Updates Blender export / DDA file format

[Kitty Hello]

Hi,

I had to add a 3D eggplant to one of my games and noticed, that my AC3D license was too old and the uppgrade fee was raised a lot and whatnot. So I installed the new Blender 2.9 and after a few videos, I got the hang of it. It improved a LOT! If you want to do 3D, try this out.
So, the Blender export filter was broken due to API changes. I had a few nights to get that running again. The old script was about 10+ years old.
(reminder to myself: always comment code. Code you wrote 5 years ago is code someone else might have written...)

So, I fixed the export and found, the dda files were quite big. I inserted a scale factor for normals and vertex coordinates and now... the dda (ASCII!) file format is more compact than the ddd binary file format I used to be so proud of.

The trick is, that the vertex positions*1000 often result in numbers like "5" or "15", which is 2-3 bytes including a separating space caracter. The binary always takes 4 bytes per float. Same for the normal directions*100.
The next update will bring both, the export filter and the dda 2.0 support to you.

[SnooPI]

Although I don't like Blender's interface it's a very good news.

(reminder to myself: always comment code. Code you wrote 5 years ago is code someone else might have written...)

I confirm!

[bigsofty]

Nice work Gernot! 

[erico]

Yep I could say that Blender is on a path to overthrown other 3d packages for quite a while and I do believe they are right there already.
I believe vanguard on that front is now on their room, other than open source, you get a neat script language
Heck, one can even video edit or kind of after effect into it So an upgrade on their file format support is just marvelous.
Also, one can look into their game engine... maybe that can be exported too?
Great work, will give a try as time pops in