript language is available. More languages (including SmallTalk, Python or what people request) will be added later on.

Once the project is created the scripts are located in the "{project directory}/data/scripts" directory. For KDevelop a project file will be created too which can be used to edit the scripts. Under Linux syntax highlighting for DragonScript will be present. The KDevelop language module is though work in progress and not yet stable enough to be used. I've also tried creating a language module for VisualCode but I did not get far.

EDIT: There is a video showing this a bit: From Zero To DELGA.

[Deadlytoad]

I know you are looking into supporting fbx so other modeling softwares can be used instead of blender. But if you wanted to keep the workflow of the xml maybe we could have some kind of fbx converter in the engine itself. Some engines have where they will convert the model into their own file format. I know hero engine does this to have better performance etc. Also do you have a official discord?

[dragonlord]

The FBX support worked on right now results in 3 new modules allowing to load FBX in the engine (runtime and editors): Model, Rig and Animation. So you can directly use FBX files without the need of importing or converting if this works best with your workflow.

All engine modules have access to individual caching which you do not have to worry about. So future versions of the FBX modules will improve performance by caching slow loading FBX content where it helps. This is all automatic so nothing to worry about from your side.

It is possible to save loaded resources under a different file name which basically is converting a file format. A small file format converter editor for the IGDE has been planed but not done so far. I'll add an issue for this to GitHub.

Right now there is no official discord channel but I can add one if there is a desire for it.

[dragonlord]

Issue is now closed. 3 new modules will be present in 1.2 release: FBXModel, FBXRig and FBXAnimation. They allow loading model, rig and animation resources from FBX files.