I have a question. I know that its not possible to parse .obj 3D graphics file using JavaScript and we have to convert it into some other format (preferably JSON). But I want to know why? Why we can't parse .obj file using JavaScript?
I would really appreciate your comments and answers.
Thanks Vik
Sure you can... why not? It's a text file, just go ahead and parse it.
Here, I'll even get you started:
var objText = getObjFile();
var obj = {};
var vertexMatches = objText.match(/^v( -?\d+(\.\d+)?){3}$/gm);
if (vertexMatches)
{
obj.vertices = vertexMatches.map(function(vertex)
{
var vertices = vertex.split(" ");
vertices.shift();
return vertices;
});
}
Of course you can. I have even written my own library for parsing 3D formats - K3D.js. It also supports MD2, 3DS and Collada. OBJ was the easiest to code :)
There are now a few Javascript libraries to read Wavefront OBJ files. This one works well, though only reads OBJ files and does not output them https://www.npmjs.com/package/obj-file-parser. You can also do this with three.js: https://threejs.org/docs/#examples/en/loaders/OBJLoader.
you can definitely do that! for example:
function parseOBJ(obj) {
const vertices = [];
const faces = [];
const lines = text.split('\n');
for (let line of lines) {
const parts = line.trim().split(/\s+/);
if (parts[0] === 'v') {
vertices.push({
x: parseFloat(parts[1]),
y: parseFloat(parts[2]),
z: parseFloat(parts[3])
});
} else if (parts[0] === 'f') {
faces.push([
parseInt(parts[1]) - 1,
parseInt(parts[2]) - 1,
parseInt(parts[3]) - 1
]);
}
}
return { vertices, faces };
}
