Introducing RealityServer

Supported File Formats for Importing Scene Data

This section describes the following:

  • The built-in importers and importer plugins shipped with RealityServer for importing scene data
  • Writing your own importer for scene data
  • The runtime commands for importing scene data

Built-in Importers

Scene data: RealityServer provides built-in support for importing scene data in the following file formats:

  • mental images (.mi)
  • mental images binary (.mib)
    Note: This binary storage format is optimized for fast reading and needs less disk space than a typical .mi file. Any supported import file type can be exported to the .mib file format.
  • NVIDIA Material Definition Language (.mdl)

Importer Plugins

Native support: Importer plugins shipped with RealityServer provide native support for importing scene data in the following file formats:

  • OBJ (.obj)

Directory location: Importer plugins shipped with RealityServer are stored in the plugins directory.

Assimp Importer Plugin

The Assimp importer plugin provides support for a large number of additional file formats. Some included formats are:

  • Autodesk FBX (.fbx)
  • COLLADA (.dae)
  • glTF (.glTF)
  • Industry Foundation Classes (.ifc)
  • Stereolithography (.stl)

This list is not exhaustive and may change as new versions of Assimp are used. Assimp supports over 50 file formats for importing, please refer to http://assimp.org/ for an up to date list.

Different formats may import differently in terms of support for materials, lights, geometry and other features. The best fidelity is still obtained by directly using the .mi file format. Do not assume that all features of the chosen file format will convert directly to RealityServer.

Note: The Assimp OBJ import functionality has been explicitly disabled in favour of the included OBJ Importer plugin. We have found this to be more reliable and complete

Writing an Importer Plugin

If you need to write your own importer plugin, use the IImporter interface in the neuray API.

Importing Scene Data at Runtime

To import scene data at runtime, use the following commands:

  • import_scene
  • import_scene_elements
  • import_scene_elements_from_string