CGTalk - Blender 3d Exporting OBJ file compatibility.

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LeoBlanchette

01-05-2009, 11:13 PM

Hi guys,

This is my first post here! I have a simple question: I'm exporting a rigged/textured/subsurfed model as an OBJ and possibly a 3ds.

For both formats, OBJ and 3ds, I was wondering how to export with maximum useage. That is, to sacrifice as little as possible and maintain greatest compatibility.

At the very least I'd like to make it available as a polygonal model with textures.

On that note, is it customary to just "enclose" the textures in a zip and hope the guy in his 3ds Max program knows how to re-attach them, or is there a way to export the model so it automatically imports WITH textures into any program?

I'm setting up a product on Turbosquid so high quality/useability is necessary.

Yecire

01-07-2009, 12:15 AM

OBJ will handle the meshes+textures fine. As for exporting animation, FBX may be your best bet (you may want to research COLLADA also?).

I haven't done much exporting myself, so I can't get more specific. Try some Google and/or BlenderArtists searching for more details ...

Michael-Williamson

01-07-2009, 12:49 PM

It's fairly common to have a subdirectory called "textures" with all the images in it. This is usually picked up automagically....

else, an OBj usually comes with an .mtl file that has some of the material properties within it (including paths to textures) It might be an idea to look at this file (it's an ASCII format) and manually edit it to have a relative path to the textures sub directory.

Make sure you distribute the .obj and .mtl together and you should be fine.

There's usually shenanigans with the "group" and object" tags in the OBJ file format ...Maya incorectly exports objects as groups for example.... also most exporters/importers/both will do some splitting of the mesh on material boundaries....

Sadly, it just comes down to testing...

make some simple test cases and export/import with different options to your target apps...

note the differences and find the settings that give you minimal cleanup...

(combining objects, setting edges as hard, removing doubles, checking materials etc etc... renaming any "auto named" bits and pieces etc there's always something to do!)

It';s usually safest to split by objects, groups and materials, and always be careful if you have multiple UV sets in the source... most exporters will choose the "active" uv set, but not all....

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