.babylon format vs .obj

[andy]

What benefits importing assets in .babylon format has over .obj format?

Which is better for performance, especially for loading very big high poly objects (for example, 100mb)? 

[GameMonetize]

babylon files can be converted directly in memory if you use binary format. Furthermore babylon files contain more than just the mesh (lights, materials, cameras, etc..)

[andy]

Thank you for your reply.

Still have some questions.

1) Do you mean that from the performance point of view it's better to use .babylon format?

I tried to load ~110mb high poly object using .obj file. It worked well. Will it be converted quicker using .babylon format?

2) As I read in another posts .babylon files have limit of max ~64000 vertices, so I can't load big objects using .babylon format? Is it a limitation of .babylon format itself or just Blender export plugin?

[JCPalmer]

Couple of things:

• Blender is working around the limitations of old WebGL implementations not the other way around.  You could change one line in the exporter, upping the limit to be in a single mesh, if you require.  The result might not work on obsolete hardware, but since you seem comfortable with where your .obj runs, you should be ok.
• Making that big of an object is a mistake in the first place (either that or your obj producer is a pig). You may need to worry about your competition, the Browser Stop, Back, and Close Tab buttons.
• If you load it into Blender, you could switch to edit mode, select all vertices, hit space and type 'limited dissolve'. It can greatly reduce your vertex count.  There will be an area that appears in the bottom left to adjust how much.  Always delimit by UV's for textured meshes.  Increase / decrease the degree to your level comfort of info loss.

[GameMonetize]

To add more info:

1. If using binary version yes

2. This is not completely true. We can support more than 64k vertices but it requires hardware support. 

[andy]

@JCPalmer

I agree with you and thanks for the tip about Blender. To explain more I'm developing an app where users will upload models themselves.

So I'm investigating limits and what requirements I can set for users. This app will support WebGL2 only which supports pretty big numbers.

So seems it's worth to make a server side tool that will convert obj files to .babylon files.

@Deltakosh

All is clear, thank you!