Open Iges File In Blender

• Import Iges File Into Blender

. Maui. i still can’t understand why there isn’t an after effects, ramenHDR, flame, shake, fusion and nuke (all the composition programs out there) exporter right inside of blender. Especially afx because so many people use it in a day to day basis (Bartek Skorupa develops one but you always have to download it separatly and it isn’t always up to date with every blender build ). It would be so great, if these options would be right inside of every blender build.

Because it would push this awesome programm to the next level. crazycourier.

I’m looking forward to when I can import SVG, EPS or AI into 2.5, I use 2.49 to easily import SVG files from Illustrator and it’s super useful for me. Maybe having more importers would help if the end goal is to grow more users? It would create a svelte “toolbox” for a broad range of users who happen to be searching for something that converts x to z.

Which many of those users might discover the other amazing tools and become fanatic Blender users! Or Keep it to a minimal core importer/exporters to keep the overall program lighter. Not to mention the man power that was spent on import/export could be used on bug fixing, strengthening core features and implementing new features. Who I am to say! I don’t have enough experience to really take a stance on either issue. I would swing towards the first option of more importers/exporters. But I do see advantages in either way!.

As mentioned before Vector (SVG/AI) support would be nice. But i think the main focus should be to get the data out in a universal open format that is backed by the major vendors and studios.

And to my great pleasure COLLADA is being worked on, i hope blender implements it so well everybody else could learn something from it 🙂 I saw EDL in the list, this was something i didn’t really think about but it would make blender a very powerfull tool to fit in the pipelines! There is one i would like to see included and i think this will be a very important format for VFX seeing that blender is trying to move in that direction.

It is Alembic check out the site for more info. This format will make the creation of VFX especially involving dynamics a lot smoother when jumping between programs or even between different installments of the same program. It is still a 0.9 release but it is soon to be declared stable and that should count for something because it has been tested for a good 2 years at ILM, Sony Imageworks and WETA Digital. Oh, and as a response to Maui at the top: I think that the primary concern now is just getting the data out in a streamlined and reliable way, after that it is just scripting. This plays nicely with the intent of the move to bf-extensions (which i applaud!) and besides every pipeline looks different even if they use the same programs.

Everybody uses passes in different ways and gets them in to other programs in different ways. Even when working on the same show they look different from each other depending on the position. Personally I’d really like to see SVG import back with a bias towards Inkscape or a plain flavour that Inkscape can save too – not using Illustrator I don’t know its options on save, perhaps if they both support plain SVG it would be a simpler importer to write?

Looking to future of 3D on the web I’d love to see this WebGL exporter ported to Blender 2.5: I think that would be a better focus than VRML/X3D looking forward with HTML5 and future browsers as it doesn’t require plugins to view. I’m not sure which exporter to After Effects you are using, but I can assure you that my exporter is 100% accurate. It supports non-square pixels, transfers locations and rotations of all objects you select, You can animate focal length and it will be transfered.

You can have objects parented to one another, you can use animated NLA strips Everything will transfer 100% accurately, camera doesn’t have to be parented to anything, nor tracked to anything, but even if it is – it will be exported. Cameras will appear as AE’s cameras, all of the other objects will appear as nulls. At the moment lamps will also appear as nulls, but I don’t think it is a big problem. I mostly concentrated on accuracy, rather than on functionality that can be achieved easily other ways. We are game developers who want to work with UDK and I could use blender as part of the entire pipeline if there were good.fbx support, the actual fbx export from blender is outdated and doesn’t support something they call smoothing groups, which is something very similar to smooth in blender. It doesn’t export neither armatures nor animations. At this time I’ve had to model in blender and make the whole riggin/animation in maya, and that’s something I would like to avoid since blender is capable to do everything we need another important issue would be the possibility to scale the export to match the UDK measure system.

Import Iges File Into Blender

The collada exporter always gives me a crash when trying to import to UDK. Extrudeface. My absolute vote here also for COLLADA and FBX. (I have made a small test).

