How exporters handle the mesh data

There was always one thing in my blender workflow which never makes much sense to me.
It is that i need to apply some modifiers to my models before exporting them to the obj or collada format. Elsewise the modifiers sometimes would not take effect on the exported models. Direct after the export i need to press the undo button to make the apply action of the modifiers retrogressive just to work on my model again, until the next export test happens.

For what i can say is that the mirror modifier works half the way he should on the export,
i can see a mirrored side on the exported models… but always with upside down fliped normals.

And on the other hand the EdgeSplit modifier dosnt work at all on exported models when you havnt applied him.

This brings me to the conclusion that the exporters do not keep in mind that there are modifiers are on top of the mesh and that they only grab the lowest part of mesh information for the export.

This really slows the workflow down when you work on complex models. :no:

Could somebody please explain how the exporters take the mesh information and why so often the modifier information get lost?

cheers
stenosis

It just depends on the exporter. For instance the OBJ and OpenFlight Exporters can apply all modifiers correctly on export AFAIK. I’m not sure about others though. There is no ‘standard’ with regards to this.

Cheers,
Briggs

Damn, that seems to be the bad point of it and even the collada export is kinda outdated. :no: