vrml wrl NASA Milkyway model

WendyLuvsCatz

from what I have read online Carrara (and older Ray dream) are mentioned for opening vrml files but neither my C8.5 or the C6 version I have installed seem to have this option.
Does anybody know anything?
(meanwhile I might need to check Blender as much as I dread it!)
update, Blender imports and I see all the stars but cannot export a visible mesh

TGS808

I believe it was was an import option up to version 5. It got removed from versions 6 onward. Now it is only an export option.

WendyLuvsCatz

yes figured that out
I can see and move around all the stars in blender but no mesh to export http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/cobe/vrml_models.cfm the NASA Milkyway model

cdordoni

Wendy,

This model is a point cloud only. Perhaps Blender has a way to substitute a very simple polygon object for each point?

WendyLuvsCatz

LOL! I can barely navigate in Blender! it confuses the crap out of me, so doubt even if it did I could figure out how to!
thx anyway!

cdordoni

wendy♥catz said:

LOL! I can barely navigate in Blender! it confuses the crap out of me, so doubt even if it did I could figure out how to!
thx anyway!

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Dartanbeck

wendy♥catz said:

Does anybody know anything?

I might know anything. But nothing about that. I think you just toss it in the recycle bin and grab a different extension! %-P

Dartanbeck

Oh, come on, Wendy! You were supposed to laugh at that one! :ahhh:

WendyLuvsCatz

I finally got this into carrara but it is points only 

can see in vertex room but cannot add thickness

any ideas how to create meshes for each point?

was FBX export from Blender

WendyLuvsCatz

I can get an obj and dae export from carrara into meshlab as points too but no filters I try create mesh for points, some join them all up

MarkIsSleepy

I did a little quick skimming around the internet and apparently a point cloud like this is mostly used as another way of defining surfaces - but then you need a separate process to skin the point cloud to create the object. There is a script for Blender to do this (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?241950-A-Script-to-Skin-a-Point-Cloud-(for-Blender-2-6x-or-Later)) but it's going to create a surface, not a cloud of meshes and I couldn't find anything on replacing the points with objects.

I think it should be possible in Blender to assign the points to a vertex group, create a mesh and then use a particle system to distribute the mesh where the points are, then you could export that as an OBJ to use in Carrara, but I'm not expert enough in Blender yet to figure that process out and the write it down so someone else could follow it. 

WendyLuvsCatz

yes I can join the buggers up like that script does in meshlab too 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?21354-Is-it-possible-to-convert-a-vertex-into-a-sphere

well this dies not give me much hope

MarkIsSleepy

JaguarElla said:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?21354-Is-it-possible-to-convert-a-vertex-into-a-sphere

well this dies not give me much hope

No, me either - good find.  I still want to try using the points as a vertex group for a particle system and see if I can get that to work, but I won't have time to play with the idea for a few days.

mindsong

didn't fenric or DCG have a 'replace object' utility in their tool suites? it might do exactly what you need to replace those points with... somethings...

cdordoni

mindsong said:

didn't fenric or DCG have a 'replace object' utility in their tool suites? it might do exactly what you need to replace those points with... somethings...

Inagoni has a plugin called Swap, not sure how it would handle the points though.I think Swap would need each point as a separate object. Even then I'm not sure how well that would work. There would be over 14,000 objects ...

Wendy, It appears the points belong to a mesh, even thought there are no faces or egdes. If I read the info in your screenshot correctly, you have 13 objects?

WendyLuvsCatz

Yes were 13, all points

I copied and pasted them to one vertex object

MarkIsSleepy

OK - I figured this out.  Kind of.  The problem is the result of putting spheres at all those points is an OBJ so huge Carrara chokes on it.  I'm still playing with trying to get something easily usable in Carrara out of this, but thought I'd post what I had so far in case anyone else wanted to play with it.

Here's the basic process, using Blender 2.75 (probably works in other versions too, but that's the one I am using), for replacing all the points in the .wrl file with spheres:

Step One - Import the WRL

1. Open Blender.
2. Delete everything in the default scene ("A" to select all, "X" to delete).
3. Import the WRL file.

Step Two - Combine all the point clouds into one

1. In the outliner delete the Anim Object, Sun object and the the ShapePointSet with no number by it, so the only selectable items you are left with are the numbered ShapePointSets.
2. Select one of the numbered ShapePoint sets (left click on it in the outliner) to make it the active object.
3. With the cursor in the view window select all, then use Control-j to join everything into one object.

Step Three - Create Your Star Spheres

1. Shift-A to add a Mesh->UV Sphere.
2. Before doing anything else, in the tools tray (left side of viewport - if it is not visible T is the shortcut to toggle it), go all the way to the bottom and lower the number of both segments and rings to 4.
3. With just the sphere selected Control-g to create a group.
4. In the left hand tool tray name your group (I called mine "star").

Step Four - Add a Particle System

1. Left click on the combined shapepointset in the outliner.
2. Under Properties go to the Particles tab.
3. Click New to add a new particle group.
4. Change the Type to Hair.
5. Check Advanced.
6. Under Number change it to around 30-40,000 (you can go up to 43,000 or more since there are that many points, I used 42,000 for my initial test, which is clearly too high).
7. Change "Emit From" to Verts.
8. Under Render change it to Group and select your sphere group.
9. Make sure only Rotation is checked.