They are totally key in new engines for 3d in the web, for indy games, and for exchange with other Studios workflows (or between different artists in same studio). Imho for Blender the most important are the exporters, as is how we can output useful stuff for game engines and 3D Packages for film or game projects. (md5, directx.x and blitz3d.b3d would be handy also, GNU gpl code for b3d:, I can provide if link stops working. ) I have just been now making test for COLLADA with a very recent trunk build, ( 1693BFTurnkWin32.zip ) and what I found, testing in FX Composer, which is a shader and general tool from NVIDIA, which can display collada files ( ) is the following: – In this, and in a pair of other viewers, if I set the texture as texture slot of the material (with ‘UV’ coords option), not just applied in UV Image Editor, texture and all seem to show correct in external viewers. Have not made more complex shaders or other stuff. But this already allows for a lot of game work.

– It actually seem to traslate the bones and weights and seem to do it well, but perhaps the bones, the joints info, is wrecked in the way a bit. Is similar effect that happened in many.x exporters I used to beta-test (for Character fx, 3DS Max, Blender, Ultimate Unwrap, etc).Perhaps is same error: The system coords is different, it has some weird bone scale or mirror, or some axe flipped. What you can see in FX Composer is some animation happening, and in same timing, but like very stretched in one axe, I think is Z axe, and probably sth else wrecked. My bet is just an issue with some axe, some flip of joints, in x files there was some stuff of the matrix transforms or whatever was the name, that caused an issue with certain tool I beta tested.

In the cases this happened, was no biggie think to fix, so hopefully it’s almost there Please, excuse me if the developers of Blender collada exporter are pretty aware of this already(I just don’t know), I just wanted to add my 2c for if it is useful. The thing is, if at least collada gets that: correct uv mapped model with bones and weights animation, then we are set to produce a lot of character animation for the new webgl and flash 3d engines. (And for all other mass of types of projects), hopefully able to interact smoothly as well with Maya/Max/XSI people. (probably things to care later on, in collada, is normal maps and lightmaps.) Kudos for all!. Marco.

About the After Effects exporter I’ve tried all have been done for Blender in the past years. Well, the best solution I’ve found ever is the script by the user OSXrules on Blender Artists. It’s simply the best because the user has just to select the script and everything will be done automatically. A maya file will be created with camera, lights, nulls, and the position of the objects. No need of particular workaround like camera to parent, or javascript files. Have a look at that script and you’ll be amazed. Wren.

Chris, please DO reinvent the wheel 🙂 I dl’ed Blender 2.59 because of the new option “Import/Export MikuMikuDance.PMD”. My goal was to convert all my DirectX files into this new PMD format because it allows better handling of bones. But when I found out that the DirectX-Import was not possible, I was very disappointed. I think that DirectX is a platform-indipendent format (just like Adobe’s PDF) and should be supported in every single 3D-CAD software, with both import and export. Just my two cents. hobbiest3Der.

The RAW Faces RAW export doesn’t seem to work in 2.5x, as it displays a script error. Also, DXF, LWO, M3, IMG, and MHX import scripts are missing and VRML WRL import/export script is missing. The DirectX X exporter surprised me when it exported all the models in a scene but no animation frame data. I have to say though, that the user interface is vastly improved over 2.49 and animating has been made much easier.

All in all, a great job developers! Of the 11 3D modelling software programs I currently use, Blender 2.56a beta is #2 in my favorites list!.

campbell. @All, we will make sure blender has good SVG support as a minimum (if people want to add AI, EPS they are free to), a port from 2.4x is not desirable IMHO because it included its own XML parser, now we have a full python install we can use pythons xml libs and write it much more easily and more maintainable.

Unity3D will update their workflow to allow drag and drop for blends, but when they do this and which version of blender they support is out of our control. @Pagan MAX file importer is not going to happen, search blenderartist for explanations why. Better FBX support is a bit vague, what exactly do you want it to support, or do you mean importer support?

@Richard, get a recent build, BVH export has been added since 2.56! @Steve, again, X3D Import was added since 2.56 also, try a recent build.

Jorsalsa. Campbell, Short question on FBX importer to Unity.

The issue I have with the current export FBX script is that I create the individual named Actions in the file (idle, walk, run, shoot, lean, fly, etc). Now, if I try to export the entire file, then when I import it to Unity the length of the animation is the same for all actions (All actions hae different frames lenght – 30, 40, 50 frames but the file takes always the lenght of the last saved animation). Because of it, I have to export each individual animation as (model@idle, model@walk, etc). As you imagine that is a lot of work, and error-prone.

