I have little experience with using 3D models exported to .x files in DirectX.
For example for make watersurface or some objects star, car, grass or whatever.
Can I do it in OpenGl similar way like in DirectX? I mean using .x file to render the 3D model? Or other file, or is that bad way? If it is bad way, what should I do?
Situation: project of simple 3D game OpenGL + C#, I have rendered terrain from Height map and I need to improve it by objects, grass, water, teleports.. so I’m finding easy way to render 3D objects.
Yes, and no. Let me explain.
The DirectX .x file format came to life with DirectX 3, which was an utter mess. Loading even the most simple geometry was an awfully exhausting task. As of such, support for a loading model geometry from files was added into the Direct3D environment.
However DirectX never enforced a specific file format, and as it matured, somewhere around version 7 Direct3D became usable. As soon as getting geometry into Direct3D became something simple, the .x file format was no longer needed. And frankly, there are only very little serious programs that actully use .x for their assets.
OpenGL never had the need for a builtin format, because setting up and drawing geometry – that has already been read into memory of course – could be managed in as little as 10 lines of C code. So the only difficulty lies in parsing a file format into structures in memory. This is not a task for a API designed for drawing stuff, bur for libraries that are designed to do I/O.
To make a long story short: OpenGL has no built in support for some file format, but you can use any file format you like to, and coax it into OpenGL. The .x file format is well documented and you can find ready to use libraries to load or write your own.