Graphic File Format

[lovatwest]

Ok, so being a relative newbee to this sort of software, I have some questions that may be obvious to most, so please bear with me. I have used the 2.33 demos to proof a concept of using the physics engine in a simulation environment. Essentially, Newton runs as an asynchronous task to a larger simulation. Now, I need to get more complex objects into the mix and I wonder what software created the ".DAT" files used in the Entity class. I'd rather not have to create a new (whole) interface to some 3D graphics engine at this time. Any advice at this stage would be good. There appear to be many good 3D graphics programs/engines out there, but I would like to keep it simple (or simpler) for the time being.
Thanks.

[Julio Jerez]

the .dat file I made it up and it is no use anymore.

The engine has an archive library named dScene for storing data, It comes with a Max plugin and the start of a blernd plugin.
It is not a file format, in the sense that engine does nopt store cooed data ready for consumption by the engine.
The library is more an archive for getting assets, you will have to build your back end converter to you own format, that best fit your engine.
The files are xml, and the extension is .ngd
The demos in 2.33 are using it now.

[jiandingzhe]

To build a convex hull, what newton engine really need is only a cloud of vertices.
So you may use any graphics engine you like, use the graphics engine's file loading utilities, and fetch vertices cloud from the graphics engine's mesh object.

[lovatwest]

Thanks for the reply, I have been into the demo code and it will help. I am assuming the blender plug ins are how you import/export the graphics into the .XML files. I haven't got that to work yet, but I have a good deal to learn still between Blender and Python. I won't give up my day job and become a graphic artist either.

[lovatwest]

Ok, I have managed to get some time back at this. From the comments in the python files, I assumed that this was created for Blender 2.4.3 and Python 2.4. I can get these two to peacefully co-exist and co-operate, but the import/export will not operate as it cannot find the bpy module. My question (and suspicion) is that this module exists in a different version of blender, or that I must obtain the module from some other means.

Any helpful thoughts?