My ideal situation would be I load say 20 chairs via OBJ import and 1st step down in hierarchy
would select one of 20 chairs, next step down would select that chairs seat etc. (parent/sibling nesting)
without thinking about the fact that OBJ doesn't support parent/sibling nesting.

The script you supplied will be very handy for using multiple approaches.

Thanks again!!

> My ideal situation would be I load say 20 chairs via OBJ
> import and 1st step down in hierarchy
> would select one of 20 chairs, next step down would
> select that chairs seat etc. (parent/sibling nesting)

Well yes I think we will get to that point eventually with groups.

Except OBJ not supporting hierarchy throws a monkey wrench in there.

In some cases I have seen programs encode a hierarchy inside of an object name with stuff like different levels separated by a : like the name being "Chair1:Seat:Seat Top"

Do you happen to know if trueSpace supports converting object names into a hierarchy like that? If it does then it may be possible to make it work.

What happens if you take a model that has hierarchy in trueSpace, and export it to OBJ and then read it back in again to a new fresh trueSpace program instance? Do you get the hierarchy back again or is it gone? If you get it back again, if you can send me a sample OBJ file that preserves the hierarchy then that could help.

- Michael

>What happens if you take a model that has hierarchy in trueSpace, and export it to OBJ and then read it back in again to a new fresh
>trueSpace program instance? Do you get the hierarchy back again or is it gone?

No, it's maintained for 1 chair, that was the flaw in my thinking.

If Moi gets to this point and there is another viable export option,(fbx, dae,lwo) then it's time to shop for a new poly modeler.

For the moment the attached chair works, I can use your script on multiple copies (giving me chair_1 Chair_2 etc.), export as obj and
select down in hierarchy and from there I can select by Style (material).

Hi Steve, I'm glad you got a way that will work for the time being.

So the test I was asking about was actually: What happens if you create a model just totally inside of trueSpace instead of importing it from MoI, where that model has some hierarchy in it (for example a parent box with 2 child spheres, or whatever).

If you export that model from trueSpace into an OBJ file, and then exit trueSpace, then start it up again and read the OBJ file back in, do you end up with the hierarchy preserved?

If you do, then it means that trueSpace is encoding its hierarchy somehow in the OBJ file and if that is the case then I could do it too.

- Michael

Danperk, how did you create the awesome animated GIF in the first post? It looks very clean and noise-free.

Hi Ecuadorian,

I used Camtasia 5. Not sure what version they are selling
now but Version 5 worked well so I haven't upgraded.


Hi Michael,

I tried the round trip by exporting a parent with 2 sibling children.

On import the group reverted to 3 siblings.

My main problem is I'm using Moi for scene creation, not just for
creating objects. It works so well for this, I prefer to do everything
except textures and render/animation in Moi. The situation is that
after the texturing stage if a client decides to make changes to
the scene layout, (they always do), then I need my hierarchy to
be easy to re-arrange/edit on the textured version.

That is why I'm interest other poly software with good import choices
that Moi hopefully will support in the future.

Carrara works very well with many of the file types exported by MoI, including 3dm

Certainly it is good value and easy to learn but it comes with so much "built in" operations that other high priced apps often charge huge plugin money for.


Brian

Hi Steve, thanks for running that test. So it looks like OBJ will not work for preserving hierarchies into trueSpace (and probably other programs also).

> That is why I'm interest other poly software with
> good import choices that Moi hopefully will support in the future.

Yeah I will probably be able to focus on this early in the v3 timeframe.

File formats tend to be a finicky area of work, some programs are pretty sensitive to a variety of factors.

It's just not such a great area to tinker with to a very large degree right near the end of a beta period, just too much possibility of problems being introduced.

- Michael

Hi Brian,

> Carrara works very well with many of the file types exported by MoI, including 3dm

> Certainly it is good value and easy to learn but it comes with so much "built in" operations that other high priced apps often charge huge plugin money for.

I have Carrara Pro 6.2 which I got free from 3DArtist Magazine. It's OK and I like to have lots of options for file conversion etc.,
but I think that for most people, myself included, we tend to judge/compare software with what we know and are used to, so for
me Carrara is just not a good fit. In what I have learned by researching 3D programs available out there, I think Modo has the
most to offer for my requirements. But thanks for the suggestion!!

Hi Michael,

> So it looks like OBJ will not work for preserving hierarchies into trueSpace (and probably other programs also).

Yeah it looks that way, still in most regards OBJ export allows me to get the data across and the rest is just optimizing my set-up
to make working in my poly prog. as painless as possible.

I did some testing with Right Hemisphere Deep View, (an excellent free utility), to see some results of Moi's different exports.
Now I realize these results are dependent on Deep View's import parser but interesting anyway. You can view the scene tree or
a parts list, (which seems to relate to the Object settings in Moi.) I won't list all my result but FBX was interesting in that the parts
were arranged as instances.



> File formats tend to be a finicky area of work, some programs are pretty sensitive to a variety of factors.

> It's just not such a great area to tinker with to a very large degree right near the end of a beta period, just too much possibility of problems being introduced.

As I said I wanted this more as a discussion, to pick your brain, not to try and squeeze more things into Ver. 2. :)

Thanks for the script, and your patience!! :)