Importing Mesh Objects

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‌Importing Mesh Objects ‌

You can import OBJ, DXF, Filmbox FBX, SBM, or XYZ (lidar) meshes into SynthEyes using File/Import Mesh. ( Read on for additional file types.) Meshes are imported as-is, with scaling determined solely by the vertex coordinates in the mesh file, ie as determined by the author of the mesh. You can rescale them as needed using the 3-D panel.

Tip : Add custom meshes to the dropdown on the 3-D panel and right-click menus of the 3-D and perspective viewports by putting a copy in the Custom Meshes folder in your personal File/User Data Folder or in the SynthEyes install (for all users). Use a .sbm copy of a mesh to avoid questions about vertex normals and for quickest processing of large custom meshes.

Tip : Use Mesh De-duplication features to cut disk usage with large meshes and multiple SNI file versions.

You can later discover the original source of the meshes using File/Scene Information (meshes subsection).

If you later change the source mesh file, you can reload it inside the SynthEyes scene, without having to reestablish its other settings, by selecting it and clicking the Reload button on the 3-D Panel.

Similarly, if you need to replace a mesh with another version, for example a lower- or higher-resolution version, use File/Import/Replace Mesh. This will change the vertex, face, normal, vertex color, and texture coordinate information, but not other information.

Note : Use File/Import Mesh of an FBX file for files containing a single mesh. Files with multiple meshes will result in an error.

Note : SynthEyes may not be able to read files written by FBX versions later than its own. You can see SynthEyes’s FBX SDK version in the Library Version section of this manual. You can also see the file version (slightly different than the library version) from the version dropdown of the Filmbox exporter.

Use File/Import/Filmbox Scene Import to read files with multiple meshes. It allows multiple meshes with positioning, cameras, lights, rigs, vertex caches, etc to be read. A mesh imported by Filmbox Scene Import cannot be reloaded, however.

Similarly, you can use File/Import/3DS Scene, Alembic ABC Scene, COLLADA DAE Scene, DXF Scene, OBJ Scene, and Zipped FBX Scene importers to read multiple meshes and potentially other objects from the corresponding file types. These are variants of the Filmbox importer.

Note that you can import DXF and OBJ files via both the built-in Import Mesh or the corresponding DXF Scene or OBJ Scene importers. The built-in versions are faster and support easily reloading the mesh from a file. The Scene importers support reading multiple meshes from a file and breaking them into component meshes, for different coloration or texturing. The DXF Scene importer additionally supports binary DXF files and perhaps other newer DXF file features.

The Alembic ABC Scene importer variant is currently intended mainly for vertex cache files, according to Autodesk. As such, it doesn't necessarily import cameras or other features. Hopefully Autodesk will rectify that over time.

The Zipped FBX Scene importer variant allows you to open a ZIP file containing an FBX file, plus other associated files, according to Autodesk. So it may save a step or two and some storage, but more subtly they may have finessed the reader to better capture related texture files from within the ZIP file, bypassing filename issues. But that isn't clear.

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