Preparing 3d files for the 3D Object Loader?

Try another file type from C4D.

your "does not load" file doesn't seem to not have any img textures. in order for k3d to work in any format you will need to apply a image texture to your model. it looks like your using materials and not images for your texturing which is normally fine but k3d requires it.

k3d loads lots of other formats other than collada as well but if your not using image textures I'm not sure if they will work or not either. collada seems problematic at times given all the variances of collada exports there can be. i have been tearing what hair i left out trying to figure out a collada export that works in lion with a re compiled v002 model loader. for me what plays in snow leopard doesn't play in in v002 model loader.

i am a maya person so i usually export my dae files with either open collada or mayas port of open collada dae/fbx format. so I'm not really a c4d guy but what you will have to do is bake your materials down to a texture. if you need the transparencies make sure to include them in your bake if there is an option.

it may be best to use an image file attached to your color/ diffusion channel and then set your channels transparency or opacity settings to be similar to how you have them now. i just suggest this because sometimes baking materials down to an image doesn't always look right.

although with some of my tests i have been able to bake my diffusion, bump and specular maps down to an image as well as exporting a displacement image map..... then put them all together in qc to reflect the pre baked model. its kind of a process apply material paint textures maps export obj open in maya recreate shader in maya bake and export to fbx/dae and then recreate the shader in qc. so for me thats building the shader network 3 times. with the new mud box there is a inter application transfer thing now with maya so i don't really have to build the shader network three times now (woot woot).

c4d doesn't have many options for export in collada. make sure to triangulate you meshes. or if you can combine everything to one mesh so that you can have a non over lapping uv map. the one cool thing about c4d is that you don't have to combine your model to a single mesh. k3d will provide a structured output for all your objects which can be handy. so it is possible to apply movie textures or what ever to specfic objects in your scene but i have found to get better results using a singular mesh.

there is a program called mesh lab that provides some good information about your models, like how many vertices and faces you have etc... face data is a normal coordinate map that corresponds with your vertices. it is used to index out and triangulate your vertices to draw your mesh. so you will need to make sure on the most basic level your model has normals vertices and texture coords with an image mapped to it. you can inspect this by opening your dae file in text. more than likely you will want to do this anyways so that you can edit the model image path to something relative to your project.

im not actually sure about the nurbs thing i know k3d does have some parametric modeling patches but i think it may be best to convert things to polygon faces.

if non of that works try a different format like 3ds maybe ?

Why do you need a re-compiled model loader? Also, what is not loading in my model loader ?

i figured it out vade. i re-compiled your plugin because i thought maybe something was different in lion and thought a 10.7 build might make the model magically appear.

your skepticism has prompted me to take a closer look and finally i discovered that it was my stupid user error using tilda in the path.

my primary issue really hasn't been with qc. I'm really trying to get the animations to run in open frameworks. i know the ofx guys credit you for the assimp loader so i have been testing with your qc loader. not sure your exact involvement.

for what its worth no one on the of forum has tried animations yet..... this is my log report everything looks golden...

OF: OF_VERBOSE: loading model ../../../data/v002Cube.dae
OF: OF_VERBOSE: loading from folder ../../../data/
OF: OF_VERBOSE: initted scene with 1 meshes & 1 animations
OF: OF_VERBOSE: loading gl resources
OF: OF_VERBOSE: loading mesh 0 
mesh helper cons
OF: OF_VERBOSE: loading image from noize.png
OF: OF_VERBOSE: texture width: 512.000000 height 512.000000
OF: OF_VERBOSE: finished loading gl resources
OF: OF_VERBOSE: scene has animations

but no animation is produced.

i have successfully modified the loader to gl name faces so the models faces are pickable and feel i have made some headway but the animation seems to elude me.

its probably another stupid user error i just can not see at the moment.

by the way syphon is the coolest thing ;) going to share something pretty wicked later..... now that i got your model loader working.

thank you vade.

p.s. i uploaded a simple assimp ofx loader that doesn't animate, however it does in qc. you don't have to look at it or anything but like i said the ofx guys credit you for the assimp loader so thought you might want to look at it. nothing special just an xyz 360 rotation.

Okay. I see what i'm doing wrong now. Thankyou for your advice.

I'm not rendering my materials as image textures. I thought the materials would carry across to QC.

Do you mind going over what has to be done 1 more time in order to get a material and all it's channels to only 1 image texture please? i am confused about how you get all the textures making up the material to be defined as 1 image texture.

Just to verify some information, as i'm fairly new to modelling. A shader (in regards to 3d programs & modelling) is the instructions given to the GPU to render out the changes you make on the texture channels, right?

By the way why is it that there are so many variances of Collada?

Thankyou for the good words again.

yes what i mean by shading network is how you graph out your material / texture channels. i call it network because most programs have a node graph view for you wire things up like you do in quartz.

here is a video tut. this guy looks like he has some interesting tutorials.

http://vimeo.com/groups/c4dtuts/videos/22319907

he is baking illuminance in the first pass then he bakes his illuminance and diffusion channels down to the color channel about 4 mins in. this may help you. the bake option is in your render menu. basically your rendering your textures down to file that you use for a texture. i would try a few options. see if not baking your uvs and normals will not work.

before that i would simply make an image file. doesn't really matter.. lets make it solid red. go to your material and click on color channel then click on add from disc and select your red image then drag and drop your material onto your model. repeat this process for all objects in your scene and export it. see if that will reproduce in in k3d.

Okay. That's great, i understand now. Did a test run and everything works well texture-wise. I knew the process of baking materials, just didn't understand the process of double baking to get everything working in QC. Thankyou for that information.

