Models and Meshes
You can load a model from file with the FileModel node. The following file types are supported:
.fbx;.dae;.3ds;.gltf;.glb;.obj;.blend;.x;.md2;.md3;.dxf;.ply;.stl;.stp
The loaded model can be connectd to a ModelEntity to render it with a material.
At the moment we don't support automatic loading of materials, textures, animations or skeletons. This will be added in a later release. See the help patch Load Assets from File for an example, that also shows how to assign multiple materials to the model.
Models can also be loaded from a Stride game project. This has the advantage that you can set up the model, including materials in the Stride editor. See Assets and Animation int the Stride manual. See the help patch Load Stride Project and Modify Entities from a Stride Project.
Difference between Model and Mesh
Model
A Model is a high-level class that combines geometry (meshes) with appearance (materials) and optionally a skeleton for animation. This makes it possible to represent a simple model with just one mesh and one material or a complex 3d object, such as an animated character.
In the scene graph, a model has to be assigned to a ModelComponent that is part of an Entity. See Rendering.
To join the data of a model you can use the node MeshModel for the simple case of one mesh and one material or MeshesModel for multiple meshes and materials. To connect a single model to the scene graph, you can use the node ModelEntity that internally does all the entity and component setup for you.
Mesh
A Mesh is a part of the model that contains the geometry information and an index that points to a material in the material list of the model.
The actual geometry data is stored in a class called MeshDraw, it holds the GPU resources for the index and vertex buffers that will be used to draw the geometry. In detail, the MeshDraw has IndexBufferBinding and VertexBufferBinding properties that hold the respective buffer plus some information for the graphics pipeline. So the full path from model to first vertex buffer is: Model.Meshes[0].Draw.VertexBuffers[0].Buffer.
The vertices stored in a vertex buffer can have different fields, such as normals, texture coordinates, etc. To make the workflow of getting the vertex data easier, you can use the MeshSplit nodes, see the help patch Split a mesh into its components.
Dynamic Mesh
The nodes DynamicMesh or DynamicMesh (Indexed) create a mesh from vertex and/or index data.
To connect a single mesh to the scene graph, you can use the node MeshEntity that internally does all the entity and component setup for you. A mesh can also be rendered with the low-level workflow using a MeshRenderer. See Rendering for more details on that. Also, see the help patch Dynamic Mesh for an example of setting up a mesh and rendering it.