XNA: Dynamic content loading without Game Studio installed?

Question

I'd like to enable my game to load content (such as a model, a jpg file, etc.) during run-time and display them.

I looked at the sample on XNA website (http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/winforms_series2), however this method requires Game Studio (which means Visual Studio too) installed on the client computer.

What are the approaches to loading content during run-time without VS+GS? Do I have to to avoid XNA Content Pipeline completely? If so do I have to write my own graphic import library or are there any suitable ones for this task?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

For loading a texture you can use Texture2D.FromFile method.

As for models I don't think there is a way to load them. If you just want to load vertex and index data then loading that from a file into buffers is fairly simple. If, however, you actually want a model instance then I know of no way (other than using the content pipeline)