As far as the model i'm trying to use, the one that doesn't work, for it to show i would have to have the whole model as one component in QC right?

Right now it's made up of different components, specifically Extruded splines. Does anyone more experienced in Cinema4d know the workflow of getting a model consisting of extruded splines converted and transferred into QC?

I have attached the file and if anyone could take a look that would be a great help for me. I can finally get this working!

i did a quick test with the file you send. i exported it to collada because it works best for me and fbx always gives me problems. i also used the v002 model importer because i think its match more stable then the kineme one. the first test did not work. then i flatten the model and export it again and i didnt work. strange thing i thought. but the solution is quite easy. its the name of the file. the model importer dont like ":,*''' so if you rename the file without all the´' signs it works like it should (you dont need to flatten the model in c4d)

Thankyou for doing that.

That's interesting stuff because i renamed the file just before i uploaded it so any problems i experienced with it was just with the name being letters A-Z.

It's still not working for some reason when i do it. Would you mind sending me back the C4D project and QC comp you used please? I know there's not much modified, but i can compare everything and hopefully find the answer.

Thanks again!

@dust; animations totally work in my loader, as demonstrated in the file included in the examples. The best thing to do, please, in these situations is let me know of bugs so, you know, I can fix them, rather than populating the world with multiple variations of half working implementations.

• Are you using the latest model loader from the site?

• Your cube model works for me out of the box, animating without an issue at all.

• Using oF as a base means no fat 64 bit compilation, further producing confusion and inconsistency in host app support.

• Additionally I have many fixes in my QC loader that oF does not have, like wider animation support and improved bone handling, and performance.

hiltmeyer wrote:
i did a quick test with the file you send. i exported it to collada because it works best for me and fbx always gives me problems. i also used the v002 model importer because i think its match more stable then the kineme one. the first test did not work. then i flatten the model and export it again and i didnt work. strange thing i thought. but the solution is quite easy. its the name of the file. the model importer dont like ":,*''' so if you rename the file without all the´' signs it works like it should (you dont need to flatten the model in c4d)

With all due respect, the v002 model loader isn't more stable than Kineme3D... or maybe this should say "where is your proof?"

Kineme3D has had an amount of real world testing that can't be said of many patches. It is totally GL sane, and does everything right (though I guess there could be some performance enhancements maybe). Kineme3D supports an extremely wide variety of models, some of which have been lacking in standardization over the years. Not all exporters always make correct models either, or create files exactly the same...

...for instance, MD2's have a cap on the amount of frames they can have. Yet many model exporters don't care about that, even though it's not technically spec. So, kineme3D has to workaround these issues manually, or by using importers that handle that kind of issue.

One thing that can be potentially irritating in a realm where we need to be focused on "hard fact" is how willing forum users to opine about things that:

1- They have no first hand substantiation of, or hard statistics supplied. 2- They have no sited source for third party information (in the case they have no personal experience). 3- Has had a lack of critical thinking behind the opinion, or none is presented.

I think we'd all benefit from clamping down on letting the "uh, I think maybe", and "maybe somewhere it says", etc., and instead take a pause, and go look for the info before posting, refresh one's mind, and also get more serious about logical thought patterns when trouble shooting. I mean, Vade has had a plugin of his with no problems ridden hard and hung out wet, recompiled and tweaked for no reason at all. Someone might actually download that and think his programming sucks. Let's steer clear of this kind of thing.

"I think it's match(sic) more stable than the kineme/v002/bangnoise/franz/whoever one" has no place in a discussion on the forum, because it doesn't say anything constructive, or based in evidence or fact.

This is more of a general statement than directed at this particular post. It's way more useful to have a forum where people trade in fact.

What does "GL sane" mean, out of curiosity. I agree with everything else you said. I ought to fix that tilde path issue though, ha!

Signal to noise is always an issue on forums like these, people tend to have a lot of theories and rarely take the time to back them up with hard evidence (me included).

sorry that i try to help.sorry that my english is not as good as your german. sorry that i write on YOUR forum and forget to attach my logfiles from the past year to prove MY Opinion. my intention was not to say this is better than that. in this case its not even comparable. (kineme 3d is more like a 3d suit with all the nice bending and stuff) all i wonted to do is write the fakts of my test to help out and provide all info about my setup. also i think your post is much more negative for this forum than mine or others as this kind of post dont encourage others to post there experience. would you post as much if every time you post someone says shut up and prove your opinion. this is not a general statement (even if i dont quote you ;-) ) its directed to you mr gtoledo3

vade wrote:
What does "GL sane" mean, out of curiosity. I agree with everything else you said. I ought to fix that tilde path issue though, ha!

Signal to noise is always an issue on forums like these, people tend to have a lot of theories and rarely take the time to back them up with hard evidence (me included).

It's a sane OpenGL implementation, and follows QC's conventions... if you delete it from the editor/stop the patch, etc. it does the right thing. It doesn't screw up the gl state of other patches.

I should have written the above instead of just reducing it to "GL sane" and assuming I'd communicated what I was thinking.

As far as I know, neither does my loader, unless that was not a point of contention, just a statement thereof.

hiltmeyer wrote:
sorry that i try to help.sorry that my english is not as good as your german. sorry that i write on YOUR forum and forget to attach my logfiles from the past year to prove MY Opinion.

I'm just a longtime user, and I've collaborated with Kosada at times.

I also stated that I wasn't directing the comment only at the post, but more "in general". I was talking as much about the logic behind compiling another version of the plugin, as giving non-fact based opinions as fact. There are many statements delivered in very non-equivocating terms on this forum, when the writer should probably consider their argument better. Again, this is just in general.

Quote:
my intention was not to say this is better than that.

