Modders: for v.1.21 onwards, do we still need support for .GLTF and .OBJ models?

[radfast]

The Vintage Story game engine partially supports loading of .gltf and .obj models but it was never fully&properly implemented. 

We in the VS Team use JSON shapes only. 

Keeping support for OBJ/GLTF has significant maintenance cost for us, especially so for the planned 1.21 performance updates. 

Dropping support for it would allow us to work at greater efficiency, so we would like to end support for it unless our modding community has a great need for it.

[Edit:] Poll text rewritten by Tyron.

[FlareUKCS]

The question should be, would the end users be helped ? I appreciate the effort modders have made to make the game more fun, but I want the main game be more improved,  and if we can do this and make the modders code easily changed, then it will be better.

I love what the modders do for the community, but I prefer the vanilla game be better.

I love the modders effort but prefer the vanilla game... I want a vanilla experience rather than depend on modders, as in I prefer vanilla but I appreciate the work modders do.

[Dark Thoughts]

I'm not into coding nor 3D modelling or those tools, but would it be feasible to add a feature in VS Model Creator or to write a separate (cross platform) command line tool to import GLTF & OBJ models to convert them into its .json shape format?

1 hour ago, FlareUKCS said:

I love what the modders do for the community, but I prefer the vanilla game be better.

I love the modders effort but prefer the vanilla game... I want a vanilla experience rather than depend on modders, as in I prefer vanilla but I appreciate the work modders do.

How is this relevant? Why post in mod related threads if you don't care for mods?

[Thorfinn]

IMO, the real question is where you would prefer development to continue.

Implicitly, this means that for the foreseeable future you are committing to retaining the existing support, or at least declaring where future development should be focused.

[radfast]

Thanks for comments so far.  The purpose of the poll, as with other polls, is to inform us so that the team can then, with luck, take the best decision for the player community as a whole.  For example if no mod is currently using .obj and .gltf models, or hardly anybody and those who are can migrate easily enough to the .json shape files, then the decision is clear.

In general Vintage Story development aims not to break mods unless absolutely necessary. This benefits players of course, because plenty of the playerbase uses at least a few mods. Each new game version if we change something in the engine we make efforts to include backwards compatibility features so that most mods will continue working. We appreciate the hard work that goes into creating a mod, and we want to minimise the ongoing 'maintenance' version for modders. (Unlike certain other games ...)

@Dark Thoughts, it would be possible for any skilled + motivated coder to write a command line tool to convert .obj / .gltf to .shape - though only quadrilateral, rectilinear faces can be converted, not bare triangles nor rhombuses. I'm not sure that it's worth a dev team member spending many weeks writing it, as depending on poll results here, I guess very few mods are using .obj or .gltf in practice. So spending a lot of developer time on such a tool would be a good example of a disservice to the player community as a whole. But it could be a good project for a student or someone who wants to increase their knowledge.

 

[wildforester]

I agree with @Thorfinn on it being what you want to do, especially if you’ve made plans that could benefit from everyone using json formatted models in future updates. Getting rid of depreciating formats now would be better than later.

[Tyron]

I took the freedom to rewrite radfasts poll text to make the what and why clearer.

[Dilan Rona]

No disrespect intended, but it would help if you posted some information of what GLTF, or OBJ models are, and what it does. Not all of us are programming DotNET, and some might be getting into that later.

 

That said, I posted a link for glTF here.

 

[Tyron]

9 minutes ago, Dilan Rona said:

No disrespect intended, but it would help if you posted some information of what GLTF, or OBJ models are, and what it does. Not all of us are programming DotNET, and some might be getting into that later.

I don't think that's relevant to our poll. If a modder does not know what they are, then as far as we are concerned, we are good to drop support for it. This is more about existing mods using OBJ/GLTF.

 

[Dilan Rona]

Point taken, and I guess you have a point. Anyone that doesn't know about them, probably wont need them later.

[tehtelev]

I vote for improving the functionality and usability of VS Model Creator. It takes a lot of work to create good and detailed models.

[RowanSkie]

Do we have examples of both types in use?

[SoggyGravel]

I'm all for what will be over all best for the community as a whole. if no mods that use it are being actively supported. then remove the feature if  it helps with the main game development. maybe this can be a feature that is re-implemented at a later date?

[Roteroktober]

30 minutes ago, tehtelev said:

I vote for improving the functionality and usability of VS Model Creator. It takes a lot of work to create good and detailed models.

Second that! With a bit of practice, you can already create complex things like bells* with VS Model Creator, but the texturing part is painful. For example, I wish there was a toggle button to mirror/rotate textures. Overall, texture control is annoying. 

 

Bells: https://mods.vintagestory.at/soundofconfession

Edited June 14, 2025 by Roteroktober

[QueerCoded]

I did a basic search through the moddb and found one mod that mentions using .obj files, though it doesn't seem to be actively developed

Edited June 14, 2025 by QueerCoded

[NerArth]

I don't use GTLF/OBJ in my mods and voted accordingly; I would have liked it if the process of using them was streamlined as having an .obj model and simply pointing a blocktype or itemtype to use that model asset; it's just not as simple as using .json shapes.

Given some complex shapes I have worked on, and what the OP says, I think that actually if the dev team completely dropped the existing support, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I think VSMC and .json shapes would benefit from more attention focused on them. VSMC has a lot of room for improvement in terms of UX, despite being fairly decent after getting used to the workflow.

Seen as .json shapes are already the main form of 3D model used, it would make sense if development continued to focus on them.

 

[CreativeRealms]

Conquest Reforged makes heavy use of OBJs (nearly 400 models) and removing support for them would make it difficult if not impossible to port the mod over from Minecraft to Vintage Story.

[FlareUKCS]

I have to apologise as I made some silly comment on this topic.

I do make use of a number of mods, and appreciate the efforts of the modders in improving my experience.

I will add that its my opinion the devs should focus on what is good for the vanilla game, and as long as a suitable warning is given, allow the modders to adapt. In short adapt what the team feel would improve the vanilla experience and simply inform the modders what and why changes were made, as long as its not changing all the time.

[Dilan Rona]

What could also help is if it has to be removed, rework it into a library that can be added as needed from the mod database, as a dependancy, and allow the community to maintain the GLTF and .OBJ models support.