Ryzom

So far, there's only a 3DS Max Nel plugin.

There's a project to create a Collada Nel exporter to generate Nel data, as most of the 3D softwares can export to Collada or will be able.

For the docs, you've got about everything there:
http://dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/NeL

You might have to study the code too.

Thanks for the info molator.

Where could I read more about the collada nel export project?

Nowhere it's just an idea.
Nothing done so far.

TcR1oo565,

You can find more information here. We're just finishing up 0.8.0 and this isn't officially targeted to start until 0.10.0.

http://dev.ryzom.com/issues/879

If you have expertise in the area and wish to work on or help with that particular project then I encourage you to start whenever. The problem is that with the other pieces that also need to come we don't have enough volunteer time to go around to get to this.

Thanks,
sfb
/s

I am not an expert in this area but have my free time interest :-) .

I did a short check on COLLADA and found this project and source code interesting:
http://code.google.com/p/opencollada/source/browse/trunk/#trunk/dae2ogre/src

I guess from blender 2.5 point of view the step would be:

1. Export the 3d object to COLLADA
2. Run a similar program like dae2ogre, but named dae2nel.

What file spec should I user for NeL?

TcR1oo565,

It depends on what you are exporting. If it's a skeleton/bip then you export to a .skel, if it is mesh then you use .shape unless its a group of shapes meant to be used as a whole on the landscape then it is an instance group or .ig... If the mesh is a cluster (say a house that uses portals to occlude external view for performance) you will need to have special checks for special node properties (e.g. isClusterized, isVisibleFromFather, isVisibleToFather, etc)... Landscape is a whole other complication. Animation tracks export as .anim files but need to be a clobbered variant of bezier splines with fixed tangents or they need to be TCB. I'd suggest looking at the Node Properties dialog on the UsingMaxAssets page. Also of interest are the various pieces that we export independently.

All of these file formats (shape, ig, skel, anim, swt, etc) are serialized versions of the NeL classes. So your "dae2nel" isn't going to work the same as dae2ogre does. Since OGRE stores its mesh information essentially in a text .mesh file it's easier to build to a file spec. What NeL does for the 3DSMAX exporter is actually take information from the modeller (e.g. vertices) and push them into a NeL class, call the appropriate "build" method to optimize the 3D data for NeL and then serialize it out with a COFile object. You really need to look at source in the code/nel/tools/3d/plugin_max/nel_mesh_lib/ folder. For example export_mesh.cpp has this method:

NL3D::IShape *CExportNel::buildShape (INode& node, TimeValue time, const TInodePtrInt *nodeMap, bool buildLods)

Getting useful NeL metadata into the COLLADA file is going to be a key challenge. How do you tell "dae2nel" what type of shape to use for a given object or scene of objects? What about NeL specific parameters for portal planes or object clusters? All of these things need to be considered. Do we make "dae2nel" a psuedo-modeling package of its own just to open these "finished" objects up and enable NeL metadata or do we still need to make product specific plugins? Chew on this for a little while and let me know what you think. Also feel free to come onto IRC and chat with us.

Thanks a TON for looking into this!

sfb
/s

@sfb

Thanks self for taking time with this.

I have not be able to look so much into this.
First I did not found the code structure in cmake.

For blender I been thinking it could be better to write blender2nel exporter in python.
First blender2nel export test could be to export the default mesh cube or monkey and display the mesh in nel.

I also think the ryzom asset repository could be usefull in format as COLLADA .dae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obj or wavefront .obj http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obj#File_Format

/To^^y