polygons to points

[CLONEOPS]

Convert your object to a mesh and then turn on point edit,select all points then ue this command
"ExtractPt"
-delete your original mesh object then select all the points...export as iges file works fine.:)
.stl will not.
~not sure about the other file export formats,but most of the others should work.

[rodrommel]

gee thanks. That set the points right where i wanted them.

I'm still having one problem though. When I take the points file that I extracted from rhino, and load it into a program called OEdit, which is used to edit .o files used by EA Sports games, the lines are drawn wrong, and the model looks like its made of barbed wire :p

When the extractpt command is used, does it alter in anyway the information of the normals for each vertex? I don't expect anyone to know this because EA really chose a weird format for their models. Anyone familiar with this knows why the lines connecting the points are being drawn wrong? Can it be fixed?

[CLONEOPS]

gee thanks. That set the points right where i wanted them.

I'm still having one problem though. When I take the points file that I extracted from rhino, and load it into a program called OEdit, which is used to edit .o files used by EA Sports games, the lines are drawn wrong, and the model looks like its made of barbed wire :p

When the extractpt command is used, does it alter in anyway the information of the normals for each vertex? I don't expect anyone to know this because EA really chose a weird format for their models. Anyone familiar with this knows why the lines connecting the points are being drawn wrong? Can it be fixed?

Generally speaking all the points extracted from your surface would point outwards unless the flip command was used...but that could get screwed up somehow depending on the
export options and file format used.
What file format did you use to export from rhino? -also post a screen shot of the barbed mesh.

[rodrommel]

OK I'll start from the top. I began by taking an .o file model, and using the program OEdit, I exported it to milkshape. From there I exported it as an OBJ and loaded it into Maya. After editing it in Maya, I saved it as an OBJ, and because OEdit can only import point files, I loaded the OBJ into Rhino.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/rodrommel/rhinoediting.jpg

the black point cloud is the original .o file that i exported from OEdit as a .txt Rhino points file
The purple mesh is the OBJ I imported after editing it in Maya.
The red point cloud is the Extracted points from the verteces in the purple mesh.

I took the red point cloud and exported it as a .txt Rhino points file because that's the only format that OEdit can import.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/rodrommel/originalhead.jpg

that is what the original .o model looks like without changing anything.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/rodrommel/editedhead.jpg

and this is what it looks like after I import the points file from the edited mesh.



It looks like the points are all in the right place, it's just that OEdit is drawing the lines connecting them wrong.


I believe it's a problem with the order that Rhino is saving the points in the .txt file. I did a test by importing a points file of the unedited head into Rhino, then changed the position of two of the points, and exported back. When I imported this test file into OEdit, I got a barbed wire model again.

By looking at the .txt files that Rhino exports, I noticed that it exports them in order from least x-value to highest x-value, where as the .txt files exported by OEdit have some different order.

My best guess is that the points need to be exported in the same order as OEdit exports them. Is there a way to do this? OEdit has a file called OEdit_RhinoTXT.dll. I hope this explanation helps.

Thanks in advance

[CLONEOPS]

My first thought here is that the vertices are unwelded..when where/unknown,probably at the mesh stage in rhino...will check this later.

[rodrommel]

well when I imported the obj into maya, i noticed many of the verteces were not connected. I chose not to mess with it, though. I figured if theyre unconnected, then it's for a reason. It could be that that's the problem. Would unconnected verteces affect the order in which the points are exported in rhino?

[CLONEOPS]

okay ~do a little test,do your import/export run through again with a simple box object..set the box at zero co-ordinates at every stage,keep scale units the same in each ,also do not do any smoothing options- but weld the box when possible when it is an option .

[rodrommel]

oooh, i would've done that a while back, but the problem is that when you want to import a points file back to OEdit, it has to have the same number of verteces as the object it's replacing. So, I'd have to make a box with 673 verteces, and I'm almost 100% id gead a hideous looking box =(

[rodrommel]

ok well I couldn't make a 673 vertex box, but I did make a 676 vertex toroid. I just deleted three points, and exported the points in a txt file. This is what i get when i load it into OEdit...

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/rodrommel/toroid.jpg


Once again, the way the lines are drawn is wrong... I don't know how to make rhino export the points in such an order so that the lines are drawn right.

[tilite]

I might have a proper answer for you in a few weeks because I will be doign a similar thing in a program called Generative Components, however I think there is a differenct technique used.

With my knowledge on Rhino I can't see this being possible without a plugin of some kind. The points just have no way of communicating. Once you have extracted them they just become arbitrary points in space, they have no one of communicating with other points. I have no idea how you would be able to extract them with some type of hiearcial system that allows them to be numbered correctly in order.

Good luck :)

[rodrommel]

yea, I figured a flugin would be needed, and to this day, I have no idea what the order for structuring the points should be. EA really made this hard, and I really dont know why. All it does is make it hard to put in your own models. Stealing the models from the game is really easy, so I don't see the logic behind it.

I just hope someday this question can be answered.

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