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Open Asset Import Library (assimp)

Table of contents

1.		Overview
 1.1		Supported file formats
 1.2		File structure
2.		Build the library
3. 		Where to get help
4.		License

1. Overview

Open Asset Import Library is a Open Source library designed to load various 3d file formats and convert them into a shared, in-memory format. It supports more than 30 file formats. It also supports exporting files to a few selected file formats.

Its abbreviated name is assimp.

Note: this README refers to the file structure used by release packages, which differs in some points from the development trunk.

1.1 Supported file formats

The library provides importers for a lot of file formats, including:

3DS
BLEND (Blender 3D)
DAE (Collada)
FBX
IFC-STEP
ASE
DXF
HMP
MD2
MD3
MD5
MDC
MDL
NFF
PLY
STL
X
OBJ
SMD
LWO
LXO
LWS
TER
AC3D
MS3D
COB
Q3BSP
XGL
CSM
BVH
B3D
NDO
Ogre XML
Q3D

Exporters include:

DAE (Collada)
STL
OBJ
PLY

See the full list here.

1.2 Repository structure

Open Asset Import Library is implemented in C++ (but provides both a C and a C++ish interface). The directory structure is:

/bin		Folder for binaries, only used on Windows
/code		Source code
/contrib	Third-party libraries
/doc		Documentation (doxysource and pre-compiled docs)
/include	Public header C and C++ header files.
/lib		Static library location for Windows.
/obj		Object file location for Windows.
/port		Ports to other languages and scripts to maintain those. 
/test		Unit- and regression tests, test suite of models.
/tools		Tools (viewer, command line `assimp`).
/samples	A small number of samples to illustrate possible 
                    use cases for Assimp.
/workspaces	Build enviroments for vc,xcode,... (deprecated,
		CMake has superseeded all legacy build options!)

2. Build the library

Take a look into the INSTALL file. Or fire up CMake with the usual steps.

3. Where to get help

For more information, visit our website. Or check out the ./doc- folder, which contains the official documentation in HTML format. (CHMs for Windows are included in some release packages and should be located right here in the root folder).

If the documentation doesn't solve your problems, try our forums at SF.net

For development stuff, there is also a mailing list, assimp-discussions (subscribe here)

4. License

The license of the Asset Import Library is based on the modified, 3-clause BSD-License, which is a very liberal license. An informal summary is: do whatever you want, but include Assimp's license text with your product - and don't sue us if our code doesn't work.

Note that, unlike LGPLed code, you may link statically to Assimp. For the formal details, see the LICENSE file.

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