I have enjoyed playing SuperTuxKart a lot, and I have decided to get addons from the game's addon website to extend my installation of that game. However, there is something that baffling me, in which certain addons lack a source file download, even if they have been openly licensed, which makes it more difficult to edit, modify, or create derivative works from those addons
(an example addon released without a source file: http://stkaddons.net/tracks/city-lights).At the moment, the only way that I know of being able to edit the .b3d files indirectly is to use the Irrlicht-integrated program Irredit (scroll down for the details; it is a Windows-only program), where I import the .b3d file I want to convert, and export its imported mesh as either a .dae (Collada) or .stl file, where I then can proceed to import the new file into other 3d-modelling programs (I primarily use Blender at the moment, but only .stl files import successfully). My main problem with this program is not its functionality but its licensing, where I normally am prohibited from redistributing that program to other people (redistribution rights can be purchased, however), and its availability of source code (not publicly available, but rights to it may be purchased at a higher price than that of the redistribution rights). Without that program however, I have no way to easily edit the .b3d files, virtually defeating the purpose of being able to remix certain addons.
It would be possible for me to come up with my own solution to importing .b3d files, but I can't right now, as I don't enough programming and/or reverse engineering experience necessary to do this.I have not known of any scripts or programs that can import .b3d files into any major 3d modelling programs, but the only relevant code I found is this (STK) project's in-house utility called B3DReader (even here I am unsure of that program's license, or else I would have to assume that it's under a full copyright). Here, I know just a little more than the core of Java from my high school classes, so I can understand the gist of this program.
But like I stated, I may be able to only reference that program when writing a new importer program, and at the minimum, should work as a Blender addon.Now back to my main point: Are there any solutions out there that I have not yet heard of that can help me import .b3d files, or will we as a team have to write our own solution that can be reusable by other people?
). Addons is in the hand of the artists: they have the option to upload them to our addons server, but we don't enforce this. You need to contact them directly in order. Sometimes you might get lucky looking in this forum, often models are discussed here before they are uploaded. Or you can just ask for models that are missing here.