convoar

Command line application for converting OpenSimulator OAR files into various other formats.

OAR files are a way to save OpenSimulator regions. "OAR" is short for "OpenSimulator archive". An OAR file includes all the information necessary to fill a region. This includes all the material images, the meshes, the scripts, the prims as well as the placement information (location and rotation). Thus, an OAR file of a region should be able to be converted into any other scene representation format.

This application is evolving. The current design reads the OAR file and outputs the converted content into directories that can be copied, uploaded, or used directly by a web server. This design will change as uses are developed.

The name is "convoar" from "convert oar" and is pronounced like "condor". It isn't the bird but there is a logo idea in there somewhere.

Building

This relies on the OpenSimulator sources to do the reading and conversion of the OAR files. Building thus relies on also fetching and building OpenSimulator.

Additionally, the 3D file formatting is done with the Open Asset Import Library ("assimp") library. The Open Asset Import Library is written in C++ so the linkage with that library is done with a SWIG generated bridge between the managed and unmanaged programming space.

Since the code is writting in C#, the executable and DLLs will run on Windows and will run with Mono on Linux systems. Open Asset Import Library is provided both as a 64-bit DLL and SO for both Windows 10 (v410) and Linux.

A useful tool is the Open 3D Model Viewer which displays and allows modification of different 3D file formats.