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AC3D
Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 8:50 pm
by DaddyHoggy
Work has given me a copy of AC3D for free as its the tool we use in the lab = so they want me to become proficient in its use so I can help with the tech' demos/practicals when our military students are given an afternoon to build a simple tank model to drive around one of our Synthetic Environments the following day.
Since I've only just started learning Wings3D and I have to learn to use AC3D I was wondering if anybody knew if I could combine work with pleasure and build ships in AC3D and then export them in a suitable format that would make the python conversion thingy go smoothly...
Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:39 pm
by JensAyton
They
claim to support Obj/Wavefront format, which is what the Python scripts want. Most 3D tools do. However, Obj is a flexible format and the scripts only handle the simplest forms, so I’d suggest testing it on some simple shapes to start with. If it doesn’t work, send me some of the Obj files and I’ll take a look, although fixing it won’t be a big priority.
Also note that any interesting material configurations won’t survive the conversion – that’s basically anything beyond mapping a single (diffuse) texture.
Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:48 pm
by Griff
it looks like AC3D is able to import and export models in "Obj (Wavefront)" format so you shouldn't have any trouble running them through the python dat-maker script. You'll also be able to import/export your models between AC3D and Wings as well which might help as you learn the program.
Don't forget the Oolite model limits though:
500 veritices, 800 faces and 8 materials (from 7)
(i think in oolite v1.65 - 1.68 the limits are 320 veritices, 512 faces, 7 materials). You can get around these limits though by splitting more complex ships into seperate models and joining them all back together in oolite as subentites.
plus, there's the Dat2ObjTex.py python script that will take a .dat file and convert it to a .obj file, find it here:
http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/ool ... onverters/
it's very handy if you find that you've accidentally deleted your original model files and only kept the dat versions (i've done this loads of times!)
edit: beaten to it
