title: What are the specifications for a Wavefront .obj file?
body: <p>I want to write a parser for Blender's .obj file. The file format seems self explanatory, but also it seems to be missing some data. For example, a simple cube (the default Blender cube) has 8 lines of vertexes, but I was expecting to see 36 lines (12 triangles to form a cube). </p>
  
  <p>I think the confusion, at lease for me, stems from the way cubes are created in direct3d. Direct3d requires 36 vertexes to form a cube. So I am thinking that I need to infer the other 28 vertexes. This type of guessing could cause issues later on when trying to parse vertexes for more complex shapes. So, I thought if I could find the official specs on the file format it might provide me with some insight into how to interpret the data.</p>
  
  <p>It seems that someone else had asked the same question before: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5054239/how-to-get-proper-number-of-vertices-in-obj-file-from-dcc-tools-such-as-blender">How to get proper number of vertices in OBJ file from DCC tools such as Blender for use in OpenGL ES?</a>
  but it didn't have any useful information for me.</p>