README.md

Wavefront

This is a simple gem for importing and exporting wavefront object files. As it is in it's initial version there are
some unsupported features that will be coming in future updates. Still, I hope this initial version suffices for
your most basic wavefront obj needs

Here are some of the things it supports importing and exporting:
    -objects
    -groups
    -smoothing groups
    -vertices, normals, and texture coordinates

Some additional operations supported are:
    -computing a simple vertex buffer from the wavefront model
    -computing a vertex buffer/index buffer

Some features that are coming in the future
    -ability to scale, transform, rotate, and unitize the obj
    -materials (this is a feature I am currently working on, but is not available in the current version)
    -ability to support more than one object. Even though wavefront spec says a file should have only one object,
        there are some 3d modeling tools that export anomalous .obj files and I plan to support them even though
        they are out of spec.
    -parameter space vertices (these are an exotic rarely used feature in the obj format but I plan to support them)
    -higher-order surfaces using several different kinds of interpolation, such as Taylor and B-splines
        (again this is an exotic rarely used feauture in the obj format)
    #############################################################################################################
    #############################################################################################################
    Note: -Let me know if there are any features I should include that are missing from this list.
          -Also please let me know about any bugs or crashes you encounter. My email is MishaAConway@gmail.com.
           If you attach a wavefront model that fails to parse with this gem, I will see what I can do to
           update the code.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'wavefront'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install wavefront

Usage

So here is a little primer. A wavefront object basically contains a single object. This single object contains
several groups. Each of these groups can contain sub smoothing groups. Both groups and smoothing groups have a
list of triangles. Each triangle contains three vertices while each vertex contains a position, normal, and
texture coordinate. I've tried to make it so that the parsed WavefrontFile instance represents this hierarchy
as much as possible. Now with primer aside, let's go over some sample values we can extract from the
WavefrontFile instance.

w = Wavefront::File.new "my_wavefront_model"                  (import file, including .obj extension is optional)
w.export "my_exported_wavefront_model"                        (export file, including .obj extension is optional)

vertex_buffer = w.compute_vertex_buffer                       (compute an array of vertices from file)
vertex_and_index_buffers = w.compute_vertex_and_index_index_buffer

w.object                                                                (inspect object itself)
group = w.object.groups.first                                           (grab the first group)
group.name                                                              (see what it's name is)
smoothing_group = group.smoothing_groups.first                          (grab the first smoothing group)
smoothing_group.name                                                    (see what it's name is)
triangles = smoothing_group.triangles                                   (grab triangles from this smoothing group)
triangle = triangles.first                                              (grab the first triangle)
vertices = triangle.vertices                                            (get the 3 vertices in this triangle)
vertex = vertices.first                                                 (get the first vertex)
vertex.position                                                         (look at position)
vertex.normal                                                           (look at normal)
vertex.tex                                                              (look at texture coordinate)


This is just the surface of what you can do to explore the parsed wavefront file. When I get more time, I'll try
to make these usage examples better.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

or.....

Let me know about any issues and send me any wavefront obj models that crash the app so that I can update the gem to support them.