"Much more stable" is very clear, and I'd guess you understand that from your command of the language, regardless of it not being your primary language. It's just a product that my use experience totally conflicts with yours in every conceivable way, so I want to make a point of expressing that in contrast to your one line of derisiveness. It's some of the best money I've ever spent.

I've seen it deployed on the vast majority of Mac flavors of the last few years with no issue. I've had scenarios where I've used APPLE's loader, and it hasn't worked, while K3D has. It works really, really well, and is very stable. THAT's based on experience and fact.

Quote:
also i think your post is much more negative for this forum than mine or others as this kind of post dont encourage others to post there experience. would you post as much if every time you post someone says shut up and prove your opinion. this is not a general statement (even if i dont quote you ;-) ) its directed to you mr gtoledo3

You can look at it that way, but you still haven't said what is wrong that makes it unstable. I mean, you're on a forum provided by a company for your leisure (and by people I consider my friends) calling one of their flagship products unstable without any kind of substantiation. Just saying. I'm not trying to hush discussion at all. I'm just saying that this forum has gotten a bit hard to read because of the amount of opiniony/mythy/rumoury/superstitious stuff posited as fact, posters rushing to suggest fixes when maybe they should still be learning, and with the increase of that, so comes a decrease in value. I'm not being negative, just taking a stand against lack of intellectual rigor.

What I'm saying is, if it's unstable, it's actually productive to throw out some facts, show some files, perhaps some models in question because that leads to some kind of logical analysis, and maybe even solutions to problems!

If I say something that is totally whackadoo as fact, that's seemingly arbitrary opinion, with no kind of reasoning, and when pressed still give no reasoning, PLEASE take me to task. I actually prefer to learn.

vade wrote:
As far as I know, neither does my loader, unless that was not a point of contention, just a statement thereof.

I made that point because of the thing of yours being "much more stable". I'd say they're pretty equivalent, save that K3D has likely had much more bug testing and deployment time, and little issues have been combed through (like managing context inside of RII's correctly, loading paths correctly :), handling shadows (I don't remember what yours does in this regard, not making a comparison), etc., )...

@ fhill2 i just double checked an i think i nailed the problem down. you have to erase the unused extrude nurbs. when you export you also have to check the triangulate export box. i also attach a export of your c4d file witch is working for me. if it is still not working for you let us know im shure we will find a solution.

@gtoledo3 sadly, shadows won't work with my loader due to a bug with the Lighting Patch not firing off valueForInputKeyDidChange method, resulting in no loading, at least on 10.6.

A quick test indicates it works in 10.7, so thats good news.

I do know many models in the Assimp test kit did not load in K3D for me at all, but, I could find some models that would not animate in mine, that would in K3D (which, I think falls back to Assimp only for some specific model formats).

i must say mr gtoledo there is one thing i really hate and you are the one who do it a lot on this forum. the thing is putting things in my mouth(or others) witch i (or others) didnt say .i didnt use the word unstable. i also did not say this is a fact. so dont try to make it look like i did. also if you write something general dont quote me. the time you waste in your rant could be better used to help people out. you dont have to prove everyone on this planet that you are a experienced user and all other people on this forum have no plan about nothing. also dont forget that people here on this forum are from all over the world and its often very hard for them to express or discribe there opinion/problem/solution in english. so please dont blame me or others that they could not write essays like you. you dont know if i send bug reports to kineme or not. so please dont assume things you dont know. also i think the guys at kineme could speak for there own and dont need a
bodyguard. so maybe you should think about this and learn from unexperienced users like me.

hiltmeyer wrote:
i must say mr gtoledo there is one thing i really hate and you are the one who do it a lot on this forum. the thing is putting things in my mouth(or others) witch i (or others) didnt say .i didnt use the word unstable. i also did not say this is a fact. so dont try to make it look like i did. also if you write something general dont quote me. the time you waste in your rant could be better used to help people out. you dont have to prove everyone on this planet that you are a experienced user and all other people on this forum have no plan about nothing. also dont forget that people here on this forum are from all over the world and its often very hard for them to express or discribe there opinion/problem/solution in english. so please dont blame me or others that they could not write essays like you. you dont know if i send bug reports to kineme or not. so please dont assume things you dont know. also i think the guys at kineme could speak for there own and dont need a
bodyguard. so maybe you should think about this and learn from unexperienced users like me.

You said it was much less stable.

Given that, when I say that you indicate it's "unstable" I'm not putting words in your mouth. When I ask why, it's reasonable, because this is a public forum where you have just made a strong statement about a product with no reason given. However, you actually go on to put several words in my mouth, and drastically mischaracterize my motives. So be it.

Stable is an either/or. Something is either stable or it isn't. If something is "much less stable" it is "unstable".

In addition, stability isn't an opinion based qualifier.

You can use lack of communication skills in English as an excuse, but the burden is upon you, the one who is attempting to communicate a concept or opinion, to communicate it clearly should you attempt to engage in an open conversation.

I'm not wasting time on a rant. I'm sharing an opinion based on concern for the quality of discussion.

When I first came to this forum, honestly, the level of discussion was much higher. The people who partook in more of the discussion were generally people that concern themselves with the veracity of the statements they made. My intention is to encourage people to strive for more than diarrhea of the mouth.

@vade i agree this may not be the forum for discussions about your plugins. i was merely sharing my frustration with @fhill about trying to get a model to load as he seems to be having problems with k3d. you asked why i recompiled your plugin and i answered i was trouble shooting. there are not many people that share the source for there plugins and gratefully appreciate your commitment the community via your sharing.

