By Squarepusher

As a showcase for libretro GL, maister made two quite nice libretro cores that should appeal to demo coders and traditional game developers alike.

Model Viewer

I encouraged Maister to do a libretro GL port of an old project he made a year ago (Model Viewer) as a showcase for libretro GL.

The Model Viewer takes ‘Wavefront’ object models as the ‘ROM’. it then displays these models inside a bare 3D environment.

It is possible to adjust the camera and rotate the model, zoom it in/out, etc.

Right now it is still in a basic phase but you’ll find a great amount of models that you can find on sites like Deviant Art and Free 3D Models (http://thefree3dmodels.com/) should already run unedited.

NOTE: Models that depend on DDS textures (DirectDraw Surface) will appear in the Model Viewer as ‘flat shaded’ for the moment since DDS support is currently a stub.

Below I’ll showcase some models being rendered inside the Model Viewer. Search around for some of these models yourself (some key terms being ‘XNA Lara’ and/or ‘3D Studio Max’). If the model comes with an OBJ/MTL file and a couple of PNG/JPG/TGA images it should more or less work barring some exceptions. (.mesh based models are not supported right now)

The Final Fantasy XIII Vanille model mostly appears correctly in the Model viewer except for a few minor details
The Final Fantasy XIII Vanille model mostly appears correctly in the Model viewer except for a few minor details
Here you see Lightning displayed in the Modelviewer with lots of shader passes applied. Most apparent shader here is the Waterpaint mudlord shader which gives the model a painterly look.
Here you see Lightning displayed in the Modelviewer with lots of shader passes applied. Most apparent shader here is the Waterpaint mudlord shader which gives the model a painterly look.
Modelviewer showin the Final Fantasy X-II Rikku model.
Modelviewer showing the Final Fantasy X-II Rikku model.
Bryan Fury from Tekken Tag Tournament 1 - looks more or less like Bryan - some hue issues here and there.
Bryan Fury from Tekken Tag Tournament 1 – looks more or less like Bryan – some hue issues here and there.
Marshall Law model from Tekken 6
Marshall Law model from Tekken 6

Platforms

Model Viewer right now runs on:

  • PC (Windows/UNIX/OSX)
  • Android
  • iOS
  • Blackberry QNX (BB10/Playbook)

The maximum supported internal resolution at which you can render the models depends on the platform you’re running Model Viewer on. On the mobile platforms we have consciously decided to set the maximum supported resolution at 1024×768 – this should be the native resolution of the iPad 2/iPad Mini and it is doubtful that even on a powerful tablet you’d have much need for 1080p internal resolution anyway.

On PC 1920×1600 is the maximum internal resolution at which you can render these models.

Like all the non-GL based libretro cores, you can apply any amount of shaders that you want.

Model links

I’m not exactly sure how hard-ball game developers are when it comes to these models – but anyways, there is a lot of source material you can find on the Internet.

Some places that supply them is DeviantArt (search for DeviantArt + XNALara-  that should show up a bunch).

Another site that I’ve found includes a lot of useful models is this one (http://thefree3dmodels.com/). Make sure that when downloading a model form there, that it says ‘OBJ’ or something similar. Models that are not in this format can’t be expected to run right now.