VRML Problem

Support Basics & Interface
1

I am running blender on three platforms and I have one big problem. I did most of my work in Cinema4D on a Mac and a student license of Maya on an SGI Onyx.

Now I am thinking of switching to Blender due to licensings costs, and I already played around with it for a month or so.

Till now, I found NO way to get my previous work into Blender, and if I can’t find a way, I guess I have to stick with Maya and Cinema4D (due to it’s blazingly fast renderer).

I tried exporting both to DXF and VRML 2.0 from Maya and Cinema4D. When I try to import the files in BLender Mac/PC, it says it doesn’t recognize the file.

Under IRIX, Blender opens the file, pushes one of the CPUs to 100% for around five minutes, and stops, but it hasn’t importet anything.

Is there any way, any application I can use to get my meshes WITH textures into Blender? I would even sacrifice all the animations I did, all I need are the meshes, the object information and the textures.

Any help is greatly appreciated…

thanx

ulrik

2

Try working in VRML 1.0 if you can. Most of the time DXF files are HUGE and usually drag Blender to it’s knees. A conversion app like Crossroads (Windows) may help in getting files to the right format. It’s old but it works.

http://home.europa.com/~keithr/crossroads/

3

you can use 3dexploration to view and save model to a different format.
There are alot of different format… .3ds, .dxf, .vrml, .scn and alot more

sorry I dont remember the website

4

For some reason you can’t open a DXF in blender by double-clicking it. You have to open blender, then import the DXF by hitting F1 (It will import and won’t clear existing objects with F1). Don’t know if that’s your problem though.

5

VRML 1.0 is your best bet. I’ve never gotten version 2.0 to import. Dxf is only useful if you don’t assign any materials.

6

I agree that VRML 1 is the best solution for getting the geometry into blender. But I don’t think that the textures or even colors will be imported.

Import/export is a big problem with blender. Maybe you somewhere find a python skript for vrml-import which is better than the built-in. Also there could be improvements in version 2.25.

Let’s see what happens when blender gets open source… :o

Holger

7

an old version of 3d explor is downloadable under

www.fruenzmanz.de/files/3dexplor.exe

u need not to register (like in the new versions) and is still able to convert a lot of formats into each other.

8

thanx for all the help, I’ll try the different applications and hints tonight and report back what worked :wink:

I thought I could import VRML 2.0 since the import prefs in Blender mention VRML 2.0

I also tried DXF, but it said it doesn’t recognize the file type…IRIX Blender doesn’t look at the “ending” of the file, does it?

I ask this stupid question because I know some other Unix apps (IRIX Premiere for example) which check for an ending of a file rather than checking it’s header or MIME type…

9

I use Lynx OBJ plugin, you can find OBJIO plugin here, and
a lot of other export- and importplugins to:
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~mein/blender/converters.html

OBJIO plugin is at:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/hoshbardam/OBJIO.zip

I have Blender 2.23, Python 2.0.1 and Python 1.5.1 on
my puter.
In my case, I have made a gorilla reading a book, in clay,
and when i bought Computer Arts in June 2002 I get D Sculptor 1.0.
D Sculptor 1.0 is a program which can, I quote;
“Turn real-world objects into 3D models with just a camera”,
and a lot of work IMHO.

My plan was to save it in OBJ file format, and import
the hole thing into Blender via Lynx OBJ plugin, an then export
model and textures to Lightflow.

Yes it works, and here is how I did it.

When I imported the gorilla in Blender, I have to alter it size
(gorilla was bigger than KingKong : ) next step was to give it a new
material, in my case I just selected the Material named “Texture”, this
materialpropertys was imported togeher with model.
In my case I have to alter some materialsettings, suchs as Color,
Pec, Alpha and RGB.

After that I used F-button to get gorilla in “face” mode.
In “Image Select Window” (button with a manface) I loaded texture
“gorilla_texture.TGA” (I have to convert gorilla_texture.jpg to
gorilla_texture.TGA, Lightflow like TGA file format).

Then I give gorilla a texture, I klicked “Texture button”, selected
“ADD NEW”, klicked to “Image”, next step was to klick “Browse” near
“Loade Image” button and select “gorilla_texture.TGA”.
"Then back to “Material button” and klick on button called “UV”.

Quite fun actually to se pictures rendered in lighflow of my gorilla,
it match the real claygorilla very well.

I have not tried “OBJIO” export funktion.

viktorivar