I'm sure you understand that there will be people like me that either tweak plugins to their needs in attempts to improve them or likewise totally butcher something beautiful because they think they know what they are doing. thats all par for the course i suppose when you are sharing things on the internet and discussing problems, peoples intentions tend to get misunderstood. it wasn't my intention to portray your plugin in any negative light or vain if it was taken that way.

honestly i didn't feel right about posting that ofx example on this board partially because i forgot to delete the build file. so my intentions here where not to make your beautiful plugin look buggy as i clearly stated i was using a tilda in my path and it was a user mistake. the implementation i posted is the ofx assimp add-on example that is widely available for download via open frameworks 07 and was only posted here once. it was my understanding that this is actually your code ?

i merely added it as a connivence to you. so all you would have to do is place the file in the apps directory and build it. i was honestly trying to make things easier and let you know that you are credited for this assimp loader via ofx. in order to not do your good name any discredit i thought i would mention this to you as there seems to be multiple people having issues with loading just textures etc... and i thought other people would get frustrated if they couldn't load a spinning cube into the thing.

i realize that you and others that share such a large body of work probably take things like that lightly as the internet is full of idiots like me totally botching up their paths etc... i just thought that you might want to know that loader and dev example did not work for me with the most trivial of animations. 1 a. because i thought people did this sort of bug testing to help each other out and 2 b. in hopes that maybe you had a solution.

i should have posted this question to your forum and for that I'm sorry but in the vain of people mis reading or misunderstanding my intentions in reference to your plugin or loader. the example i posted was only posted once here on kineme in this thread. so im sorry if you think I'm littering the internet. should i ask one of these other guys. kyle or memo ? come to think of it maybe you are right i probably do litter the internet stupid psycho bable but like i said my intentions are pure and not negatively motivated.

// ofDevCon 
// Written by Anton Marini (http://vade.info)
// With massive help from Memo Akten for GL optimizing and pushing this faster than I expected
// Kyle McDonald and Arturo Castro for C++ nuances
 
// TODO:
// 1) Path issues - not all models:
//      a) reference images current working dir
//      b) properly describe sub-folders
//      c) reference absolute paths for images that dont exist.
// 2) convert to ofMesh (?) in OF 007 ?
// 3) Ability to ease *between* two animations. Maybe later folks.

When there's a problem with a plugin, the first thing to do would probably be "yo, that guy actually reads this forum/ this is his forum/ this is his website".

Way after you get the obituary, then you start doing the re-compiles.

fhill2 wrote:
Thankyou for doing that.

That's interesting stuff because i renamed the file just before i uploaded it so any problems i experienced with it was just with the name being letters A-Z.

It's still not working for some reason when i do it. Would you mind sending me back the C4D project and QC comp you used please? I know there's not much modified, but i can compare everything and hopefully find the answer.

Thanks again!

Your mesh needs to be made of triangles. That's what's meant by face data. Forget about "double baking" etc.

@hiltmeyer. In your zip folder there's only a .dae file. When you mentioned attaching a c4d file to your post did you mean a .dae file? Because the original C4D would come in handy to see what you mean by erasing the unused extrude nurbs, as to me in my project none of the nurbs i used are, to me, unused.

When i load the .dae file in vade's model importer it doesn't show and in the k3d object loader it crashes QC.

When I open it, I get a model that looks like there are some overlapping triangles... I've included a screenshot with no conversion and some overlapping triangles, and a screenshot of it in QC w/ K3D - note that I'm only:

-Loading the mesh with meshlab. -Exporting mesh as triangles, to dae. -Loading with K3D and turning on backface culling.

That's it.

What does it look like in C4d? It looks the same in Preview as well, but with the extra color info.

If I convert it to triangles, it winds up looking the same, and loading ok with K3D, albeit the same way it looks in preview and meshlab.

Here's the mesh and setup.

Preview	Attachment	Size
	untitled folder 2 2.zip	139.51 KB
	Untitled2.png	25.32 KB
	logo.jpg	200.78 KB

@fhill2 Odd, that dae loads fine here in my model loader :X

@dust I never thought your intentions were negatively motivated, don't worry about that. I totally get the urge to tinker, its just that I'd like to know if there is an issue, is all. I don't read Kineme forums all the time, so if there is an issue, let me know via email or the v002 forums, etc.

As for the oF stuff, yea, I originally wrote the QC plugin after donating a working, modern VBO and texture loading Mac OS X compatible example app to the Assimp project guys a while back. At oF Dev conference I got animation working and made a simple port of the QC plugin to oF, after that, it left my hands because it got integrated heavily into the rest of 007, using ofMesh, and other changes and I've not really kept up.

The QC plugin was continuously worked on in the mean time, and I fixed issues I've yet to port to the oF code, partly out of laziness and lack of time. The major issue with the oF code, compared to where the QC code is a fix for mis-calculating some bone types sometimes, and properly supporting vertex animation. Your box does not have any bone matrices in it, near I can tell, and simply uses vertex/modelview matrix transforms, so no meshes are being deformed, just transformed, and the oF variant does not handle that simply due to bugs in the rendering/logic of how transforms are inherited in the mesh 'tree'.

No worries. The path issue is fixed for next release. Derp!

@fhill2 here is your model working for you. before i explain to you again the process needed in order to render your model with kineme 3d i want to state and don't take don't take any of this the wrong way as some time my intentions may get misunderstood as i am truly trying to help you out. please try some of the methods that i and others have suggested to you. we are not trying to push you in the wrong direction.

try to take some initiative upon your self or at least attempt to try. the cinema 4d file you posted is the exact same model you posted as not working at the start of this thread. i explained to you twice the process needed in order to get your model into kineme 3d. you stated you understood the concept of using an image as a texture file but did not attempt to do this at all. neither by adding an image to your color channel or by baking your materials down to a file.

i just wanted you to know that people here do not do the work for you and that i am a nice guy and have explained in detail twice what you needed to do. did anybody else do that for you ?

so i will explain again and don't take this in any kind of condescending way i just don't like explaining myself 3 times. and again don't worry i fixed your model for you.

i can only explain the basics concepts. in order to understand a modeling package like c4d or any other high end model package you need to read a book the size of a bible so unfortunately i can not hold your hand and tell you specifically every step...as there is not space for that here.

the good new is that i did the work for you.

