[Plugin]Export Collada with texture names 1.2b [30/9/11]

Morten

Thanks for that, TIG - the textures work great now without the need to manually edit the paths!

Any idea how to preserve the original SketchUp material names in the DAE file?

Aerilius

Any idea how to preserve the original material names in the DAE file?

That's what I've been working on (while I hadn't read all new posts here). I've also found the mistake myself and fixed it (I had mixed up the file base name and full path).
So now the plugin not only replaces texture file names, but also the material's screen names. It wasn't simple because collada has several different material names (<material>, <instance_material>) that are scattered over the whole file.

@driven said:

maybe putting the dae file into it programatically would be better

So you mean to put the collada file into the same folder where the textures are? I understand how that would be useful, for now I did only modify the contents of the dae and kept the file structure how SketchUp produced it.

Gaieus

@aerilius said:

So you mean to put the collada file into the same folder where the textures are? I understand how that would be useful, for now I did only modify the contents of the dae and kept the file structure how SketchUp produced it.

Indeed it could be useful however note that it would be rather unusual. Most of the exporting packages I know place the materials into a subfolder under where the model file is. Would it not cause confusion rather than ease of use? When exporting, most (experienced) users create a folder to collect all exported files and subfolders anyway.

Morten

@aerilius said:

I've also found the mistake myself and fixed it (I had mixed up the file base name and full path). So now the plugin not only replaces texture file names, but also the material's screen names.

Hmm, after replacing your Ruby script with the latest version, the imported DAE object appears without textures in both Blender and Lumion.

I'm testing a simple box with 1 brick material + 1 default white material on the inside of the box, and as far as I can tell, there's still a slight discrepancy between the material names throughout the DAE file:

<instance_material symbol="[Brick_Rough_Tan]" target="#ID5">
<instance_material symbol="Material3" target="#ID15">

...

<triangles count="12" material="Material2">
<triangles count="12" material="Material3">

The texture re-appears if I replace "Material2" with "[Brick_Rough_Tan]", so it's almost working.

TIG

I too have noticed this BUT the SKP dae-importer works just fine
Perhaps these other apps need the image files to be with the dae - but the normal SKP dae-exporter version writes to a similar textures subfolder too ?

I have also played around with trying to adjust the material's names in the xml - you can convolutedly connect the textures to the materials and thereby get the real material's name... BUT changing them in the xml [manually] seems to do nothing because when you import the materials they are still called '<auto>1' etc anyway

pep75

F I N A L L Y !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU!

pep75

mmm....the love is over.....it doesn't do anything! Is it working? I'm importing the Collada-file into Cinema4d but I just got the "normal" material names......

Gaieus

What do you mean by "normal" materials names? Texture0, texture1 etc.?
Are you using this exporter? (File > "Export collada with texture names" and not File > Export > 3D...)?

pep75

Hey Gaius,

In Cinema4D I normally get "Material 1, Material 2, etc" instead of the material names I use in SketchUp. When I use the collada-plugin (file > export collada with material names) it really doesn't export it with the material names. I'm working with Windows and version 8...mmm

grtzz
Pep

TIG

We can't see how to rename 'Materials' in a DAE file.
We can rename their 'Texture' files however.
SO depending on the app that you import into - all materials will become something like material0, material1 etc, or in a SKP <auto>1 etc.
Assigning a name to a material in the DAE is simply ignored and the app's imported materials are named using their simple numerical order in the DAE file.
However, if the material has a texture many apps will list that against the material, so you can then spot it by that image-name IF you've used this exporter-tool and had used sensible image names for textured-materials. With the native DAE exporter material1 will have a texture called perhaps texture1.png etc... but at least this tools gives material1 with ' brick_666.png'...

pep75

Aaaaaah...so only the names of TEXTURED materials will show up...mmm...well that means no improvement for me.......grrr....I could already see the linked texture-names in Cinema and the textures are clear to me wich material it is....well...

Thanks though!!
Grtzz
Pep

Aerilius

@tig said:

SO depending on the app that you import into

That could be a explanation (I can't check because I don't have C4D).

