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What is the best format to use for 3D characters with the iPhone. I am looking to find free characters and did look at md2 (previous post), however there does not seem to be much free quality stuff about.

All I am after is to have a few normal 3D people walking around on my iPhone. I do have some animated 3ds / x animated characters. I am just trying to work out via what tools and format I should use for the iPhone.

Update: Keeping this simple how do I get animated .x files or animated .3ds file on to the iPhone?

The md2 example seems like a dead end as can't convert 3ds / .x animated files to md2 successfully with jpg textures .

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Burf2000
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1 Answers1

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The choice of the file format does not depend on the target plattform but on the capabilities provided by it, the amount of thrid party libraries you want to use or the effort you want to put in writing a custom file loader.

There is no such thing like the "best file format".

datenwolf
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  • I do understand that but how do I get animated .x .3ds files on the iphone – Burf2000 Jul 13 '11 at 22:03
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    You implement your own or link against third library parser and animation system for the chosen file format. They are all well documented and for some of them there are open source libraries. – datenwolf Jul 14 '11 at 06:45
  • I do understand what your saying but I am looking for code examples or what tools I should use to get my .3ds or .x files in to iPhone – Burf2000 Jul 14 '11 at 08:58
  • I seem to be finding mainly vague answers while googling for this issue. I have an animated 3D character created in 3DS Max. I need to get it to play on my iPhone using OpenGL. What options do I have for this and what are the pros and cons of each?Right now, I'm doing research on SIO2 and Oolong. – Ben X Tan Aug 09 '11 at 05:38
  • @Ben X Tan: The answers are vague, because your question is vague. You never specified in which context you want to display/animate this character. Also chracter animation may mean anything, from vertex key mesh deformation, to skeletal animation. Do you need a fully fledged engine or just some library to use in your own OpenGL drawing code? – datenwolf Aug 09 '11 at 07:34
  • @datenwolf, what are some examples of libraries that you would recommend? The main issue I am having atm is that there are too many choices, and so far none of them are quite what I want. – Ben X Tan Aug 10 '11 at 07:57
  • @datenwolf In my case it is a rigged character. I just need a library to play the animation. Don't need a whole engine. Does that help? – Ben X Tan Aug 10 '11 at 07:58