Importing Model Files into Alice - Update

Have spent some time this week trying to import objects from varying sources into Alice. As a result of this effort, I have reduced my success rate at this process to well under 50% for getting anything to show up in Alice and still haven't imported anything really usable except from Smooth Teddy (in looking thought the references, I see that was one of the sources of objects for Alice 1.0).

To illustrate the problems even with "success" - I did get a free Stormtrooper model (from http://www.3d02-ae.com/html_3d_Model...in_3M00487.asp) all the way into Alice and actually tried a couple of the textures that came with the model. Really very impressive except that the model hierarchy didn't come through (see the notes in the Alice importing tutorial for how to fix this), and now all I have to do make this model usable is to correctly restore the hierarchy to an object with over 90 sub-objects .

Except for two notes - I won't go into the programs, file types, etc. I tried - the only consistent thing was that the more familiar I was with something, the higher the success rate. The first note is that I was impressed with Biturn - it tried it's best on everything and it's error messages were usually helpful. Second, I had zero success with .wrl (VRML) model files - a surprise since I thought it was a general standard. Anyone have any ideas? I know Blender is supposed to be able to do this but I couldn't get it to work (files were from http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html ).

Jim

If I want to make my own models, what program do I use, and is there a tutorial for getting the model into alice? I use wings3d for most 3d stuff.

Here are two forum threads and a tutorial site to use as starting points.

Forum: http://www.alice.org/community/showt...hlight=objects
http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=314
Tutorial: http://www.alice.org/ase_import/ase_import.html

Both also have useful links for further investigation. Do remember, however, that Alice really wasn't designed for importing and using outside models and be prepared for a bit (or maybe a lot ) of frustration if you do try.

I was not previously familiar with Wings3D. My impressions, after 15 minutes or so looking over their web site, is that it is more of a graphics program than a modeling program. Also, some of the art is very nice . It does export to .3ds and .obj formats so a model should import into Alice, although you'll have go through Biturn (see second thread). (I'd personally recommend the .3ds option, but that's because it's the one I'm most familiar with.) I couldn't tell with a quick look what sort of component (sub-object) hierarchy Wings3D supports so this may be a problem if you want to do something other than a purely static model.

If you do have success with it, please share the results with the forum.

Jim

Note: Since posting this originally, I've found some problems with the .3ds format and importing to Wings 3D. This is the only problem I've had with .3ds but apparently it is an old enough format that it is, by modern standards, limited see
http://p212.ezboard.com/fnendowingsm...cID=2711.topic

Great! Thanks. I used wings3d and could make all objects, and they kept their heirarchy I set in wings3d so I can still mod them piece by piece in alice. Also, wings3d is free!

Sounds like great results and quickly too. I'm going to download Wings3D this afternoon and give it a try. (Also a nice link re viruses - though sad that we need such things. )

If you have time, maybe you could see if Wings3D can solve this problem that was posted a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=382

I've failed the couple of times I tried and I wasn't trying for anything very hard - just a different texture on the inside and the outside of a tube. (A coordinate mapping would also be nice, but I didn't even attempt that.)

Jim

I've been having a few problems and it Alice will only accept about half of my files, but I guess I'll just have to live with that.
Here's my example of the only way I can do a tube like that in wings3d. http://www.alice.org/community/showt...=1255#post1255