more than 1 part node...

[bobbystahr]

... but it saves a single mesh with no access to individual parts, sadly

that can be solved easily with Wings3d,if the polycount and/or the filesize is not too high.

Would it need to be re U/V mapped ?, as the save removes all embedded info as near as I can tell

[j meyer]

I don't know,never checked that aspect,but what i remember from dissecting free
objects there should be no problems as long as the geometry stays intact.

[bobbystahr]

I don't know,never checked that aspect,but what i remember from dissecting free
objects there should be no problems as long as the geometry stays intact.

Well I don't have Wings3D but I managed to separate trunk/branches from leaves in Imagine3D but that left the model sans U/V maps and PoseRay didn't get them back...If someone else wants to try the raw extracted .obj in Wings3D I'll send it or post it...RSVP if you are interested .  ..   ...

[j meyer]

C'mon Bobby,Wings3d is free,give it a try man.

[bobbystahr]

C'mon Bobby,Wings3d is free,give it a try man.

heh heh heh...tried it when I had a roommate who was enamored of it, but as a point, line, face modeler I could never adapt to the box modeling though I may have years back, but am a lot less patient than I was when I was a young sprout. At 63 I'm just trying to actually remember what i already know . ..   ...

[j meyer]

  Ok,that's an argument...and i got curious and tried it anyway.Seems there's more
to it than just the separating.Most likely things get a bit messed up on export(from TG2),
but to be sure more tests are required.Might take a while,though.

[bobbystahr]

better than the results I got with Imagine3D in any case....I may still take a run at Wings as I need a modeler that will do U/V mapping

[j meyer]

Meanwhile i have tested it with a simple 3 part object made in Wings3d,no problems
at all.Tg2 converts the geometry from quads to triangles,but the UV mapping is not
affected in any way.You just have to separate the parts(after the tgo to obj conversion)
again and set up the materials anew for export (that's what gives you the parts shaders in
TG2).And then in TG2 you'd have to reassign the texture images(bump,displ,spec) of course,
or do what ever is required for use in other apps.
As for problems like those shown above my guess would be that it depends on the software
the original obj file was generated with as there seem to be many different approaches for
saving/generating obj files.And some may cause problems.Like the problems you use Poseray
for.

[Dune]

Thanks for that, Jan. Good to know all this.

[Matt]

Interesting. I always take my XFrog objects directly into TG and save them as tgo after finalizing, but it might be interesting to take them through Poseray for a change. By the way, there's no way to save a .tgo as .obj, is there?

I'd recommend keeping your objects in the OBJ format and saving your finalized objects as Terragen Clip files (TGC) with the original OBJ, not converting to TGO.

[Dune]

Would you mind explaining why that would be better, Matt? I don't always dump my obj's, but often do. I can understand it's better to have them (the obj's) as a backup, but is a tgc 'better' than a tgo?

[bobbystahr]

Interesting. I always take my XFrog objects directly into TG and save them as tgo after finalizing, but it might be interesting to take them through Poseray for a change. By the way, there's no way to save a .tgo as .obj, is there?

I'd recommend keeping your objects in the OBJ format and saving your finalized objects as Terragen Clip files (TGC) with the original OBJ, not converting to TGO.

But you can't populate .tgc so.tgo is still necessary for pops...buuuut just had a look and was gobsmacked by the fact that a .tgo is approx 7 times the size of an .obj....I won't be converting any more to .tgo with that knowledge in my brain. Dunno why I never checked that before .  ..   ...

[dandelO]

Bobby, I've never ever seen that before. Every single .tgo I've made from an .obj is significantly much smaller than the .obj it came from. So much so that I usually replace objects with TG models to save on memory in heavy scenes. I've never seen a .tgo that was even the same size as the original model, they're always much smaller for me.

Ulco, you can also save a .tgo model as .obj from within Terragen(use the drop-down box in the save dialogue) but it won't write a .mtl file to go with it. I've yet to work out any way to get a .obj out of TG that can be used elsewhere because of the absent .mtl but you can convert any of your .tgo files to .obj format, perhaps the only way would be that you need to be skilled in modelling and be able to reassign your own texture domains to the TG written .obj in a third party modeller. You're pretty handy with the modelling yourself, I'm sure you could work it out.

[Klas]

dandelO, the obj file is a text file, the tgo looks like binary, so the filesize differs, but the size in memory should be the same.

[dandelO]

Ah right, thanks, Klas. I've just always assumed that the larger the object filesize, the more resources it would take up when in use. I suppose since there's no difference in geometry between filetypes then they would use just the same resources regardless of filesize.
Cheers!