limits of .b3d format
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| What are the limitations of the b3d format? ive been modeling characters in cinema 4d then using ultimate unwrap 3d to texture and convert to b3d but i seam to lose my groups and smoothing is there a way of doing this and is there any limitations i should know about. i working on some content packs which a number of people have shown interest in but i get problems when converting to b3d so any help would be great. thanks Pete |
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| b3d supports both groups and smoothing, but your art pipeline probably does not. In other words, how are you getting from Cinema4D to Ultimate Unwrap? Information about groups and smoothing is probably lost in that step. ADDITION: Incidentally, what exactly do you mean by "groups"? The term is sloppy because it means different things to different software/people. In fact, just generally more specifics about your characters are needed. For example, are these models animated? What kind of animation? |
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| Sorry my terms were not very good. I normally save the non animated model in obj format into ultimate unwrap the smoothing seams to still in place then i use unwrap to export a b3d file which i then animate in Pacemaker. By groups i mean in 3ds and cinema 4d you can group different parts of the model together to make them easyer to select, i understand alot of programs flaten this into a single mesh, so ive prob answered my own question Pete |
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| Interesting. Off topic> Gives me an idea. My .b3ds that I am using (from Bioware's commercial models) keep exploding if I scale them - although, I don't really need to scale them - it is just handy. So, from what you have mentioned - I can use UU to save them into other formats, then load them back in and re-save them as .b3ds - and see which one works best. < Largeness ps: respect to your sig! Up the Bullfrog Boys! |
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| @puki To live, you must first Large. To die, you must Large to the point of being huge Huh? |
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| Puki, have you tried welding the model? |
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| Nope - I will give it a shot. I am also going to have a snifter at saving the model in every other format before Larging it into .b3d - just for the thrill of it. |
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| Sorry my terms were not very good. I normally save the non animated model in obj format into ultimate unwrap the smoothing seams to still in place then i use unwrap to export a b3d file which i then animate in Pacemaker. Well, Ultimate Unwrap can definitely export b3d files with smoothing information (I do it all the time,) so either Pacemaker is the issue (never used that software,) or you're mistaken and the smoothing information isn't getting into Ultimate Unwrap. I kind of think the latter, since I recall not being able to carry over smoothing information using obj. Then again, I haven't updated Ultimate Unwrap in a while, so maybe Brad has updated the obj support. And yeah, the loss of groups is expected. Frankly I'm not sure why it matters, since selection groups are not applicable outside of the original tool anyway. |
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| PaceMaker uses Blitz's native .b3d loader so I doubt that would be a problem. |
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| How about for saving the b3d file? Incidentally, where are you noticing that the smoothing groups are gone? Is the model looking wrong in Pacemaker, or is it wrong when you save the animated model and use it in your own code? |
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| wrong in pacemaker, but thanks its not pacemaker it the model lossing the smoothing coming out of cinema 4d it just doent look as bad in unwrap until you look close. I think i will need to try all the different file formats that cinema 4d exports and see if any of them keep the smoothing info. thanks for the help anyway Pete |
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| If you're using Ultimate Unwrap to texture the model, maybe you should forget about getting the smoothing carried over from Cinema4D and just redo the smoothing in UU. It exports smoothing information to b3d, but I don't know of any way to import with smoothing intact. |
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| good point and exactly what i was about to try but last time i tryed it i couldnt get the smoothing different on different groups when i changed one it changed all of them? im prob doing it wrong ill have to experiment a bit more. |
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| Email me in a few hours to remind me and I'll send an explanation of how to do it. I'm at work right now. |
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| thanks matey will do! |
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| Ah, nevermind email, here's an explanation: First off, note that smoothing in Ultimate Unwrap is done via welding/unwelding polygons. The relevant commands are all named accordingly. Second, familiarize yourself with the various methods of selecting polygons in Ultimate Unwrap. The most obvious is to click on them in the perspective view; make sure to hit S to switch to selection mode. The other important method is to select polygons in the UV editing view; just click on (or click-drag around) some UVs, and the corresponding faces are selected. Begin working on your model by unwelding all the polygons. Under the '3D Tools' menu select 'Unweld Model'. Now select a bunch of faces that you want smoothed together. Click 3D Tools->Weld Faces Repeat for all the polygons. Make sure that your selections don't include already welded polygons, or the two groups with smooth together. If a polygon was welded that you actually want smoothed with a different group, select that polygon and use 3D Tools->Unweld Face before continuing to weld faces. |
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| thanks mate seams a bit odd to unweld polygons doent that creat more vertices which would screw up any animation id done? if im wrong im wrong |
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| I thought you hadn't done any animating yet? Don't you do your work in UU, export to b3d, and then animate in Pacemaker? At any rate, it shouldn't matter. I don't know, give it a try. |
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| ok ill try it Pete |
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| jhocking. thanks worked a treat! |
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