timon botez wrote:
Scuse my ignorance. Im using the tex-object to build models and as far as I understand, the text object draws polygons right? How about Gem objects to OBJ's? The rest I can handle in Alias wavefront...
probably i have sent this mail to tim already; but i have lost it and just for the archives:
the problem is a bit subtle. openGL is (to a wide extent) vector-based. Gem is openGL-based.
however, Gem does not handle the vectors (vertices, polygons,...) itself (in very special cases it does so). instead, this is done by the openGL-server (which is done by the GPU on modern gfx-cards) e.g, Gem only tells the openGL-server to rotate an "object"; it does not do the calculations itself.
openGL is optimized for a one-way connection (meaning: it is fast to send something to the openGL-server; but slow to get information back from the server); furthermore i don't even know, whether it is possible, to get the vector-information before it is passed to the rasterizer (the last stage of rendering: make pixels out of abstract polygons)
of course it would be possible to do all the vector-transformations within Gem: this would be slow (as it had to be done on the CPU instead of the optimized GPU); AND this would mean a *lot* of re-programming of things that are already there.
the forthcoming vertex-stuff (a starter is already in the CVS) will handle verteces directly in Gem most of the time an object-exporter will most probably make sense here.
fmg.as.dr IOhannes