Re: .obj question

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Erik wrote:

> there is a vn flag which specifies a vertex normal, unfortunantly the models I
> have are sans normals.

It wouldn't help - the VERTEX normal is a very different thing
from a POLYGON normal.  The vertex normals are typically some
kind of average of the normals of all the polygons that share
that vertex.  This may be a useful *hint* as to which way the
polygon should point - but it's easy to come up with pathalogical
cases that break this.
 
> > There was a long debate about ways to possibly work around this on the
> > OPENGL-GAMEDEV list maybe a year ago.
> >
> 
> which one? I was told to get on one for good convo and all they do is flame
> everyone for being off topic (I'm not even sure what the topic is, but
> apperantly it's not opengl and it's not gamedev even tho those words are in the
> list name). opengl_gamedev_l is the one I see you talking in, so it's probly
> that one :)

You are probably thinking of OGL-GAMEDEV-C, the grandiosely named
"OpenGL Developers Consortium" (which it isn't BTW).

OPENGL-GAMEDEV-L is pretty friendly - and wouldn't have flamed you
for asking that kind of question.

The *other* two lists of similar name are:

   OPENGL-ADVOCACY-L which is really only there to remove
     tiresome "OpenGL versus D3D" debates from OPENGL-GAMEDEV-L

   OGL-GAMEDEV-C which is *supposed* to be only about collecting
     and documenting bugs and extensions in OpenGL drivers and
     pressing the vendors to get them fixed.

I have always believed that the OGL-GAMEDEV-C list would degenerate
into just being a clone of the OPENGL-GAMEDEV-L list - and that's
a VERY bad thing.  The owner of the list insists it won't - and
he does flame people for asking "how do I do this" questions.

Personally, I want OGL-GAMEDEV-C to disappear - and I think it
will...eventually.

> I think some of the polys I have are double-faced, to boot.
> Like the rudders and canards. Durnit, wasted days for picking
> the wrong format :)

If you have a mixture of single- and double-faced then you are
certainly screwed.  You need a better file format.

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Steve Baker                (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
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