Unless I am doing something wrong on the export? Thanks for the clarification. Cornell. I use Blender professionaly for the creation of game models for UDK. I find it very frustrating that it is impossible to export simple static meshes for direct use in UDK, even though UDK can import both Collada and FBX formats. Exporting as Collada means the collision boxes are not available or correctly recognized and exporting as FBX means smoothing groups are not available. So I am forced to use 3D Studio Max to convert my models to.ASE files.

An.ase export option, or more complete Collada or FBX would mean a much more streamlined production process. Michael Grosberg. I’m coming from the simulation industry and we use Openflight and Ogre Mesh. We have customers who do the same, some of which inquired about Blender support. I believe a new ogre script is in the works as soon as the API is stable. I have two gripes about the functionality of existing importers / exporters: 1.

3ds importer is not reading pivots correctly – there’s a pivot offset property to 3ds objects that is ignored, so when a file is imported objects appear in the wrong place. It’s not a feature I actually need – I rarely use 3ds anymore – but I did notice it and it’s been like that for years now. Openflight materials are loaded as game textures, while colors, opacity, glosiness data etc.

If they could be imported as material instead that would be so much better. jambay. Wow, lots of comments; I’m thinking this little note will get lost in the pile 🙂 Anyway – I see that “osg” isn’t included. I still use that with 2.49 on occasion, handy to have a text edit file I can tweak for my application. Additionally, since osg isn’t available with 2.5x I use 3DS instead.

There’s an issue with the 8.3 file ref if you use relative paths off the project folders for textures – Blender prefixes the file name and therefore it can’t be found when using the exported 3DS file. Some juggling to change the path and file-name are required.

Overall, nice to see a consolidated list of available formats. Looking forward to using VRML/X3D (though HTML5 isn’t official yet).I know for me as a hobbyist and I would guess many other hobbyist’s working with Indie, opensource, or commercial game engines like CRX, Darkplaces, eDuke32, Fte, Halflife, Openarena, QFusion, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, source, etc having an export right out of blender to many of the established model formats would be greatly appreciated. Some of the formats have been already mentioned in the previous comments like ASE, MD2, MD3, MD5mesh, MD5anim, but then there is MAP, MDL(quake) and MDL(source), SMD(valve/half-life) and the slightly newer IQM(Inter-Quake Model). Right now you need to jump through some hoops relying heavily on 3rd party programs some of which aren’t free such as MilkShape or the ancient but effective Qme along with a few free to use:Quark army knife and Noesis to get some of these formats from your blends in 2.56. I’ve yet to find any exporters that have worked for me for any of those formats under the current beta release. Just makes for a frustrating experience fighting to get your labor and love out of blender and into its intended target.

I just wish each Blender update didn’t break working plugins, but that’s just the way it is I guess. I couldn’t stand Blender until the 2.5’s and 2.56 was the 1st time I could actually work my way around the interface and actually have fun trying to learn Blender with thanks to Roland Hess’s book: Blender Foundations – The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.5 and a BIG thanks to Andrew Price for Blender Guru, his video tutorials and all his work to show people such how easy Blender is to work with to make some awesome stuff appear!. Bavarin Fleetfoot. I suspect that the reason for keeping to a basic set of import/export types and making the rest be addons is so that the program does not grow unnecessary bloat in that area supporting countless file formats, many of which may only be used by a very few people. By keeping only the most commonly used formats in the core program and offering a robust means of extending that from the outside, they keep the program code easier to maintain yet still give everyone access to any data format which is wanted badly enough. Wren. Reply to Chris’ post from 23.

January 2011: Chris, please DO reinvent the wheel 🙂 I dl’ed Blender 2.59 because of the new option “Import/Export MikuMikuDance.PMD”. My goal was to convert all my DirectX files into this new PMD format because it allows better handling of bones. But when I found out that the DirectX-Import was not possible, I was very disappointed. I think that DirectX is a platform-indipendent format (just like Adobe’s PDF) and should be supported in every single 3D-CAD software, with both import and export.

Just my two cents.