• the first issue is that your model is huge like astronomically large. so large that you can not see it when you load it into the renderer.

• issue number two is that your model isn't centered and axis of origin is not in the center either. i can not say how kineme centers your model but if it is off center to begin with when kineme centers it it will still be off screen

• the solution try to work in unit space a measurement of 1 unit cubed. I'm not sure your background but your working in a a very large format that is normally only for high end offline rendering and your trying to to do realtime things. so this is easy make you model smaller.

• now if you simply resize your model and place it in the center at 0,0,0 you can export and load into k3d as is.

• the 3d problem your model is composed of something like 27 pieces and would require that many textures and render patches in order to replicate what you want.

• you are using n-gons in your caps. not sure if i mentioned this before but you need to triangulate your meshes. so changing your cap type from n-gon to triangles and using a regular grid will put your spline extrusions into a somewhat normal format for gl rendering.

• combining your objects into one mesh. well there are a ton of ways to do this. in c4d i believe its called connecting. clicking the objects you want to combine and then right clicking and choosing connect usually does the trick. all though i suggest you start your model with this in mind and work from a single polygon or spline if you need to then select faces and extrude or draw and connect your polygons edge by edge always works as sometimes merging your objects can get funky. its best to just build up form one mesh low poly mesh and the detail where you need by adding and edge or cutting a hole, lofting a spline etc...

• ok this is getting into a book my friend let me just explain what I'm uploading here for you and let you explore. you will be happy to know that just adding changing the size of your model would have made your objects visible in k3d although again you wouldn't have any colors. i just think that once you see your model that may have instigated you to go ok i see something now let me figure out why i don't have colors.

so im uploading your model in FBX format. i think this was mentioned in the try another format section of this thread. i am also including a blank non overlapping uv map for you.

i left the coloring of the uv map up to you. in order to color your uv map open it in photoshop and color your objects how you want. i know you requested someone else that knows how to use c4d to help you and maybe they will. just remember there is always more than one way to do something so you still may have a chance to get the answers your looking for. I'm just not that good enough with c4d to say oh thats simple you just expresso that cappuccino

Preview	Attachment	Size
	monkey.zip	724.21 KB
	monkey.png	262.08 KB

@vade cool thanks man that explains it. if you don't get this message i will try and hit up your forum tomorrow as it seems vertex only animations via colada do not work as well. bones work beautiful in your qc plugin. but don't work in ofx so that makes sense if that is negated in ofx. so is the vertex animations only for md2 files. because exporting only vertex mesh deformations doesn't reproduce in your plugin or ofx via collada ?

the thing that gets me is i can see the astro boy animating in of. is this fix you did with the plugin something easily fixable with ofx ? if you could point me to the function i would be happy to take a stab trying to get it to work in of. i really want to compile something to pc. ? here are the two models. vertex only doesn't seem to animate. when you say vertex animations do you mean vertex only and no bones ? because that is how i exported the vertex only test without bones. i baked the simulation into the mesh ?

ik_bone_no_zip = GOAL. vertex_only = FAIL

@dust. I appreciate you letting me know this. I would like to let you know that when you take the time, and every other person who has takes their time, to help me out by giving me information, i treat it as the opposite of the wrong direction.

I can see why you got the impression of me not attempting any of the things you and other people suggested, because my C4D file uploaded a little while ago was the same as my .dae file that i uploaded at the beginning.

Just because the C4D file i uploaded doesn't have the procedures you advised me to try contained in it does not mean i haven't tried to do it myself. My apologies if there was some confusion that put across a message of me having the inability to listen to what you, and other people are going out of their way to advise me on these forums.

I said i understood about the image texturing that you advised me on because i repeated the process myself and saw how everything worked. I have my own examples sitting on my computer and now know how to transfer textures from C4D to QC.

In your first post in the bottom two paragraphs you wrote about getting the model into QC. You advised me on:

1. Triangulating my meshes - I thought i had correctly done this by changing the settings when exporting the .dae out of Cinema4d but now, having read Gtoledo's post realised that i hadn't done this correctly, however in that moment in time before the post of my c4d file i did think i had achieved, and recreated, what you advised me to do.

2. Making sure my model has, on a basic level, normals, vertices and texture co-ords with an image mapped to it (and checking this by opening up the .dae file).

I was looking on the internet at the same time you wrote your first post, and came across another post about Fireflies. http://kineme.net/forum/Discussion/DevelopingCompositions/FirefliesHowWo... Where franz mentions combining multiple components down to 1 component in a C4D project to be able to work in QC. (I immediately thought this was my problem, as i was pretty sure that my .dae file contained normal, vertices and texture co-ords and my .dae file contained multiple components)

Once i thought i had achieved everything you had mentioned to do, i decided to repost about how to get the model into QC.

If there's anything that you can think of that i can upload to show that i recreated the processes you and other people mentioned during this post around the time and date of the previous posts please let me know, because i want to prove that i do listen and appreciate every word that is posted in response back to me.

By the way, i also want to make clear that i don't think anyone who has has replied to me, if in this post or another post, is 'working' to sort out a problem that i have. I know that they are taking time out of their day/night, that they could spend doing other things, to help me out on a problem.

