Import obj -Carrara

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 12:26 am

Are there any Carrara users here who have imported obj into MoHo succesfully? If so can you outline the steps for me? I read the threads here and tried but I get either a black skin, I tried switching the setting LM suggested in the 3D area (I'm not at home so forget the name now) and so on. I tried a shader that had bump, color, gloss maps etc and looks likethe map in the color channel was visible after I corrected the path in the mtl file but truthfully I am just randomly trying different settings as I am new to Carrara and MoHo.

I'd also like to know if I am limited to a single texture? Is there a way in Carrara to bake a texture as you do in 3DS Max?

If you do know how to do it and can spell out any of the steps in detail it would be very greatly appreciated.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 1:29 am

I can't tell you anything about Carrara specifically, but Moho will only use the diffuse color texture maps from an OBJ file - you won't be able to import bump, gloss, etc.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 1:22 am

@Lostmarble - Thanks. I'll give it a try this weekend and confirm. Saw that the shader I chose was an example that used many channels and think I may have just gotten confused expecting something different; there are a few settings in Carrara to flip stuff etc on export and I was just checking them all different ways since I wasn't sure. I'll use a shader with a map only in the diffuse channel and as soon as I get it I'll post the relevant settings here for future revference.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 7:27 am

Ok, I can import the object ok from Carrara but I am having a problem with the texture sizes. I made a simple cube in Carrara and textured it with a single 512 x 512 texture and when I import the obj file into Moho the cube seems to be textured with about the bottom 1/4 of the texture. I tried increasing and decreasing the size of the obj in Carrara before exporting and also decreasing the size of the texture I applied in Carrara but always end up with the same result. Any guesses? Can you tell anything from the obj file if I post it?

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 5:13 pm

bupaje wrote:Can you tell anything from the obj file if I post it?

Yes, that would tell me quite a bit. Also, which exact version of Moho are you using? You can find out with the Help->About Moho menu command. Look in the lower-left corner of the About box.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 9:46 pm

I am using version 5.06.

Here is zip which has the texture, mtl and obj file

http://stormvisions.com/moho/export_obj.zip

This is the textured block in Carrara

this is the image after importing it in Moho

Thanks for taking a look at this.

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 11:31 pm

I don't know if Cararra has a faulty OBJ export function, but Moho is displaying this object correctly. The texture coordinates in the OBJ file only cover about 1/3 of the texture for each face of the cube.

It seems that Cararra is not exporting the cube with the same texture coordinates that it is using internally. Can you import the OBJ file back into Cararra? What does it look like then?

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Mon Jan 10, 2005 11:57 pm

If I import it then it looks like it looks in Moho. In fact I just noted that in order to show the image as I did in Cararra I had adjusted the horizontal and vertical values to 4 or I get exactly the same image as in Moho. So I guess that Carrara is either not exporting this value or Moho doesn't use this value?

Post by **Lost Marble** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:19 am

bupaje wrote:So I guess that Carrara is either not exporting this value or Moho doesn't use this value?

There is no such value in an OBJ file (not exactly). All 3D programs have their own way of representing objects and textures, and internally they're all very different. The OBJ format is quite simple, and isn't capable of expressing all of the specific features of every 3D program.

Now, above I said "not exactly". In the OBJ format, you can make a texture repeat itself by using the proper texture coordinates. So, Carrara could export the cube so that it looked the same. However, whatever these horizontal and vertical values you set in Cararra are, they are not part of the OBJ format. To export this as an OBJ, Carrara would need to take them into account when exporting the texture coordinates, and it seems that it isn't doing this.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:27 am

I recently talked to someone who writes Carrara plugins and am going to float this past him see if he has any thoughts. Thanks for taking the time to unravel this.

macweenie · Post by **macweenie** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:20 pm

bupaje, if you could post whatever you find out I too would appreciate it. I am using Cararra also and have had some problems.

Thanks

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:08 am

Will do. As of now the person I spoke to thinks this may be a 'buglet' or what he called a 'tweener' -guess it means it fell 'tween the cracks.

In fact what I just realized is that in a previous thread where I asked about importing an obj with multiple textures, and found I couldn't, the color was off in Moho (because it only used the one texture in the color channel) but the size was correct.

I submitted a bug report to Eovia about that and a minor issue when you choose png as the export format (it writes it to the mtl file as jpg instead). I'll post here when it gets fixed.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:17 am

Just as a followup for any Carrara users I got a response which reads in part ...

[...]The texture tiling in not supported when exporting to .obj file format as of right now. [...]I will suggest this to our build team so that they will think about making this a feature.

So we may see it in some future update.

macweenie · Post by **macweenie** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:16 am

Gah! Don't count on it.

When I was using version 2 I told them in the first few weeks about several problems including the rendering of the fire primitive (would not render unless an object was directly behind it), the particle shader system not working correctly (always rendered flat grey), and the camera not rendering the scene properly if you exported through VectorImage. They said they were aware of the problems and would get a patch out but 2.1 didn't address them and they put out 3 without fixing 2. Too bad MetaCreations folded because they were a much better company than Eovia seems to be.

PS: As far as I know VectorImage is still 1.0 and still renders improperly.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:52 am

Don't give up, in fact I'd resubmit it. It seems they have been attacking updates since I got Carrara 4. I only have it a three weeks or so and they released 4.0.2 and 4.0.3.

Slightly OT but here is the list of fixed bugs and improved features just in this last update.

http://www.eovia.com/resources/fixes/ca ... es_401.htm

Import obj -Carrara

Import obj -Carrara

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Re: Import obj - again