What file formats and conventions should I support to make my game engine artist-friendly?

Posted by Avi on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Avi
Published on 2012-06-01T04:30:32Z Indexed on 2012/06/01 4:50 UTC
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art

I'm writing a game engine, and I want to know what I should do to make it more artist-friendly. I don't want to be too limiting in terms of what file formats I support, etc.

Some specific questions:

Are there specific formats artists like to model in? Does it not matter because the 3D modeler abstracts the data storage away?

Is it okay if I don't support per-vertex coloration in my game engine? If I have to store a diffuse, specular, ambient, and emissive color value for each vertex, it doubles the size of vertices in the buffer. Is it reasonable to ask artists to do all these things in textures / maps?

Any other tips you have about making it so that artists have to adapt their style to my specific engine as little as possible would be nice.

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