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Asset pipeline improvements
http://www.horde3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=952		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  marciano [ 22.09.2009, 20:08 ]
Post subject:  Asset pipeline improvements
We have done a small tweak to ColladaConv to make the whole asset export pipeline more efficient/convenient. There is a new option -dest now to specify the output folder. This is very useful, however a serious annoyance was that ColladaConv has always overwritten materials that were often modified by hand. To avoid this, the new default behavior now is to not overwrite a material file that is already existing. If that is not desired, the argument -forceMat can be used to overwrite all materials.

This is a small change but I think it can save a lot of time since no manual copying of assets is required any more when a model is updated.
Author:  marciano [ 01.02.2010, 02:39 ]
Post subject:  Re: Asset pipeline improvements
We have prepared a nice ColladaConv update which will improve the whole content pipeline a lot: Instead of just single files, ColladaConv can now process a whole directory tree or even repository. This enables to do full content rebuilds very easily and further reduces the need for copying around files manually.

Being able to do fully automated content builds has a couple of advantages:
  • Less manual work when adding or modifying assets
  • Better multi-platform support: We can produce different output files for different platforms, as would be required for mobile platforms (especially textures)
  • More file-format independence: My favorite one ;) We can optimize the final asset format without having to worry that projects will have to spend hours to reconvert their assets
  • Regression testing of ColladaConv: Whenever there is a change, we can just recompile and test the whole sample repository to see if everything works as expected
Author:  AlexL [ 30.03.2010, 14:50 ]
Post subject:  Re: Asset pipeline improvements
Hi.

I'm having problems with the latest (SF SVN, rev. 228) ColladaConv.
First problem: On Linux and OSX absolute pathnames start with "/", so ColladaConv bails out at the very start, because it wants the first arg to be a non-option value, which windows-like start with a "/" as well. Former versions of ColladaConv used to have "-" as option value. Certainly this is easy to fix, but here's the
Second problem: Not sure if I understood all the options correctly like "/base" and "/dest"
I'd like to convert a simple DAE file with an absolute path to a dest directory with a absolute path name as well, but I didn't really succeed.
If I don't set the "/base" path, it is assumed to be "./" and then the abs path is added which results in a file-not-found-error.
So, the question is basically: how is the whole thing meant to be with regards to /base and /dest and shouldn't it be possible to convert a single model with abs-path?

Thanks in advance!

Alex
Author:  marciano [ 31.03.2010, 01:34 ]
Post subject:  Re: Asset pipeline improvements
AlexL wrote:
On Linux and OSX absolute pathnames start with "/", so ColladaConv bails out at the very start, because it wants the first arg to be a non-option value, which windows-like start with a "/" as well. Former versions of ColladaConv used to have "-" as option value.

Good point, this needs to be changed again for cross-platform support.

AlexL wrote:
Not sure if I understood all the options correctly like "/base" and "/dest"

We have yet to update the documentation but here is the intended usage in a nutshell.

The dest path is the directory to which the output is written. The base path specifies the path where your collada files are located (your repository). The input file or directory is relative to the specified base path. The idea is that ColladaConv will recreate the hierarchy under the base path and use that for cross-references of composite resources (a model scene file for example references materials and a geo resource). If you want to use absolute paths, you should always specify a base path.

The following works under Windows:
Code:
ColladaConv models/man/man.dae /base C:\MyRepository /dest C:\MyContentFolder

This will convert the asset C:\MyRepository\models\man\man.dae and write the output to C:\MyContentFolder\models\man\. All resource references for the asset are using the path models/man, for example the scene.xml file references the resource models/man/man.geo
Author:  AlexL [ 13.04.2010, 12:37 ]
Post subject:  Re: Asset pipeline improvements
Thanks for the explanation.
Also thanks for changing the "/" to "-" option char in svn 234, so asset conversion works for me both on OSX and Linux.
Author:  marciano [ 27.06.2010, 19:15 ]
Post subject:  Re: Asset pipeline improvements
I finally took the time to update the content pipeline documentation in the svn trunk. Feedback is welcome in case anything is unclear.
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