It's not advice to use .sdkmesh format from DXUT, and to use his own format. I really don't understand why? I think it's really usefull. Anybody has a real explanation for that?

I cannot make heads or tails of what SDK mesh is doing in its complexity and lack of documentation for it. I am rather peaved that they did not provide a tutorial that uses D3DX10MESH like previous SDK releases. The tutorial uses SDK_MESH instead, which is not explained at all. It leads me to believe we are not even supposed to use D3DXMESH anymore at all. They only use it to load from x files and translate to their own mesh format if I understand correctly. Looks to me like a developer is pretty much fored to roll thier own mesh data structure(s).

Since I cannot decypher what it is doing, I couldn't tell you why they don't want you to use it.

Disclaimer:

The DXUT Mesh format (.sdkmesh) is not a recommended file format for shipping titles. It was designed to meet the specific needs of the SDK samples. Any real-world application should avoid this file format in favor of a destination format that meets the specific needs of the application.

I guess the SDKMesh is used cause D3D9 and D3D10 meshes are different and this is just a new class they made that could be used on D3D9 and D3D10 projects.
Its also a good sample of how to make your own mesh file structures.

Reasson its not recommended to use? I would say its not recommended to use .x files as well. Main reasson ... if u distribute something u make, u want to protect your content. So using some file format everyone can obtain is not a good idea.

I dont believe they say its not recommended to use because its some bad code :)

I can share my format if someone is interested.

Vincent

I do not think the NIH syndrome is by any means limited to the DXSDK team but more a general issue with any sort of developer :)

NIH syndrome is a symptom of poor culture and poor management, not of poor programmers.

Regarding not using .X files to "protect" your assets, that's totally worthless. Any asset encryption system you can think of will be broken, if your game is good enough that people want to mod it. And anyone who wants to rip art can easily just snarf it straight out of the Direct3D command stream using DLL injection. The protection you have against art theft is the laws of the land, not any particular technical trick.

The best reason to not use .X for a game would be if you needed a feature it didn't support (LOD and morphs are hard to do in .X), or if the cost of loading and processing the mesh was too much, and you needed a "memory ready" mesh format.