Open Asset Import Library (assimp)

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

Its abbreviated name under which it is commonly known is assimp.

This is the development trunk of assimp containing the latest features and bugfixes. For productive use though, we recommend one of the stable releases available from assimp.sf.net or from *nix package repositories. According to [Travis-CI] (https://travis-ci.org/), the current build status of the trunk is

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

Additionally, the following formats are also supported, but not part of the core library as they depend on proprietary libraries.

• C4D (https://github.com/acgessler/assimp-cinema4d)

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

• Open Discussion
• General Help

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.