pioneerspacesim/pioneer — pull request #1676 by Luomu (2012-11-04 18:48:27+00:00)
Title: New model

Here's this thing.

I would like to note right from the start that this is not a complete system, but I have not made great progress in the last few months. I'm calling this phase 1 - aimed at getting tools to the modellers and enabling future development. The current state should be perfectly ready for making nice spaceship models and even testing them in game, but game integration will need plenty of work.

I've written more in depth notes at: http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/New_Model_System

Repository with some testcase models at:
https://github.com/Luomu/newmodels

Models need to be placed under data/newmodels, then start the game in modelviewer mode:
```
pioneer screenwidth screenheight model_name
```

Hotkeys at: http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Newmodelviewer (note: there is no file selector, the interface will need some love)

First we have to get past some boring stuff: ensuring things build OK. You will need Assimp 3.0, released July 2012. Windows users can get the headers/lib/dll here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/assimp/files/assimp-3.0/
For Linux, you may DIY: https://github.com/assimp/assimp (needs cmake and other junk, boost is optional but highly recommended for threaded loading).
robn once set up pioneer-thirdparty so we have a place for dependencies like this, it will need to be updated.

Things that need doing: there's many, see the list on the first wiki page. The really important ones are:
- complete FileSystem integration
- Model cache

This cannot completely replace LMR yet because:
- We need building set definition to replace model tags (I made a hack to detect models under newmodels/buildings)
- Space stations are not currently possible because of the docking stage/anim requirements

If there are interested modellers out there me/we can provide prebuilt binaries since this might take a while to review...