Thankyou for the time you still have put in on helping me out with this, even though you feel that i haven't done a good job of taking the advice you've given to me.

Before i go hide in an attic and not come out until i've read every single page of the c4d manual, could you please explain what you mean by '1 unit cubed' please when working within measurements?

Regarding everything else you said to do i'll go ahead and do. Thankyou for setting me on the right track.

@ george toledo

i have read a few of your comments in regards re-compiles. although not explicitly targeted at me via the @ symbol it is obvious that i am the only person in this thread that has said they have re-compiled anything.

for the sake of non ambiguity and clarity unto whom your venting your frustration on please address the correct person. three times you have been addressing hitlmeyer when you should have been addressing me.

lets take these one by by one.

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I mean, Vade has had a plugin of his with no problems ridden hard and hung out wet, recompiled and tweaked for no reason at all. Someone might actually download that and think his programming sucks. Let's steer clear of this kind of thing.

first off whom is saying vades programming sucks ? second where are they downloading this re-compiled plugin from. and who is they ?

thirdly in my defense... i have very good reasons to re-compile and tweak said plugin. who are you to dictate what is good reason and not and why does having a good reason even matter. some people like to actually read other peoples code that is shared on the internet fore the sole purpose improving ones intellectual prowess because they may genuinely be interested in the content or methods used to accomplish a particular task. if you have to know I'm interested in compiling an animation on a pc computer with glut and i am comfortable with qc so i start there first.

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I was talking as much about the logic behind compiling another version of the plugin, as giving non-fact based opinions as fact.

why does re-compiling a plugin that has nothing to do with you require fact verification and substantiation on your behalf. vades intentions and interest into knowing why said plugin was recompiled has clear merit and motive as he I believe is genuinely interested in facts related to his plugins. this so that in his free time he can make improvements. not all of vades plugins work in lion this is fact...

you would probably know this if you tried using them. some of us like to take initiative on there own to try and fix deprecated code rather than sit around and wait for some one else to do it. the logic behind this george is that if something worked in snow leopards and then doesn't behave the same in lion hmmmmm ????? maybe just, maybe the logical solution would be to try a re-compile for the system you are using.

lets try to spell this logic out in a different language using an analogy. so my car wouldn't start one day. i looked at the starter, and i didn't really see any problem there. after some careful investigation i figured out the solenoid went bad and was not connecting with the brake sensors so the car would not start. the next time the car doesn't work let me change some spark plugs and see if it will fire up. its not that then it must the starter this time oh no that didn't fix the problem hmmm what is the problem ohh wait what an idiot i am..... i forgot to put gas in the car.

this is my analogy to trouble shooting sometimes its not always clear what the problem is and can be something completely foolish like a freaking tilda. mind you george i have wasted a week of my life reading every line of assimp code in order to get better understanding to the i forgot to put gas in the car model ? can you relate ? oh no your perfect and have an answer for everything. did you try answering any of @fhills questions ? oh no you didn't you you just said it works for me hahaha you have face that has 16 verts attached to one corner oh that looks bad here is a model that don't work.

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When there's a problem with a plugin, the first thing to do would probably be "yo, that guy actually reads this forum/ this is his forum/ this is his website". Way after you get the obituary, then you start doing the re-compiles.

vade has adressed me several times in this thread asking pertinent legitimate questions pertaining to his plugin so yes i am aware he reads this forum and others. he is a busy guy you would know this if you have visited his forum or have tried using his assimp loader code as i am not the only person asking him these questions. his answers to other peoples questions in reference to his assimp loader have been very short and to simply use collada ? thats it its obvious he doesn't have the time to give an in-depth tutorial on how to load a model and texture into his plugin.

i have gained more pertinent information and insight into disparity between the open frameworks assimp loader and the qc loader in this thread alone than any other on the internet. in fact i have provided him with both simple transform matrix models and more advanced inverse kinect bone models and vertex only mesh deformation models to test with.

some of use truly trying to understand the complexities of 3d animations and trying to understand the work flows needed in order to design for these types of tool sets. i read your comments here and you basically tearing hitlmeyer a new a-hole for not properly documenting his findings. look at how this reads.

Quote:
My intention is to encourage people to strive for more than diarrhea of the mouth.

how is hitlmeyer supposed to take the sentence contextually. you basically saying what is coming out of his mouth is $hit. hey I'm the first person to say I'm talking out of my arse or this is off topic. and it doesn't bother me anymore when you call me out because I'm the first to admit i don't know everything.

seriously dude come this guy hitlmeyer is generally trying to help another human being out of the kindness of his heart and he happened to voice his opinion in regards to him having more luck v002 loader than the kineme loader. are people not aloud to help others out on this forum now or something.

now that is to not say that everything your saying doesn't have any merit but the context of this thread is to figure out a cinema4d export solution that works with kineme 3d.

@fhill no worries mate. i was just reading the other un related comments in this thread and maybe some of that animosity may have rubbed off on you. it was not my intention and now i feel really bad about it because your doing the right thing uploading you c4d file and asking the right questions. i have no doubt that you didn't actually try any of those things i mentioned and didn't listen to any of my advice or others. i just feel to passionately about things sometimes. again your asking the right questions and my snark really has nothing to do with you.

haha no man you don't need to prove anything to me brother i believe you... do it for your self. i like helping others but yeah in general people don't really write others peoples javascript patches for them and stuff like that. people usually test files say this works this doesn't try this technique here is my bug report etc... although there are a few who do and try to help to the best of there capacity. don't get discouraged 3d is very complex and it only gets more complex once you start figuring out more.

yeah the unit space in 3d modeling is usually representative of the grid lines you see on the floor. a unit can be any tyope of measurement you set that unit to be 1 meter one foot et... think of 1 unit cubed being one square in the grid. you can change your view port settings by going to your attribute mode menu and selecting and selecting view settings. the attributes should be in your lower right hand corner. once you are in view setting hit the back tab and you can change the grid spacing to be something you are familiar with in real world terms. mine is set to 100 cm. you can try chugging the grid dynamics to be none that way things don't change when you move the camera. don't let that confuse what i mean by 1 unit cubed is that try to keep your model the size of one of those squares no matter what the real world measurements are. that way when pull your model into kineme3d it will and center and normalize the object you should see it. you will still maybe need to fuss with the scale in k3d but at least you will be able to see your model and know how much to scale it in qc. the attributes are the same place where you can change your n-gons to triangles when you click on one of your extrusions.

