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MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Material

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 1:24 pm
by caustics
Hi,

now as scenes become more complex I am having some impact in the way that MWS doesn't recognize multi-material assignments from OBJ files. The imported geometry has also some issues (open faces etc) if not imported as tesselated, but this is another topic.

I created a demo scene ... a simple cube with 3 sides assigned the colors red, green and blue each. I would expect to get the same result in MW Studio after importing. If MW Studio couldn't create the materials for whatever reason, it should create at least the triangle groups to make it easier the to apply the material afterwards.

EDITED: forgot to include the thin for the OBJ file:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15295616/cube.obj
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15295616/cube.mtl

I extracted this from the OBJ file I created:
Code: Select all
usemtl Default
f 4/1/4 2/2/2 1/3/1 3/4/3 
usemtl blue
f 6/5/6 8/6/8 7/7/7 5/8/5 
usemtl Default
f 6/5/6 5/8/5 1/3/1 2/2/2 
usemtl green
f 8/6/8 6/5/6 2/2/2 4/1/4 
usemtl red
f 7/7/7 8/6/8 4/1/4 3/4/3 
usemtl Default
f 5/8/5 7/7/7 3/4/3 1/3/1 
It is quite self-explanatory if you look at it. The "usemtl" tells which material to use for specific faces, so why MWS doesn't use that info?

BTW: I tried to export as 3DS format and then import into MWS but then it tells me that is wants to be relaunched as 32bit application ... no clue what that means or how to do that on OSX.

Anyone else struggling over this?

Regards.

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 7:50 pm
by itsallgoode9
yeah, that's a big issue. Is there a reason you're doing .obj instead of .mxs? or are you just pointing out the flaw in the .obj exporting?

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 11:17 pm
by caustics
I use Silo or Hexagon for modeling stuff and unfortunately both are not exporting to .mxs. But from my experiences .OBJ is a widely used format for exchanging models, never had any issues with that until now with MW Studio.

Regards

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 12:46 am
by Mihai
Does Silo export to Collada? Try this format instead in that case.

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 1:03 am
by Half Life
I'm not getting Collada import in Studio -- is this a planned feature? because it would be very cool.

Best,
Jason.

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 3:56 am
by caustics
Unfortunately, Silo has no COLLADA export, but I managed it to export it from Carrara but the result in MWS is useless.

The materials were created but it creates a new material for each object instead of reusing identical materials. Additionally, as noted above, it seems that MWS has an issue with importing geometry. It certain cases it isn't able to deal with quads or ngons. The sides of the cube for example become triangles, but only one tri for each face leaving a hole were should be another try to close the face.

See image of imported file into MWS:
Image

COLLADA file:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15295616/cube.dae

I think if there would be a possibility to get the OBJ import of MWS fixed would be great. IMO an application like MWS deserves a decent OBJ import functionality.

Seems that I am a bit of stuck for the moment ... as going for Rhino OSX seems no option because the MW Rhino plugin does exist for windows only, right? And for Modo there seems to be a plugin for 401 but not for 501. Additionally, it would strike me hard for the moment to have to purchase a tool like Modo only for the reason the OBJ import is not working.

BTW: Is there anybody who could give some feedback how good Modo & MW play together?

Regards.

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 11:06 am
by Rickyx
When I have import/export problems I check geometry and material assign with AccuTrans 3D.

If it open the file correctly try to re-export from AccuTrans itself and see what happen in Maxwell...
I use Blender and, while exporting in obj, I got the option to divide geometry by material.

Ricky

ps. windows, mac or linux?
Accutrans works fine with wine on linux. Mac I don't know even how is done...

Re: MW Studio *.OBJ import lacking support for Multi Materia

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 4:16 am
by caustics
Hi Ricky,

If I understood you right, Blender offers the option to break apart a scene by material in separate objects?

I will to have a look at that.

Thanks.
Rickyx wrote:When I have import/export problems I check geometry and material assign with AccuTrans 3D.

If it open the file correctly try to re-export from AccuTrans itself and see what happen in Maxwell...
I use Blender and, while exporting in obj, I got the option to divide geometry by material.

Ricky

ps. windows, mac or linux?
Accutrans works fine with wine on linux. Mac I don't know even how is done...