Tool usage in OD

[svenskmand]

I just wanted to hear you opinion of tool usage in OD, as it is now we - that is Skorpio, AndrewBuck and I - have only used Blender, Inkscape, GIMP and NeoTextureEdit, which are all free software tools, and I would suggest we stick to that.

If we get models made in proprietary tools like 3D Studio Max, Maya, ZBrush or other proprietary tools like that, it would really cripple the usage of such models as you would need to have a license to these programs, and they are really expensive :S. And I also think that it would scare of many possible open source contributers if they cannot edit all content using free software, I know that it would scare me away :S

I am concerned about this as we may potentially get people from the "War For The Overworld" project, and I would hate to see our content getting crippled by the usage of non-free tools :S

What is you opinion about this? such that we could make a statement about tool usage for the project.

[TheAncientGoat]

Well, changing the default format from .blend is out of the question, but if people want to use those tools and then export them to blender sothat they are fully working, I don't see that big of a problem

[svenskmand]

Well, changing the default format from .blend is out of the question, but if people want to use those tools and then export them to blender sothat they are fully working, I don't see that big of a problem

Well of course that is fine, but I do not think that they would be fully working, it is like using Office documents in OpenOffice which is non-usable at ALL :S

But if we agree that the default is .blend (Blender), .svg (Inkscape) and .xcf (GIMP) then that would be fine with me

[andrewbuck]

I agree with TheAncientGoat, we need to specify the file formats that we use and let people use whatever tools they want to make those files (assuming their programs export them correctly which I think is probably possible). Blender is a well known enough project/format that I would be surprised if Zbrush, etc, didn't support it.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Ok, good, maybe we should write it on the wiki also, which formats we use for the source of the content?. That is we write that we use .blend for 3D, .svg for vector 2D and .xcf for bitmat 2D.

Then I will write an entry in the wiki specifying this, we should also make a statement on the forum about this.

EDIT: Ok I have now made this entry in the wiki, please give comments.

[andrewbuck]

For 2d textures we typically use either tga or png. Xcf is probably fine too although I don't know if OGRE can read these directly or not. In any case, for pictures imagemagick makes short work of converting between formats so this is less critical. The .blend file format is the most critical.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

For 2d textures we typically use either tga or png. Xcf is probably fine too although I don't know if OGRE can read these directly or not. In any case, for pictures imagemagick makes short work of converting between formats so this is less critical. The .blend file format is the most critical.

-Buck

I am talking about the files that constitute the source of our content, which means that they should be easily editable. The files that the game actually uses does not really matter, as these are made from the source files. It is the same with many 3D models - although I do not know if it is the case for OD - that they are made in a program, e.g. Blender and then exported to say MD3 or some other format that a game engine then uses.

So I am talking about the source files for the content

[andrewbuck]

Yeah, I understand what you mean, and xcf is a perfectly fine source format for 2d imagery, but any other picture format works fine for that too. The only issue of concern would be the compression artifacts from jpg, etc; any image file format which is appropriate for what the content is (svgs for vectors, xcf for bitmap data, etc) would be fine. We do need standards for source formats on 3dmodels and possibly for sound when we get to that point as these are not as convertible as images are.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Yeah, I understand what you mean, and xcf is a perfectly fine source format for 2d imagery, but any other picture format works fine for that too. The only issue of concern would be the compression artifacts from jpg, etc; any image file format which is appropriate for what the content is (svgs for vectors, xcf for bitmap data, etc) would be fine. We do need standards for source formats on 3dmodels and possibly for sound when we get to that point as these are not as convertible as images are.

-Buck

It is most of all to ensure that we do not get file formats that we cannot use to anything, and as a result we would only have the "binary" format, which is not editable. Say someone makes a perfect texture (a bitmap) and gives us a file in some weird format which you can only open with that particular program. And he then converts it to something say xcf, and much of the important information is lost like layers, then it is almost impossible to change anything in that file.

Regarding vector graphics it do not think that there should be any trouble, as SVG is a standard But then that bullet will be easy to fulfill

Have you all looked at the wiki entry? is it okay?

[svenskmand]

...
We do need standards for source formats on 3dmodels and possibly for sound when we get to that point as these are not as convertible as images are.
...

Regarding sound I would suggest that we use FLAC 44.1kHz 16 bit or 96kHz 32 bit for samples, and Ardour or Audacity to work on compositions of sounds, and use Ardour or BEAST/BSE for music. As always all programs are free software.

[andrewbuck]

Yeah, I guess I forgot about layers, etc, which could be an issue. The wiki entry looks fine. I think flac or wav would be fine for audio (wav is pretty big though so we may want to only accept flac). As for bitrates, I am no expert. It sounds like the WFTO team had someone working on sound so he would likely be the one we want to hear from.

-Buck