It seems collada files contain several "similar" elements like %(#000000)[<image>], %(#000000)[<effect>], %(#000000)[<material>] and %(#000000)[<instance_material>]. SketchUp's exporter applies generic IDs and names ("Material2") to these elements and generic names to the texture files.
I added already the capability to apply the original material's name to %(#000000)[<material name="...">] and %(#000000)[<instance_material symbol="...">] (although that was risky and caused lots of the errors in the posts above, but it should work now). I regret if those names aren't imported into other applications.

pep75

Hey Aerilius, please don't apologise for this...you did a great job, and I was getting used for waiting on a more streamlined import method to C4D. It will come!

Thanks anyway!
Grtz
Pep

StamatisPsarras

First of all Thanks for your efford!

I am having 2 problems with this particular plugnin

The normal collada file from the native exporter in sketchup is about 62mb but with your is more that 250mb. Is there anything, like filenames, material names or whatever matter when exporting?
Importng it to Lumion doesn't seem to show up the names of the materials. Has anyone make it to work properly with lumion? Meaning lots of re-sync with correct materials?

p.s. I don't know if that matters but I am notusing "textres" in sketchup just color "materials" that I change the name (!)

Thanks for your time!

edit: I also tried with "textured" materials and some materials got idd renamed in the first time, but 1) The texture seamed to go to more surfaces than i put it 2) The names on a second export seemed to seize renamed and go to a generic material01, material03...

Although as I understanding there is not a perfect solution here. Has anyone understood what order sketchup uses in order to apply the generic material names? My first thought was alphabetical but this seems not to be the case...Plz help me....

McGyver

I'm curious if anyone has found out if it is possible to keep the material names (by that I mean the SketchUp "color only type materials" not image textures) when exporting using DAE... Has this been determined to be impossible?

rraallvv

Could someone add an option to swap Y and Z axis, please

I am using Collada2POD to import my models into my application, but Y and Z axis appears swapped

I'd appreciate it a lot

electrician

Hi,
I have problem, i use this plug in but still texture names comes like texture0.bmp, texture01.bmp ect... What is possibly happening? I use File > "Export collada with texture names"

MKumar

Even when i use this exporter it creates lot of textures, instead of one. the above comments are too technical for me. can you professional give me a simple solution or an updated exporter which works.

TIG

@mkumar said:

Even when i use this exporter it creates lot of textures, instead of one. the above comments are too technical for me. can you professional give me a simple solution or an updated exporter which works.
The native exporter works fine, except that material-names get changed [even worse in older versions], hence the attempt here to 'fix' the names, the exported DAE format is no different...

Here's my analysis...

When you get lots of texture files relating to something that appears to be the same texture it is because most exported file formats rely on triangulated mesh faces and therefore only have three vertex normals to map the UVs of the textures [i.e. to work out how the texture is positioned exactly on each facet]. Now, if a texture has been simply positioned on a face [i.e. slid around], or rotated or scaled, then these three points are sufficient to determine what the texture should be like on the related exported facet. However, if you have a 'skewed/perspective-like' texture [even slightly distorted like this] - perhaps by moving one corner inadvertently whilst positioning/rotating it, or somehow projecting it - then to UV map that texture in the exported format successfully would need four vertices, and of course as explained before we only ever get three to use !

So to overcome this many exporters will spot these distortions and create a unique distorted texture-map of that particular texture and save it as another 'similar' image-file... and then apply that without any other UV mapping as the texture - so that it then looks the same in the exported version; but of course it has to use this other image-file. Thus, is you have lots of weirdly distorted textures in a SKP that you export it can include many of these distorted image-files... Some Pro exporters try to reuse distorted image-files for several matching facets, others like my OBJexporter have a built-in tolerance and if the distortion is very slight the undistorted standard version of the image-file is still used to avoid zillions of slightly different files/textures getting made...

So, in conclusion... I suspect your SKP has many distorted textures that cannot be easily exported without distorted image-files being created.

Mra

Nice plugin,

but it seems this does not support the exporting of instances/symbols/components etc?

I import in Maya and SketchUp components are no longer instances.

However if I export using regular Collada DAE exporter, maya reads SketchUp components as instances.