User guide

Viz Engine Administrator’s Guide

5.10 Import 3D Options

In this section, parameters influencing the import of 3D objects can be configured.

There are four different formats; Wavefront, AutoCAD, 3D-Studio, and Softimage.

The Wavefront, AutoCAD, and 3D-Studio formats have three available controls:

• Unify Object Size: If enabled, all vertices are recalculated during import in a way

that the object centre is moved to the origin (0,0,0), and the size of the object is 100

cm in its largest extent. If disabled, all vertices retain their values as defined in the

original file. An object could appear invisible in a Viz Artist scene because the object

is translated a lot from the origin or is scaled up or down a lot. It could be necessary

to deactivate the unification to be able to recombine several separately imported

objects that must keep their size and relative position.

• Face Orientation: Polygonal 3D models often do not have a consistent face

orientation, but for performance reasons, the Viz Artist renderer expects that all

faces of an object point to the same direction. If enabling this function, Viz Artist

tries to rearrange the orientation of the object faces during import.

• Shading Angle: If the 3D object has no normal vector information, Viz Artist

automatically recalculates the normal’s from the geometry to make lighting

possible. This recalculation is influenced by the shading angle, which acts as a

threshold between sharp and soft edges.

Note: A shading angle value of 60 means that an edge between two faces is

considered to be a soft edge for angles below 60 and a sharp edge above this

level. 60 is the default shading angle.

The Softimage format has two available controls:

• Classic Scaling: Changes Softimage rotation order to conform to the internal

rotation order of Viz.

• Enable Animations: Allows import of saved Softimage animations.

5.11 Image File Name Convert