Geometry formats

The DirectXMesh library does not include file I/O operations for reading or writing geometry, and is focused on processing memory buffers of indices and vertices. The primary reason for this design decision is that there are numerous geometry formats all of which have various pros and cons, and it is extremely difficult to write a policy-neutral, generally useful mesh library that presumes specific formats are in use.

There are a number of geometry container formats that are in common use with Direct3D:

Autodesk FBX

The Autodesk FBX file format is an interchange format for 3D assets. It is extremely useful as a source file format, but makes a poor runtime format as it's far too heavy-weight. The most common use of the FBX SDK is to create exporters that extract the needed data and writing to the a custom runtime format.

FBX SDK

Samples Content Exporter

CMO

Compiled Mesh Object (CMO) is a simple runtime format that is supported by the Visual Studio content pipeline (VS 2012, VS 2013). This support provides the ability for Visual Studio to build a CMO from an Autodesk FBX, Collada DAE, or Wavefront OBJ file.

CMO is supported as a runtime format for DirectXTK's Model class.

Visual Studio Starter Kit

Visual Studio content pipeline

DirectX Tool Kit

Meshconvert

To aid in debugging, here is a simple console program for dumping out the content of a CMO in a human-readable form.

cmodump.cpp

Collada DAE

Collada DAE is a interchange format for 3D assets that is useful as a source format, but makes a poor choice as a runtime format.

https://collada.org/

SDKMesh

The SDKMesh format is a sample runtime format that was created for Direct3D 10 as a replacement for the legacy X File format for use in the DirectX SDK samples.

SDKMESH is supported as a runtime format by DXUT's CDXUTSDKMesh loader class and DirectXTK's Model class.

DirectX Tool Kit

DXUT for Direct3D 11

Samples Content Exporter

Meshconvert

To aid in debugging, here is a simple console program for dumping out the content of a SDKMESH/SDKMESH_ANIM file in a human-readable form.

sdkmeshdump.cpp

See SDKMESH

VBO

Vertex Buffer Object (VBO) is an extremely simple mesh format originally defined by the Windows 8.0 Resource Loading sample.

VBO is supported as a runtime format for DirectXTK's Model class.

Windows 8 app samples

DirectX Tool Kit

Meshconvert

To aid in debugging, here is a simple console program for dumping out the content of a VBO in a human-readable form.

vbodump.cpp

See VBO

Wavefront OBJ

X File