That's not necessarily a true statement…one does not preclude the other, but rather too often people make bad decisions in design that focuses on one and ignores the other.
I tend to disagree with the overal opinion of the reviewer while looking at it from non-technical aspect. Perhaps what he says about performance is true (I hardly doubt that though) the point is that developing with Java (and JME) is much faster than your general C++ engine.
JME contains alot of examples and techniques that help new developers get on the right track. Making a very simple shooter game could really be done in only 1 day. I recall a blogsite where the JME Dev's created a game in only 24 hours. This kind of "simplicity" is really the power behind JME and was also the reason why I chose for JME.
Theoretically speaking Ogre (to name a 3d renderer, though not complete game engine) might be much faster but that isnt going to help you if you simply can't finish your game due to lacking features and support.
Im wondering though, since Im currently doing some modelling in Blender, what are the possibilities at -this- moment about importing models (with/without animations) in jme?
Darklord said:
Theoretically speaking Ogre (to name a 3d renderer, though not complete game engine) might be much faster [...]
Ogre has the problem that is recomended only for newer computers, for example. Probably it makes intensive use of features that are available only under newer technologies.
Darklord said:
Im wondering though, since Im currently doing some modelling in Blender, what are the possibilities at -this- moment about importing models (with/without animations) in jme?
For static models you can use OBJ, 3DS and ASE. For animated models you can use MD2 and MD3 and MilkShape, if you do not need bones.
For bone animated models you have a lot, none is perfect, though. The bone animation formats supported by jME and external loaders are Collada, MD5 and Cal3D.
At the first place of the wishes list seems to be MD5 :), with 4-5 different importers. For it there are: MD5 Reader 2 (available as CVS in http://md5reader.cvs.sourceforge.net/md5reader/md5reader2/, for instruction http://md5reader.sourceforge.net/); in the same repository, under com directory, there is neakor's MD5 Importer (using previous instructions you will download both the sources); else you can find kman's loader either here http://gamedev.kproject.gr/ and here https://jme-contrib.dev.java.net/, kman's pages contains also his great Cal3D loader (I wrote in the thread about his Cal3D loader and provided also a working Blender exporter for it, though currently in latest Blender release or in the SVN there should be a completed Cal3D exporter; and also Cal3D official project has a new Cal3D exporter for Blender). Collada, instead, is supported internally by jME.
Though kman's projects could need some fix to work with the current jME CVS or jME 1.0.
Thank you for this detailed reply! 