SFF [simple file format] is a very *simple* mesh depiction scheme that is equally simple to parse:
numpolys
for each poly in numpolys
  vertext count
  vertex1
  vertex2
  ...
next poly
An SFF mesh's disk representation consists of numbers in the above format, stored in a text (ASCII) file with a .sff extension - that's about it. Note that there is no provision to represent normals, texture coords, edges, groups, etc.

If you already have a polymesh file in another format, it's simple to write a small translator to convert it to a .sff. Here is an obj2sff converter (Perl script) that does just that - it reads in a Wavefront .obj mesh, writes out a .sff. Feel free to use the above converter to translate into .sff, .obj meshes that you find on the Web, output from Maya, etc. Once you have a .sff mesh you can write Processing, OpenGL, MEL, Python, RenderMan, etc. code to display/render it.

Usage (run the following in a shell or create a batch file/script for it):
obj2sff <in.obj> <out.sff>
Eg:
obj2sff pawn.obj pawn.sff

Below are some sample .sff meshes. Click on a wireframe image to view/download its .sff mesh.



octahedron

'cut' cube

cow

al

end table

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