Testing Modo to Leadwerks pipeline with some problems

[Roland]

http://vimeo.com/22841693

Texturing a simple mesh and get into the engine should be a simple task. But....
This video shows a problem I have with getting a simple mesh to show up in Leadwerks Engine
followed by a question "What did I do wrong". Feel free to tell me what

[Richard Simpson]

This is to do with bones in an un-animated mesh. I imported my desk with bones, but no animation, and get the same effect. (see image)

 

In UU3D there is a tickbox when exporting to GMF to allow bones and animation, I have to untick these. See if you have options like this in MODO for the FBX exporter.

[Canardia]

Modo exported bones, but you don't have the skin shader in your mat file.

Remove the bones in Modo or add the skin shader to your mat files.

[Josh]

I'm seriously thnking about disabling hardware skinning in le3 due to the number of problems people have with it. This issue comes up all the time.

 

Are there fbx export options in Modo to not save bones?

[Canardia]

Don't remove hardware skinning. Just write one page of documentation how to export models, and make sure the web site doesn't change every week and half of the tutorials and docs are lost A skin change should not be able to change any functionality either, it should be just CSS change.

[Roland]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

As there is no settings for 'not' export bones in Modo I loaded the exported fbx into uu3d and disabled bone and animation at GMF export. This worked. Good.

 

I also tested with the skin shader as suggested but with no success.

 

Although the UU3D thingy works I really think that such a simple thing as this has an terrible complicated pipeline, from fbx model to gmf. It would be so much better if there was a program that created the material, converted the textures to DDS and made the fbx->gmf conversion in one step. As it is now you have to go through 5 different tools (fbx2gmf, materialeditor, MakeDDS, GenMat, UU3D ) to get things done. Not good at all!

 

This is absolutely no joy for the user.

[Canardia]

I think it's good that only UU3D works in a professional pipeline. All 3D modeller's export routines are broken, and I hope it will always be so, because then UU3D is the only working pipeline, and we can focus on one 100% working thing instead of a million broken things.

[Marleys Ghost]

I Have no problems converting FBX to GMF using UU3D .... the pipelines a breeze

[Roland]

I know that UU3D works. That's what was suggested and that solved the problem. So far so good.

 

But still one has to run GenMat, MakeDDS and MaterialEditor for such a simple task. If this was some 'one-time' setup thing

it would be nothing to mention. But this has to be done each time the model or textures are changed.

 

If I read this correctly the pipeline is using UU3D for the GMF generation and not Leadwerks own tool.

Isn't that kind of strange and leads to confusion.

 

So this is the recommended pipeline then

 

UU3D to convert FBX to GMF

MakeDDS for each texture

GetMat to create materials

 

fbx2gmf is obsolete ??!!

[Marleys Ghost]

fbx2gmf ? never used it ... as for static meshes I use ADN for materials .. animated I write my own .mats in notepad and use paint.net mainly to convert the textures ..

[Roland]

I'm seriously thnking about disabling hardware skinning in le3 due to the number of problems people have with it. This issue comes up all the time.

 

Are there fbx export options in Modo to not save bones?

No there were no such options. However UU3D solved the problem.

The pipeline is a bit to much "run this, then run that, and then run this" to be cool.

But at least it works now

 

fbx2gmf ? never used it ... as for static meshes I use ADN for materials .. animated I write my own .mats in notepad and use paint.net mainly to convert the textures ..

Whats ADN?

[knocks]

Fbx format is made for animation, For basic assets exporting a .obj is all that is really needed. I do agree we shouldn’t need a 3rd party application to provide a smooth effortless pipeline.

[Brent Taylor]

I think it's good that only UU3D works in a professional pipeline. All 3D modeller's export routines are broken, and I hope it will always be so, because then UU3D is the only working pipeline, and we can focus on one 100% working thing instead of a million broken things.

 

Exaggerate much? The only current modeling package I'm aware of with broken exporters is Blender (Collada comes to mind).

[Canardia]

You need:

1) UU3D to convert models to GMF correctly (All 3D modellers have some flaws, and in UU3D you see them immediately and can fix them)

2) Paint.NET to convert textures to DDS correctly (MakeDDS crashes on certain dimensions)

3) Notepad++ to make mat files (GenMat creates a lot of unneeded junk)

[Marleys Ghost]

Whats ADN?

 

 

http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php/topic/2550-adn-materials-editor-11-r3-is-out-update-08262010/page__view__findpost__p__23573

[Roland]

http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php/topic/2550-adn-materials-editor-11-r3-is-out-update-08262010/page__view__findpost__p__23573

Oh.. I had forgot about that one. Thanks for that link Marley.

[Roland]

Finally got things to work using the ADN Material Editor... GREAT TOOL.

 

1. Model in Modo

2. Export to FBX

3. MakeDDS on Textures

4. UU3D conversion of FBX to GMF. Scale = 0.01

5. ADN Material for the materials (what a great tool!!!)

 

Here is the result in the Editor.

 

 

Thank's for your help

[Josh]

Yay!

 

You know, I really think of materials as things that are shared across models, not something unique to a model that should be exported along with it, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.

[Roland]

Yay!

 

You know, I really think of materials as things that are shared across models, not something unique to a model that should be exported along with it, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.

 

In fact you are both right and wrong at the same time.

 

For models which have textures & normalmaps that are unique to the model (not tiled textures) the material is unique to the model

as in my example (Although the textures in that simple one could have been tiled). In those cases the material could to be something

thats generated more automatically as in 90% of the cases it is a color-map and a normal-map.

 

For other models you can use tiled textures which are not unique to the model (like stonewalls etc..). In this case the material could

be a material thats more generic (like stonewall.mat), which can be applied to different models.

 

So in my view its two different kind of situations where the materials are used in different way.

 

ModelMaterial - is unique for a model. Can be autogenerated with some effort.

TiledMaterial - is a generic material which is non-unique and may be applied to any model

[Canardia]

There can be also a MaterialMaterial, for example wood, some certain type of plastic, glass, paper, steel, etc..., which are homogenous and can be be used by smaller models also. They don't necessarily have to tile, if they are 4096 textures and don't repeat on a smaller surface, so that only like 20% of the texture is shown.

[Roland]

Anyway. All is perfectly OK with me as long as there is a pipline that works for me.

And now there is. I guess its hard to autogenerate materials. And the ADN Material Editor

solved the problems, again...WHAT A GREAT TOOL!

 

As I understand it, materials and edit of them things will be much better in LE3.

[Josh]

Considering my art background comes from CSG editing that makes sense. I never met a texture I didn't want tiled.