XNA Model Viewer inside Visual Studio 2010

This is a work-in-progress - I just had the idea this morning to embed an XNA model viewer in a Visual Studio tool window. I had previously been working on a standalone model viewer, but then I thought, why recreate some of Visual Studio when you can use the real thing?

The current entry point is to right-click on a model file in a Content project, and click a "View Model" context menu item, but this could be changed so that if the model viewer tool window is open, it will update whenever you select a new model file.

Right now it only loads the model, but I could add some more tools to change the effect, change effect parameters, etc.

Click the image for a larger version.

image:/assets/images/blog/modelviewer1.jpg

What do you think? It's actually surprisingly easy to write a tool window for Visual Studio - so (armed with the Windows Forms samples from App Hub) this whole thing only took an hour. I like projects like that...

6 comments

Gravatar Sharky
Nov 20, 2010
08:37

Great idea!

Gravatar Carlos
Nov 21, 2010
01:52

Nice!, and if we can set our Effects to that preview, would be very useful.

Great job, congratz!

Gravatar Tim Jones
Nov 22, 2010
19:27

Thanks! I plan to implement both of those features - changing effect parameters (including textures), and changing effects. I've posted an update [which includes neither feature ;-)] here.

Gravatar Adam Kane
Jul 30, 2011
23:14

Genius! What a great idea.

Gravatar Nicolas
Aug 2, 2011
09:20

What's the status on your project mate?

Gravatar Tim Jones
Aug 2, 2011
11:21

`Adam Thanks!

`Nicolas The most recent version is described here

I haven't had time to work on it for a few months, but I have some ideas for what to put into the next version.

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