@gtoledo "You said it was much less stable."

no i didnt say that.

"Given that, when I say that you indicate it's "unstable" I'm not putting words in your mouth."

yes you did and you do it again.

"Stable is an either/or. Something is either stable or it isn't. "

maybe in your world but not in mine. if some thing crashes then it is unstable is only true in real world not in computer world.( i wish it would be like in real world ) otherwise im working only in unstable environments.

"I'm not wasting time on a rant. I'm sharing an opinion based on concern for the quality of discussion."

open a new thread and dont lower the quality of this discussion with your concerns.

"When I first came to this forum, honestly, the level of discussion was much higher. The people who partook in more of the discussion were generally people that concern themselves with the veracity of the statements they made. My intention is to encourage people to strive for more than diarrhea of the mouth."

maybe it was because there where not as much vainly smartypants people who pollute other post with untruth and tell others from there high horse what they say is only diarrhea of mouth. think about it ;-) also think about how often you where involved in fights on this forum and how often others? so maybe its time to think about your statements.

one last thing i would like to point out to make you happy. KINEME 3D IS NOT UNSTABLE its worth its bits in gold and im very happy i have spend my money on and would recommend to everybody buy it too.

@fhill2 i lost track of your problem because of the arguing with gtoledo. could you please give us short report if you solved your problem (and how) or if we still need to find a solution.

@dust - Interesting. Does this work for you in the AssimpViewer example (its PC only, also direct X, but will tell me if Vertex only animations work). I don't have a PC to test with.

I do know that not all Assimp model modules are equal, and that vertex animation is not always supported. Stick to IK and bones, its also tends to befaster than vertex based animation, because you don't need to upload a whole new mesh for every frame.

Yeah, actually you did say it's less stable and you're actual text is still there, in case you're so out of it you don't realize it.

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also think about how often you where involved in fights on this forum and how often others?

As far as lowering the quality of discussion goes, that's exactly what you do when you throw out non-backed up jabs as facts.

Yeah, the user DUST at one time flipped the hell out because there was a job offer here that he had a delusion that I took from him, and he came on the forum bad mouthing me and the person who offered it (I hadn't taken the job, several people emailed the guy, and it was an open offer.... whatever). Later he took code of mine and made an app out of it to sell on the app store. So, exactly one user, on a repeated basis.

Well, except now.

Regardless of where you're "taking this" my intention was to get clarification of language, maybe see some examples of why it's buggy, etc. I was also being critical of the thought process that arrives at that statement. If that offends you, again, it wasn't really my intent.

...and no, the definition of the word "stable" isn't an "only in my world" definition. You say you don't know english well, but go on to use it to throw several daggers. Why don't you look up the definition of the word stable? It's not a "when it's stable" proposition! I'm helping you, and whether you choose to flip the hell out about it or not, with an unreasonable reaction, is totally your prerogative.

now i really think you try to piss me of. where did i write it's less stable. i wrote i also used the v002 model importer because i think its match more stable then the kineme one. that could also mean that k3d is super cool but i think v002 is better. hiltmeyer is much smarter then gtoledo does not mean you are an idiot.

also i dont have the time to search thru all the forum to prove that you are the guy who try to put words in others mouth. i dont even care about if you do it on others ( as i think im not there babysitter) but if you do it with me then its different. also i dont have to look up the definition of stabel because it got the same meaning in german (we say stabiel) and if you dont get what i try to say with "only in your world" then im sorry. i actually thought you are much smarter and have the ability to read between the lines.( this "much "does not mean you are dumb only not as smart as i thought)

so please gtoledo dont try to put words in my mouth. dont say the text is there when it is clearly not and everyone could see it. and learn to accept not every thing you write is automatic the truth.you are not perfect and make mistakes too. i know its not easy but im shure you could make it.

this is my last post to this gtoledo vs hiltmeyer shit conversation. i you feel to write more about this issue the please pm me or send a email at hiltmeyer (at) hiltmeyer.net

Dude, you are just off the chain.

Quote:
where did i write it's less stable.

See the screenshot of like, the words you wrote only hours ago, that are right above. Whatever man.... This is an open forum. You made a derisive statement about a plugin I use a lot, and haven't had similar problems with, with no kind of substance to back it up. You're still arguing the point for some reason... actually, you're arguing several incompatible points at this moment. One, that you only said it because of language barrier, two - that you didn't say it (it's right above), three- that you did say it and that who cares/it's opinion, etc.

You're right, this is a shit conversation. You could have gone "oh, I didn't communicate what I was trying to, there's a language barrier here" or "no dude, this plugin really sucks, here's a bunch of stuff that shows how less stable it is" without going into the realm of personal attack or anger, which you will only be met back with. I was under the impression that we're trying to have constructive discussion, and an open exchange of ideas with CRITICAL THINKING, not just to pat each other on the back.

