Import Model without content pipeline

Content
1

Hi,
For my game I store all resources into .res file, so I can get bytes of each a resource file in runtime (like a zip file). For load texture with bytes data source it’s not a problem : Texture2D.FromStream(... and my bytes image).

But after lot of search on the web, I can’t find a way to load a model from bytes data… just content.Load<Model>(string) work where string is the name of xnb file but content.Load(xnbBytesArray) doesn’t exist and Model.FromStream( ...). And it’s impossible for performance/security reasons, to extract each model of the .res file, to load each file model with the content manager and after delete all created files.

I know we can’t import .fbx files directly because they need to pass into the content processor but when I compile my project, I found my models into .xnb file.

So if in runtime I have bytes array data of a xnb model file, how can I do for create a Model instance with that ?

Thank you a lot.

2

Do you really need to store the assets in .res files? Seems unusual. Nevertheless, here are some ideas.

Idea #1:
Write the resource stream into a temporary file and load the file using the ContentManager.

Idea #2:
You could create a custom ContentManager and override ContentManager.OpenStream. In OpenStream return your resource stream instead of a file stream. Then you can load the model with content.Load<Model>("name_of_model").

3

That is what I suggest as well. Overloading ContentManager.OpenStream is easy to do and allows you all sorts of flexibility.

4

Thank you for your answers, but the .res file allows me to perform encryption, so I will try your to override ContentManager.OpenStream :slight_smile: