import/export .cob

Coding Python Support
1

Hi!

I remember 2.43 having at least an import for .cob files but 2.45 hasn’t.
Where has it gone?

Thanks

2

truespace is not used much anymore and COB support wasnt that good.
if your an avid truespace user you could reserect it but suck tasks can be time consuming

3

IIRC, Truespace imports / exports .X and .OBJ files.

4

I don’t have/use truespace myself, I just have some .cob models with which I would like to work with.

I wish Blender would keep its support for formats even if it is not good. Something is better than nothing.

Thanks for the answers.

5

I see where your coming from - but since your getting old files, keep an old blender handy to convert them.

maintenance of such scripts takes developers away from adding support for more useful things.

quite a few scripts have been removed over time, otherwise we would just have scripts that didnt work well (take .x for instance) and people would think blender is buggy it would not be good for blender - theres nothing stopping anyone maintaining their own set of python scripts. you could even take out a google.code account and do it. make your own bpython treasure chest! Iv suggested such things before but there is just not enough interest.

6

Is there an alternative to importing .COB models into Blender? An external converter that, say, converts .COB into some other format first which is well supported by Blender? COB -> 3DS maybe?

7

yup… a bunch

I hope you can have access to a ms windows…

http://www.metaseq.net/english/index.html

A great modeler, which can open cob files and export in several formats Blender can read: metasequoia LE. Is freeware, fully. (before was something different) .That is, the LE version.Which btw, is great already. I have done much work for game mods with it.

Blender cover more areas (animation, render) (I still model with Metasequoia, Wings and other tools) , so you may wish to use this modeler to convert the cob to something Blender can read. And totally sure the workflow is safe.

Be aware that whenever you load a mesh, texture may not appear, or smoothing normals. You often gotta recover, or just adjust some setting, as UVs for example, are rarely lost, and some people get confused thinking they lost Uv information, even as don’t know they aren in a texture view kind of viewport, lol. I don’t speak specifically on any tool, but in general.

I positively know, you can use this to convert. You could also convert the files with Truespace 3.2, which I believe is free at download.com.

But i sort of see it way too old…is so many years old that Truespace version…but hey, may serve u for conversions…

8

also, free Hamapatch(I think(edit–export only,logically–)) and Ultimate unwrap($) , open cob files.

lastly, a way old tool, dunno if will work… http://synapse-web.org/tools/xroads/xroads.stm

is a converter

Imho…I’d go for Metasequoia

9

Try to convert to OBJ or LWO, they both are well featured formats, better than *.3ds old format

and in my experience, are well supported in Blender.

10

I’m a 100% Linux user so Windows apps are of limited use (although maybe I can coax 32bit WINE to run on my 64bit server).

Maybe it’s better to tackle this another way - is there a list of problems with the truespace importer? I need to learn Python anyway (I’m a software developer by profession and our new toolset is partly Python-based) and I also have the Truespace 6.5 file spec, thanks to the Caligari website.

11

possel,

download blender 2.35 or whatever old version and import the model with it. Then save the blend, then open it in blender 2.45.

LetterRip

12

i am doing this but i can’t even export to 3ds so yeah. but i would like cob. because than i can convert it into a .pof file for freespace 2

13

cob and 3ds are way too old formats…I mean, there are new ones and some older but more complete, that are quite better.

tjwhaynes , go for it, then. Cob did not support character animation, as far as I remember. I have 4.3 purchased, in one of those bargain offers of eldest versions, indeed, the cheapest one. (60$ or so…).And also, you also have at download.com ts 3.2 for free. i know, here there’s a lot of linux users, not very fond of launching wine…But the app itself is a win32 one, so…

I think k3d also imported cob files. For what I check now in its page, that seem to be not anymore…

14

btw, cob had the issues of 3ds in not long names for material names, if I remember well. Also, an advantage (I always preferred it over 3ds) is it keeps quads. Depending on tool and exporter, it tends to keep material features and colors, and vertex colors, again, If am remembering well. Scn files where actual total support of the scenery, but also animation, etc. I suppose is very tied to the version of ts, in that format.And probably not much specs out there, as there are many plugins for cob, very few for scn.

Collada, for example, is so really much more complete. i even find easier to handle , and more problem free, more widely adopted, the OBJ format. Also, there are a few command line converters, majorly DOS-based , that converted COB 2 ‘whatever’. Sort of what image magik does for 2d. I dunno if is easier for you to launch those than a win32 app, or if, probably , already there are ports of those utilities to linux. There’s much probably more Linux modeling tools that can import cob and export to whatever.