Am I just being blind, or is it surprisingly hard to track down any information on Blender’s native file format? I’d like to implement an importer for my game engine, but can’t find anything whatsoever - the documentation seems strangely lacking in this area.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
blenders native file format is .blend, but it can export meshes in a number of formats, the list of which continuse to grow. it’s all in the file>export menu, but if you want to export armature data, or game data, or animation, that would be much trickier. the guy to talk to would probably be edwin.
Thanks for your quick reply, however I will try to make my question clearer: rather than exporting to another file format, I wish to write an importer for the .blend format itself, to import those files to my own application.
try asking in the python and plugins subforum, one of the IO script writers is bound to see your question there, and they will surely know the answer.
no you don’t
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_Architecture.336.0.html [particularly the data structure section]
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_file_reading.498.0.html
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Notes_on_SDNA.436.0.html
if you really want to do this the best thing to do would be to look at the source files to load a blender file.
a better approach would be to write an exporter in python that from blender can save in your application’s native format
z3r0 d right blender file format is modified, every version to fisilitat new functions, both 2.41 and 2.42 have and will modify it’s game implementation as well as other sections for its beter uses in blender so that meen you’ll have to update you program every 3 to 6 months to uses the latest blender version.
export means you can lay out the file as you like, or use a stable format like VRML thats well documented
good luck though