♥ PosetteForever ♥

I've been looking for a CAD-shaped package that is 'OBJ +MTL' friendly since I discovered that TurboCAD were not planning to add support. Worse, although they claimed to have added FBX support, their forum did not care to discuss its effectiveness. In fact, no-one on the forum seemed to have tried the facility, never mind noticed the small problem of rigging variation that currently besets Poser import. <br /> <br /> A lot of the legacy / free modellers such as Carrara and Hexagon are stuck as x32, cannot cope with the hi-poly models and sets I want to rip or slice to Poser-friendly size. Blender's quirky UI gives me a prompt migraine... <br /> <br /> So, sorta by default, I came to AC3D. It seemed to tick enough boxes, a complete home/student license would be cheaper than that dubious TurboCAD upgrade and it offered a fortnight's free trial. <br /> <br /> So, after serendipitously de-bugging network render Box' CPU superfly settings, and belatedly installing my new all-in-one printer that's been on to-do list for several months, I down-loaded the AC3D pack. <br /> <br /> First oops, Win'10 Defender refused to run the exe. Not watermarked or such. I set my totally paranoid Norton's to work, no dangers found... <br /> <br /> Second oops, AC3D's 'Help' comes as a lonnnng web page. That is white text on black plus vivid blue section headings, so far so good. <br /> <br /> But, the side-bar with index is dark gray text on black, barely legible. Well, D'uh... <br /> -- <br /> <br /> AC3D windows etc also had that too-gray on black text format, but the UI lets you change it. And makes that easy to do. <br /> <br /> Now with an oven-meal heating, I quickly hunted around my archives for some trial models. I needed something interesting to play with, something neither too simple or too complex for this first pass. A pair of potion / perfume bottles for DS, which I'd 'ripped' to OBJ seemed a good start. Unfortunately, they used 'DUF' calls per MC5/MC6 rather than eg JPGs. <br /> <br /> Then, while browsing my archive of free downloads from ShareCG, AC3D recognised a .BLEND model. It read Blender ? Really ? Yes. And, unlike Blender itself, had a UI that made sense. Although the model, a low-poly 'Martian' ray-gun, lacked texture calls and was too simple to un-group to components, it readily exported to OBJ+MTL. <br /> <br /> Fumbling through drop-down menus, I found the UV-mapping option I'd noticed earlier. Thirty seconds later, the defaults gave me a nice 1000x1000 auto-distributed template. A couple of minutes wielding a free Irfan View paintbrush produced a clunky JPG texture map. This hand-loaded okay, but adding 'map_Kd map1b.jpg' to the basic MTL using free Notepad made it automatic... <br /> <br /> Not great art, but you can see progress from the Blender original, via default-gray mesh, its template and the result as OBJ+MTL...

Spent several hours playing with the boolean tools... <br /> <br /> As yet, I've not found a way to take two 'bites' from an object and get what I want. Keeps producing 'not solids' with stray tris etc. <br /> <br /> I think my test objects --standard AC3D primitives-- need a lot more polys to keep them as 'solid objects' rather than becoming 'open' shells with fewer boolean options. <br /> <br /> Oh, and 'cutting tool' usually vanishes, so gotta remember to only use duplicates of those if may need again... <br /> <br /> Funny enough, this was a pain in TurboCAD, too, as the legacy 'basic' modelling engine used closed surfaces, think shells, but the advanced modeller, which used solids, was much less friendly... <br /> <br /> Oh, and yes, AC3D *will* read a texture-map call from an OBJ's MTL eg map_Kd 1_metal_rough.jpg but, so far, only for the first material it meets. Ignores rest. And only exports that one call. Okay if one (1) wrap-map invoked, such as my ray-gun example above, but I'll need to experiment with settings to see if have missed essential option beyond defaults.... <br /> <br /> Going to organise meal, then have another try.

Thank you kindly Nik <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/icon_thumright.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br /> <span style="color: blue;">"Carrara and Hexagon are stuck as x32"</span> <br /> <br /> I thought Carrara 8.5 was 64-bit <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/eusa_think.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br /> <span style="color: blue;">"gray text on black, barely legible. Well, D'uh..."</span> <br /> <br /> gray on black, not a great idea of legibility <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/smile.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br /> <span style="color: blue;">"so far, only for the first material it meets. Ignores rest."</span> <br /> <br /> So, a single texture map is the better approach? If I get around to this, then, I'll have to layer something in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro & export it as a single texture map. <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/thumb.gif" alt="" />

"Carrara and Hexagon are stuck as x32" <br /> <br /> 'I thought Carrara 8.5 was 64-bit ' <br /> -- <br /> <br /> Yes, so it is !! Thank you, thank you !! <br /> <br /> Has moved on from my DAZ freebie version. Must check for improved capacity and tool-set. <br /> <br /> FWIW, if AC3D can only handle one (1) wrap-map or texture per exported object *and* has wonky Booleans, then is not better than my ~2017 TurboCAD. At least TC supports multiple 'colours' per model, one per part's 'drafting layer'. And TC would export such via 3DS format, which I could then 'texture by colour-codes' in eg Poser... <br /> <br /> Snag is I want budget software able to reliably 'slice and dice' eg the vast, hugely complex OBJ+MTL sets by Richard Mandel and his team, free on SCG. Dozens of wrapped textures & colours, hundreds of texture calls... <br /> <br /> I've spent entire evenings salvaging lesser models exported from FBX minus MTL, wearily matching the many nice textures to their oft-obscurely named materials. I think my record was ~70 materials, but that gave me a 3-day migraine. Worse, they never quite looked right, as lacked Ka, Kd, Ks etc modifiers beyond my 'best guess'...

I had a look at Richard Mandel's team's SCG profile. Great work by them <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/thumb.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/thumb.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/eusa_clap.gif" alt="" /> ! The models seem to have a lot of parts to them, "vast, hugely complex OBJ+MTL sets" as you mention. I see why it can take quite a bit of work to 'slice & dice' <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/eusa_think.gif" alt="" />

Hi ! <br /> <br /> Could not get past the 'one texture-call per object' barrier, could not make those wretched Booleans behave. <br /> <br /> Yes, AC3D can automatically 'UV' a clean mesh to a tidy template for off-line painting as a 'wrap-map'. That's real-neat, but still leaves AC3D with a 'glass ceiling'. <br /> <br /> So, have un-installed prior to end of trial period. <br /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/very_sad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/very_sad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/very_sad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/very_sad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/very_sad.gif" alt="" /> <br /> And hunt resumes... <br /> <br /> { Sigh... } <br /> <br /> FWIW, since I last checked, FreeCAD Org seem to have re-compiled their open-source package to x64, so I'll take a look...

Ah, no application is perfect, but we tip our hat <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/sombrero3.gif" alt="" /> & say "Well done!" to the ones that are good, especially the freeware ones & their producers <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/eusa_clap.gif" alt="" /> <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/ayeah.gif" alt="" /> ! I downloaded & played (very little) with FreeCAD, & downloaded some books on how to use it, but have not yet gotten around to learning how to use it. I hope that you find the one that ones best for such a task, Nik <img src="https://www.posetteforever.com/images/smiles/thumb.gif" alt="" /> .