Hi Oshyan, thanks for the speedy reply (I haven't even got a notification in my email yet!).
When you export an OBJ from Xfrog, you get a dialogue popup that asks if you want it to create an MTL file or a COL file (whatever that is); I chose the MTL file.
I did check the folder where it was saved and there was, indeed, an MTL file.
I openned it up in Notepad only to find it was a totally blank document.
Thinking that perhaps you had to save the OBJ/MTL file with the textures, I tried that; this time the MTL file contained the following information:
Quotenewmap BaseMap AG12brn1.tif
newmap LeafyoungMap AG12lef1.tif
I have no idea as to what this means, but I imported that OBJ and the textures were there! Yay!
Just a few observations (that may help other newbies):
1.In the object dialogue box, there's a tab entitled "OBJ Options". Click on that and there you will find 2 options - Source in cm & Source Z up. Make sure that both of them are checked or your object will import lying on its side (that's what had been happening to me and I suspect is the normal Xfrog coordinate system; Y is up; and this is why T3 has the popup asking whether the imported object is an Xfrog object).
2.Even if you have your object's preview mode set to show as textured; you also need to make sure that same can be said of the setting within the 3D preview (or you'll still end up with a bounding box). Within the 3D preview window, click on the icon that looks like a
single blue cube; it's the "Change object display mode" button. Once you click on that, check the "Show as textured" choice and you'll (hopefully) see your object...
3.Plants can come in very, very (did I mention very?) small. My plant (Rye grass) was so small, the bounding box looked like a dot and it wasn't until I scaled it up to 100x that I could actually see it (this is with the camera at the default location and the object importing at (0,0,0)...
Anyway, I think I have it worked out now.
Just one more quick question; is there any documentation re. editing/reading an MTL file (I'm actually trying to understand the tgd file as well - but that's another post
)?
Further to plant importing/saving/etc; now that I have the textures, it is time to save each of my obj plants as tgo plants (it's OK, I worked that one out. Newbies; all you need to do is right click on your object in the node network and you'll get a popup where you can select, "Save object file" - click on that and there are your choices - in the "Save as type" box down the bottom...).
Now, I had my plants magnified 100x so I could see them but now that I want to save them to tgo, I need to reduce them back to normal size.
This may be OK for saving, but how on Earth can you get the camera close enough to see the damn plant?!
Every time I try, it seems to disappear from the preview window (?).
Vue has something similar called "Open GL clipping" (something that used to drive me crazy until I learned how to fix it) where, if you bring the camera too close, the object started to be "eaten away" by some mysterious force (but it still renders fine - but leaves a lot to guesswork)...
Is this similar or am I just a crazy guy talking to myself?...........