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Supported Model Formats

Currently the 3D model formats of Unifeye SDK PCf and metaio Mobile SDKare not compatible due to different requirements for rendering and graphics on PC and mobile platforms.

For the future, it is planned to also support portability of 3D models between Unifeye SDK PC and Unifeye SDK Mobile and to offer a subset of the VRML 97 standard for the mobile platform.

For details about creating model files to be used with the Mobile SDK please also refer to the Blender tutorial and the 3ds Max tutorial.

MD2

The MD2 file format is an efficient 3D file format which nicely supports animations. MD2 models cannot have different colours but textures. Therefore, textures have to be baked in case for instance “vertex colours” shall be shown. Also the filename of the texture must be the same as the model's. (e.g. modelFile.md2 + modelFile.png)

One MD2 file can contain a set of different animations. The animations are calculated on per-Vertex base (no bones) and are very efficient for mobile devices with weak processors. Although the MD2 file format is a vertex-animation format, the file itself is very small in size compared to other vertex-animation supporting formats (like VRML for example). A model with around 500 vertices, 1000 polygons and a total frame number of 200 with all animations will consume about 480 KB of storage on the mobile device. When this exemplary model is loaded into the renderer it will consume additionally 750 KB of system memory.
Note for animations: please use 7 fps to prepare animations.

Usually MD2 models do not need to have more than several thousand vertices. There are several models ready for download which can be used with the metaio Mobile SDK.

Wavefront Object (.obj)

The OBJ file format is a model format for static meshes. It supports multiple meshes with different textures and materials. Meshes can also have assigned different materials to their polygons.

Thereby the OBJ format provides more flexibility with respect to textures than the MD2 format which can only use one texture. However the OBJ format does not support animations. Thus, it is recommended to use the OBJ format for high quality static objects and rely on the MD2 format for animated models.

Model performance improvements

Lighting

When using textures on models, try to bake the lighting conditions into your textures.→Return to content tutorials

-- SupportMetaio - 2011-11-29