How To Write Exporters?

[framebuffer]

Hello!

I am writing a simple 3D game engine and i wanted to use houdini as a level editor. In this context I have the following questions:

How does one go about learning the HDK? My primary purpose is to write exporters for my engine.

I saw the HDK documentation that ships with the learning edition and if I am not missing something then I believe that they are not enough. Are there any alternate sources to learn the HDK?

My primary requirements are to be able to traverse digital assets in a scene, traverse objects within digital assets, traverse the subcomponents of polygons etc, the usual exporter stuff.

Can anyone guide me in the right direction?

Here is an example: Suppose I create a digital asset called "Player Start Point" that has some parameters that we can set within Houdini. Then we can add this to a shelf for the artist to click. Once its added, I want to scan it by traversing the DAG and checking a string within the digital assets to determine what type of entity it is. Then, if its the player start point, I want to read the position parameters from it, and also the polygon geometry for an in game representation.

I recently came across this http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?Itemid=2&a...t&task=view.

I want to do something in the same lines. But I have no clue how to start with the HDK. I have written simple polygon exporters for maya many years ago, so i have some idea how its done. Are there any books that teach the HDK?

Are there any open source projects available for me to study?

Thanks.

fb.

[sibarrick]

You might want to check out the help on python in H9. You may well be able to do what you need with that and avoid the HDK altogether.

If not then learning the HDK is not all that easy there isn't any comprehensive help on it. Do you know C++ already? If so there are a number of examples to look at, plus the doxygen and help files on odwiki. There's this forum, Sesi support, and a bunch of stuff I've been playing with on my own site Houdini Tools other than that you are mostly on your own.

[framebuffer]

Hello sibarrick!

Thanks for the reply. I know C++. So i guess I have to scan the stuff you have on your web site and other resources. Yet, it would be great if Houdini had some overview of main work flow techniques.

I will definitely look into the python features. But I am still keen on learning the HDK. The toolkit comes with very few documentation and there is none on the web too.

I think I will start to read what is already available in the toolkit and then study the sample codes. Then maybe ask questions depending on my requirements.

Also, I studied your Tri2QuadSource source. I think it has many things that i am looking for. yet, it would be great to know the intent behind certain things. Its well done. Some things make sense. Thanks for releasing the source code.

I am using an XML based file format. I will read all the data and write an XML file out of it. Later, I want to add support for DirectX too.

I was wondering where did you learn all this? Did you go to some college or did it yourself?

One last thing, is the Apprentice HDK restricted in any way?

thanks a ton,

fb.

Edited November 4, 2007 by framebuffer