Export camera?
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As Chris says it's quite possible, provided that you know the exact format that the target app requires the data in...
I have personally made SKP scene camera-info and SKP scene location/sun/shadow exporters for Octane Render [available via their licensed users sketchup forum], so you can separately import 'nodes' for these two settings into your render settings if desired...
So making ones for other apps may not be so difficult... -
Hi TIG,
How could this be done for LightWave, Maya or Blender?
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Well, the most basic way would be to use a script in SketchUp to see all the properties of the current camera, and then type those in manually into the software of your choice. Thhis plugin lets you do some of that:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27835
Looks like it shows camera location (the camera eye), camera direction and the "up" direction. Those data might be enough to enter into Maya, Lightwave and blender to then correctly match positions. BTW, those data shown are in inches, so you might have to convert them if you are not working in inches in your other softwares.
But if you want a more fully automated way to export a camera file for those software, that would require knowing what file format they can read. I know we have some blender users around. Maybe they know what format could be used for Blender. I'm not sure about Maya and Lightwave. I use neither of those. I do use 3dsmax though.
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Poking around and it looks like both Maya and Lightwave support .dae files (collada). You might try taking your SketchUp model and exporting to those formats and the cameras should come along with it.
If you just want camera data, then do a "save-as" and delete everything out of the model, but leave the scenes in place. Then export the empty model. Maybe it will export camera data into an otherwise empty .dae file? That way you might be able to import that file, with just the camera infor into your existing Maya/Lightwave model.
Just some thoughts.
Chris
PS I would guess that blender will also work with the .dae file.
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Hmm, just tried it and SketchUp doesn't appear to export scenes as cameras in .dae files? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that seemed like it should work. Guess not!
Chris
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Sorry for the spamming....but I should say that a collada camera exporter could still be written, even though I'm not seeing that SketchUp's does it natively. That might be the best file format to use as it appears that many software can read it.
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@chris fullmer said:
Sorry for the spamming....but I should say that a collada camera exporter could still be written, even though I'm not seeing that SketchUp's does it natively. That might be the best file format to use as it appears that many software can read it.
Thanks for trying Chris, and you aren't spamming as any info on this subject is very useful.
I still don't know how to just export from Sketchup as .dae, as I'm using the free version.The trick i learnt (as I'm not using the Pro version of Sketchup) was to:
- export as Google Earth 4
- rename to "archivo.zip" and open the zip. Inside is a .dae file.
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The free version can also export to dae. It may be called "Collada" in the exporter. There is an advantage of that exporter (as it has been re-written); it does not rename materials exported from SU therefore it's much easier to work with in 3rd party apps or when you make some changes in the model and re-export it for reloading in those apps (if they allow it of course)
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@chris fullmer said:
Hmm, just tried it and SketchUp doesn't appear to export scenes as cameras in .dae files? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that seemed like it should work. Guess not!
Chris
No, AFAIK it does not. When you export your model to GE, it can export camera settings but it's not the dae file that bears the info but the kml file one folder level up.
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@gaieus said:
When you export your model to GE, it can export camera settings but it's not the dae file that bears the info but the kml file one folder level up.
Yeah, that was what I finally discovered. Maybe that's a good way to do it for GE, but that's not the right way to do it for collada.
But a separate ollada camera exporter could be written. I never did finish looking into it, but it seems pretty straightforward for a simple non-animated camera.
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