[Haskell-cafe] Uniting graphics libraries

[Vo Minh Thu]

2010/9/18 Tillmann Vogt <Tillmann.Vogt at rwth-aachen.de>:
>  Hi,
>
> I have nearly finished writing a Collada-output library to make 3d animation
> files. Before doing this I have looked at two libraries on hackage that
> parse Collada to display it. For my library I have copied the types from
> gpipe-collada and extended them. Now I am thinking that it would be nice if
> all 3d libraries would use the same data type. Currently gpipe-collada,
> graphics-formats-collada, obj, ... parse 3d-formats. FieldTrip,
> lambdacube-engine, ... (to mention examples) can generate and/or display
> 3d-objects. But they all cannot be combined without tedious type
> conversions. The obvious argument is that every application has its own
> needs. This is of course true but I think that the Collada format shows how
> to deal with this (you can do quite a lot with profile_common). I would be
> willing to write patches for some libraries and make a discussable 3d-types
> library based on Collada.

Hi,

This is a great goal! I've also been thinking in solidifying all
things 3D on hackage lately and forming a game and graphics strike
team. (The idea is that even if you're not interested in games, there
are still a lot of common things.)

Now it seems you see Collada as a good common starting point. I don't
know much about Collada and I can't really say if it is a good idea or
not. But by following the blender development mailing list, it seems
people don't really 'trust' it, in the sense that in practice, it is
still difficult to move things around between different programs
through Collada...

Also Collada is (I am not sure) just an interchange format and you
talk about data types. Can you be a bit more specific about what you
envision? Are they a direct representation of Collada?

You talk about combining the different libraries on Hackage, would you
like to do it through Collada?

When I said I thought about solidifying things lately, I was thinking
to the problem you describe but at a lower level: for instance there
are many different representations for 3D vectors and transforms. Is
it also a concern for you?

Cheers,
Thu