Step Five - Convert the Particles to Meshes

1. On the Modifiers tab click Convert to change the particle system to a mesh.
2. Save before doing this - you are creating 30-40,000 spheres and your computer may freeze or crash! This may take a while - on my computer it took about 10 minutes.
3. Export to OBJ.  This took a long time too (about 5 minutes) - it's a crazy huge object with more than 2 million verts in my test (I used a sphere that was 8x8, which is why I recommend 4x4 above).

If Blender just locks up forever or crashes somewhere, try starting over and lowering the resolution of the sphere and the number of particles; you can probably get away with far fewer and still see the galaxy shape clearly.

Let me know if anyone needs screenshots or more information on any of the steps - the above does assume that you can find the various windows in Blender's default interface.

WendyLuvsCatz

I shall tackle it this weekend, a polygon - a square or triangle instead of a sphere would actually suffice and that then is actually not that much compared to hairs in Octane where I was gonna plonk it with an emitter shader.

or conversely carrara native engine with a glow channel black background.

whole spheres yes would get pretty big.

MarkIsSleepy

JaguarElla said:

I shall tackle it this weekend, a polygon - a square or triangle instead of a sphere would actually suffice and that then is actually not that much compared to hairs in Octane where I was gonna plonk it with an emitter shader.

or conversely carrara native engine with a glow channel black background.

whole spheres yes would get pretty big.

Argh - yes, just a single poly square makes so much more sense. I got the idea of using spheres stuck in my head and couldn't see past it to the obvious.  That's a great idea! 

WendyLuvsCatz

Yes the Blender link I posted said spheres I never actually thought of spheres but rather splats if possible but would settle for flat polys of any sort, was thinking of the triangles in the particle generator actually that always face the camera.

MarkIsSleepy

Here's a version imported into Carrara with a single flat poly at each point: https://www.dropbox.com/s/azk7tifrpcafhjl/MilkyWay.car?dl=0

It's not as full asI thought it would be.  I wonder if I accidentally deleted some stars?  It might also be dim because some of the planes were twisted in the particle system.  It might be important to try and get them all facing the same direction.

WendyLuvsCatz

Ooooh TY it loads in Octane too, am doing a quick animation, told Misty on Skype about it

pretty awesome stuff, can see a few Carrarists using it for space scenes!

I made the shader a blackbody emitter, kept your texture map

only 100 samples more samples I do more stars appear, might let it go 1K after ani rendered for a few frames

after 1K samples

200 samples with bloom and glare

WendyLuvsCatz

MarkIsSleepy

Awesome!

WendyLuvsCatz

OK fixed now

WendyLuvsCatz

Oh and Mark, that vid includes an obj export of your conversion to DAZ studio  using iray and emission shader, the bit before the glare/cross screen Octane version

Dartanbeck

MDO2010 said:

Here's a version imported into Carrara with a single flat poly at each point: https://www.dropbox.com/s/azk7tifrpcafhjl/MilkyWay.car?dl=0

It's not as full asI thought it would be.  I wonder if I accidentally deleted some stars?  It might also be dim because some of the planes were twisted in the particle system.  It might be important to try and get them all facing the same direction.

Wow! You've put a good amount of detective work into this, MDO, what a Pal!

Wendy's right about the thread title. I never have a need for file types of that nature, so I mostly skim right past this one.

In making Starry Sky for Carrara I've noticed that we can have a lot more stars in the scene than will actually render, depending upon how far they are away from the camera, since they must apear so tiny in the scene. Yeah, making them bigger makes them visible but destroys the effect.

I did notice that I could get a lot more stars to show up if I set the render settings to use an object accuracy of 0.5, which is why Starry Sky defaults the render at that setting. Back then I didn't have p3DO explorer Pro for replacing the .CAR file thumbnails, so I relied on the file save to render the thumbnail, which is why it also defauts to the "Close-up" camera. 

I have spent an incredible amount of time on SS4C before submitting it to DAZ 3D and tried many, many, many different settings for the stars, cameras and render outputs. Those stars are actually three-dimensional (but incredibly low-poly) spheres. If loaded individually from the browser's Individual Star files, they are actually Sub-D smoothed as well - just keep that in mind if loaded that way. Those that are used in the actual product's defaults are not smoothed as there is no need. I only smoothed the individual star models to be more applicable for an individual star to be used in such a way - as to be individual. The smoothing makes it a perfect sphere for closer-up shots. 

I was actually working on an expansion pack that has various types of galaxies and other deep sky objects but run into trouble when the meshes get smaller and smaller and further and further.

cdordoni

I did this using an octahedron in place of each point, DAE and DXF files below. The DAE file loads into Carrara really fast, there only 350,000 or so triangles. The DXF is a much bigger file and loads very slowly. 

http://www.concept-4d.com/samples/milky_way_44k_DAE.zip

http://www.concept-4d.com/samples/milky_way_44k_DXF.zip

 

Dartanbeck

Awesome, Thanks! :)

WendyLuvsCatz

TY too Cdordoni, your DXF after it eventually loaded renders very well in Octane and navigates easily on my PC