AssimpXna is a custom model importer for Xna 4.0 using the Open Asset Import Library (Assimp).
Assimp is a well written library (C++) for importing various well-known 3D model formats and is probably everything you will ever need when coping with 3D models for gaming. It can be statically linked into a single dll without other dependencies than the MS Visual C/C++ Runtime (~ 3 MB). As it also provides C# bindings via SWIG 2.0 it was pretty straightforward to come up with a simple Xna importer using it (< 300 lines of code). For the most part i imported the VS2008 projects from the Assimp 2.0 SDK into VS2010 so AssimpXna is compatible to .NET 4, XNA 4.0 and only depends on (MSVCP/R100.dll). However, be sure to target the default x86 platform.
Assimp supports most stuff you will need and more than i can recall right now (cameras, lights, bones, multi-texturing...). However, the simple Xna importer i quickly wrote just suports
- static meshes (no animations)
- texture coordinates, diffuse texture map (one uv channel only, TEXCOORD0)
- basic material properties (Ambient, Emissive, Diffuse, Specular, Alpha)
- vertex normals
- vertex colors (one channel only)
Note that by now, bone weights are not accessible from Assimp via SWIG.