Gene can speak for himself but I get the vibe he's probably going for simplicity, much like how OBJ is the simplest static mesh format and because it's so incredibly easy to write out, it's so widely used (even if there's a few extras that not all exporters/importers handle, but the core stuff works.)
Using Alembic would be smart, no doubt, but the complexity it brings in terms of managing compilation on multiple platforms outweighs the portability of a potentially simpler spec that's easy to write and relatively easy to read. Filesize-wise compression can be used regardless. I don't see that as a concern. Anyway, that's my opinion. What are your thoughts on this, Gene? On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Steven Caron <[email protected]> wrote: > 1. that's exocortex's default plugin behavior, you can customize the > behavior with their python api. we do this at whiskytree and only get the > ops we want. we customize import and export based on asset type ie. cameras. > > 2. and 3. use the free python api alembic comes with... reimplement the > camera only export in softimage or program x in python. use the existing > spec/camera class. reuse existing free maya, houdini, and nuke plugins. > > again, it is not my intention to discourage you... just want you to think > about the time you are going to spend on foundation stuff which is pretty > much done. > > > On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Gene Crucean < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> So Alembic has two deal breaking aspects from my pov. >> >> 1: It applies operators to everryyythinggg. I hate this about Alembic >> >> 2: It's not free. Yes the spec is free to make plugins and whatnot, but >> this would firmly put this tool out of reach for a *lot *of studios. Not >> to mention it's much more complicated to whip up an exporter for some >> random app using Alembic. >> >> 3: My main reason is that using python makes it really simple to add into >> the pipeline in nice flexible way. >> >>
