Hi Allen,
One thing I've often wondered is whether or not a 'render friendly' format for the LDraw library wouldn't be useful. For example if you and Travis (as rulers of the two most common rendering tools) could come up with a standard format you could cache the parts library into the new format and add new parts as needed.
Or more precisely, when you run an LDraw viewer/editor the following happens
1) Check to see if LDrawParts.qik exists - if yes, go to 3)
2) Generate LDrawParts.qik with parts in format useful for fast 3d rendering
3) Load model. If it contains any part does not exist in LDrawParts.qik but exists in /ldraw/parts conver and add to LDrawParts.qik.
4) Use preprocessed parts in LDrawParts.qik to render
Of course stage 2) could be ignored and you simply add parts as they appear in models. Or 2) could be voluntary.
This way you wouldn't break the standard format but could have an in-between format. And if you and Travis could come up with a standard a user could even share the file.
Tim
One thing I've often wondered is whether or not a 'render friendly' format for the LDraw library wouldn't be useful. For example if you and Travis (as rulers of the two most common rendering tools) could come up with a standard format you could cache the parts library into the new format and add new parts as needed.
Or more precisely, when you run an LDraw viewer/editor the following happens
1) Check to see if LDrawParts.qik exists - if yes, go to 3)
2) Generate LDrawParts.qik with parts in format useful for fast 3d rendering
3) Load model. If it contains any part does not exist in LDrawParts.qik but exists in /ldraw/parts conver and add to LDrawParts.qik.
4) Use preprocessed parts in LDrawParts.qik to render
Of course stage 2) could be ignored and you simply add parts as they appear in models. Or 2) could be voluntary.
This way you wouldn't break the standard format but could have an in-between format. And if you and Travis could come up with a standard a user could even share the file.
Tim