Public Beta for Obj, SolidWorks, STEP, and FBX importers

notareal

@ashraf said:

@notareal said:

In this challenge http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6614442 you can find obj and fbx files that seems to be impossible to import in SU (by means I know). If plugins in development can import these scenes... there will certainly be happy customers.

I just finished importing the OBJ file, here is an image of the dragon enjoying the SketchUp environment, I will try the FBX file later.

[attachment=0:291ko41q]image2.jpg[/attachment:291ko41q]

Got a nice bugsplat with fbx, just after import when placing the imported model. Not sure if it's a SU memory issue or plug-in related. Is FBX camera to SU view supported?

Import of dragon.fbx was also quite long (around 10 min did not look on clock). Even as SU did bugsplat when placing the dragon there was a saved .skp in C:\Users"user name"\AppData\Local\Temp (Win7). Saved skp worked fine... had to turn off edges for better response. Had no time to look on all supported fbx features, like cameras. FBX is packed with features, so it would be good to know what features are supported. Anyhow, I am quite impressed of the performance, certainly this seems to be capable importer.

ashraf

@notareal said:

FBX is packed with features, so it would be good to know what features are supported. Anyhow, I am quite impressed of the performance, certainly this seems to be capable importer.

The plugin focuses in importing the geometrical and material information from the FBX file.
The information that is imported includes: geometry, normals, texture coordinates and materials(colors and textures). The plugin also maintains the structure tree inside the FBX file.

Pixero

A feature request:
Would it be possible (for the FBX plugin) to write on import the second UV channel as a custom attribute and then for the fbx exporter to also capture that custom attribute and write it back as a second UV channel?
A second UV channel is often used for lightmapping so by beeing able to open a fbx file for editing in SketchUp without losing it would be great for workflow.

Of cause I can see a need for lots of other things written as custom attributes that would be great to have (like animation and other material attributes) but I'll start with just this one...

notareal

Adding fbx camera to SU view support would give some more value. There are situations when cameras must match.

ashraf

@pixero said:

A feature request:
Would it be possible (for the FBX plugin) to write on import the second UV channel as a custom attribute and then for the fbx exporter to also capture that custom attribute and write it back as a second UV channel?

The problem with this, is that while we are in control of the import process, the export process is done using the FBX exporter created by Google which we have no control over

ashraf

@notareal said:

Adding fbx camera to SU view support would give some more value. There are situations when cameras must match.

Adding Camera import is not difficult, we thought be able to add in future updates of the plugin

Pixero

@ashraf said:

@pixero said:

A feature request:
Would it be possible (for the FBX plugin) to write on import the second UV channel as a custom attribute and then for the fbx exporter to also capture that custom attribute and write it back as a second UV channel?

The problem with this, is that while we are in control of the import process, the export process is done using the FBX exporter created by Google which we have no control over

I thought you had a fbx exporter plugin too? Or maybe you could write one that did support these kind of things?

ashraf

@pixero said:

I thought you had a fbx exporter plugin too? Or maybe you could write one that did support these kind of things?

We have an FBX exporter that we use in SimLab Composer, but we did not release one for SketchUp, The current new plug-ins are only importers.

jsteacy

I bought a model off of http://www.modelplusmodel.com, the .obj file won't import into sketchup. Once I select the file and hit open simlab obj importer crashes, though it doesn't crash sketchup. the model I purchased does come with a .fbx file so I'm going to download the fbx importer tonight, and try that once I get the trial code.

ashraf

If you can share the obj file please send it to support@simlab-soft.com we will test it and let you know why it is crashing the importer

jsteacy

Ashraf, I just sent you a PM

jsteacy

tfdesign

Oooh! A Solidworks importer??

How about a Solidworks exporter??!

Or even just SAT?

ashraf

@jsteacy said:

Ashraf, I just sent you a PM
jsteacy

I saw the file, the problem is due to the fact that the file uses negative indexes for the faces.
This is something that we should address before the release.

Thanks for the models

thomthom

@ashraf said:

@fletch said:

Impressive. How long, exactly, did it take to import the dragon object? Can SU even handlethat dragon file in all it's high-poly glory?

The operation almost took 15 minutes, 5 of which where consumed by SketchUp after importing the object, my guess is that SU works on building a detailed bounding box and verifies the object is correct.
After that the object is usable is SU, it is not very responsive, you need to wait for your actions to be executed, but you still can work with it.

I think it's SU's auto-merge feature that takes time. The more entities already in the entities collection the holder it takes to add the next entities. What method are you using to build the geometry? Entities.fill_from_mesh is by far the quickest.
http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/ourdoc/entities.html#fill_from_mesh

@unknownuser said:

The fill_from_mesh method is used to add faces and edges to the collection of entities from a PolygonMesh. It requires that the entities collection to be filled is empty. It has higher performance than add_faces_from_mesh, but does less error checking as it builds the geometry.

ashraf

Yes we are using fill, not add. We noticed that opening a file in SketchUp is much faster than importing it. So the next version will add an open option, It is a good practice to use the open option with the largest model in the scene

thomthom

Open Option?

ashraf

try importing a large SkechUp file, and compare it to opening the same file.
Open takes much less time for the same file.
So we are planning to take a advantage of this in the next version of the importer.

jsteacy

Ashraf,

I tried the .fbx importer with the same models from that website, it brings in the geometry but does not import the textures.

jsteacy

ashraf

The problem with the obj file was already fixed, and it will be included in the release

paulower

Fantastic.

You have not thought about making a plugin to import of *.max to SketchUp?

I think there not is still an importe *.max to SU.