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Not to be too much of an idiot, but

where did i write it's less stable. i wrote i also used the v002 model importer because i think its match more stable then the kineme one

Implying a is more stable, logically means b is less, otherwise, how can a be more?

But, this is a ridiculous thread, lets try and solve some model loading issues?

@ vade @ gtoledo i was referring the "less" to unstable and this is not what i sayed. but you are both right and i made a mistake. but its not a problem because i could realize when i say something stupid. and this was stupid. but i also think everyone get my point and what my "problem" with gtoledo was and why i get in defending my words. to get to the point i never said kineme 3d is unstable and i dont like to be attacked for it. thats it. now back to problem solving :-)

@vade i have not had much luck exporting direct .x files either. although i have compiled assimp i have not really looked at it to much. your qc abstraction is a bit easier for me to understand than the ofx abstraction as the ofx is using its own mesh abstraction and mixing with assimps functions. although the implementation looks to be a bit shorter than your qc plugins implementation its a lot more to comprehend given the various layers of abstraction open frameworks has.

i will need to take a closer into what your additions to the qc plugin are....as i am having much better luck with it in regards to animation exports. actually your implementation is beautiful there is no need for me to bake the key frames into the vertex position points in order to make the deformation.

i was hoping for an out of the box ofx solution which i believe there still is chance of this as i see the working demo models fine. it might have to do something with the normalized animation timing in ofx not sure but when i get some more time I'm going to investigate further.

for now I'm using your qc plugin with a normal ik bone rig and is sufficient enough to make the augmented vision proof of concept demo I'm eventually trying to output to vuzix star 1200 display.... vuzix does not have the resources to support mac at this time ;(

it doesn't really matter i should be able to pull it off on a mac if i negate the 6dof sensors and things etc...

@gtWhen you say exported it from meshlab as triangles, can you please elaborate on that process? I've got issues listed below with the attached model. kinemeI really understand why this thread has come up because it really seems like you have to dig around for seemingly little-known methods to get kineme3d to work with a fair few of the models around. If it is picky then we need to know exactly what it expects in a model and how to do it rather than traulling forums. The examples that ship are great for implementation methods but as far as models go there really needs to be some documentation. The first model I ever tried to load after buying the license failed and I blindly figured out a work around myself as in this thread http://kineme.net/forum/Discussion/Tutorials/dontgetkineme3dobjectrender... . It's easy to see why people have more beginner-friendly experience with the v002 plugin for this reason. There are many intermediate visualists like myself out there who aren't 3d geniuses but bought k3d to just load some models, would be great to have it explained a little more. As for the model problem I'm having.Here are the issues I have with it:1. First up it wouldn't load because some of my layers/objects in c4d were duplicates and thus had duplicate names. V002 loaded it fine. Fixed this by editing the .dae in txtedit and changed the names of conflicting members. I could imagine this would get pretty nasty if the model was complex with many duplicates etc but I guess it lets you use index keys to manipulate individual objects 2. it's far too big, I can only get it to fit in the qc coords when it's scaled down to like .003. When normalised is checked it renders all the objects over each other in the center, is this normal? (no pun intended) Any idea how to control this size on c4d export? (i'm very new to c4d).  v002 auto-scaled nicely.3. When I run it through a structure explode I lose the main center sphere of the model, which is the first 2 members of the structure i think, until i change "range" from inf to nan, but then it stops exploding :(    I ran it through a structure range patch but the members are still not there when inf. What is inf? What is the seed? Range doesn't work the same as structure range, how do you use it?Pretty excited about it though, once it's running I think i'll go crazy on models, will be great fun.  

@fhill and @blackburst

here is HD screen shot of how to do a c4d2k3d export export....

it will be sometime before that video becomes available. if you feel inclined to explore without a screen cast.

using @blackburst's segmented sphere model

steps....

c4d2k3d

• object tab -> file -> merge objects. • select object model • set centimeter scale .025 • select all copied sphere objects • pull them out to root of object tree • delete null grouping object • select all sphere models • right click connect and delete • add material • add texture to file on color channel • set material to object • export collada with scale of 1 • load in k3d • add texture file to object render

@blackburst you shouldn't have to connect your models or combine all objects. just resizing will work if your wanting to treat objects as a structure. i suggest maybe dealing the objects singularly and or connect down to few maybe to have a more managable structure.

with the object exploder the range is the range in which object explodes. think of it referring to your model size in qc units if your model is 1 and range is 1 then your whole model will explode. if set .5 then half your model will explode. so its basically the distance from ground zero in explosion terms.

interesting enough you can use it as a reverse your delta time and put your model back together after you explode it. the file i uploaded illustrates how to blend 2 mesh explosion and reverse the explosion to audio input for a interesting effect.

That's really helpful, dust.

Man, Dust, you are a fucking dude. Thanks so much. This is why I talk to people. :)

Any idea why the "smooth" option on the loader suddenly stopped smoothing? I can only get a faceted look now. I literally changed it from smooth to faceted back to smooth and now it won't ever smooth. edit> I found that if I leave the phong tag in the c4d object and leave "export 2d geometry" checked on export to dae, once it's in qc and obj renderer is set to normals: pass-through then it respects the phong smoothing...with buggy results, you have to stop and start the viewer if you change to faceted and back. begs the question, when does smooth actually do something?

urgh. So you have to check "simplify" to get smooth to really do anything. if normals are set to pass through and I either get nothing or the occasional flash, that means my normals are fucked yeah? How do I go about repairing them? If I make a stock sphere primitive in c4d and export to collada with no phong, simplify and smooth on the loader and pass through normals on the renderer it just becomes partially smoothed with some polys still with edges etc. I would have thought that a plain perfect sphere would "smooth" uniformly around the whole shape?