dotXSI Export from Modo

[photex]

Hiya folks,

I'm at an alpha stage of my dotXSI exporter for Modo 302. Depends on the latest Crosswalk.
You can find it here (http://www.wasbecause.com/index.php?page=Projects).

If you have constructive bug reports I'd be more than happy to receive them. :)

Cheers,
_chip

[nemac4]

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

[leif]

Thank you very much :) Do you have a quick-start-guide for getting noobs like me started?

Leif

[photex]

Thank you very much :) Do you have a quick-start-guide for getting noobs like me started?

Leif


The closest to that that I have is just to ask me. :) What are you having trouble with?

[TharsoBrasil]

I put the .lx in extra and I cantsee nothing to save in modo? what can I do?

[photex]

I put the .lx in extra and I cantsee nothing to save in modo? what can I do?

Well.. yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing to install it also. I have to restart modo any time I update it though.
I'm pretty sure you should also see it in the Save As... list of format options. But here is a screenshot of what I see when I choose "Export As.."
Note that the dotXSI-DEBUG option is only on my machine because I build a debug version for testing. You should not see that one. :)

[Ethangar]

I have it installed and it shows in the export list fine. The problem is that I either can't get it to export the .xsi (takes down modo 302 with it.) or when I tried other models and got it to export it won't load into XSI.

The last one that I tried is a simple enough model. Its in .lwo format in about 20 layers with about 70k polys. When it failed I tried collapsing all the layers to a single one. That didn't work either. It had some subdivision surfaces in it so I froze those. Still nothing. I checked for one and two point polys and there are none. Its just straight planar mapping on it so there is no UV info.

If I just select export.. It fails to export. If I select all the polys and try and export. That is when it takes modo with it.

The log doesn't show anything. It just seems to stop.

412

[photex]

I have it installed and it shows in the export list fine. The problem is that I either can't get it to export the .xsi (takes down modo 302 with it.) or when I tried other models and got it to export it won't load into XSI.

The last one that I tried is a simple enough model. Its in .lwo format in about 20 layers with about 70k polys. When it failed I tried collapsing all the layers to a single one. That didn't work either. It had some subdivision surfaces in it so I froze those. Still nothing. I checked for one and two point polys and there are none. Its just straight planar mapping on it so there is no UV info.

If I just select export.. It fails to export. If I select all the polys and try and export. That is when it takes modo with it.

The log doesn't show anything. It just seems to stop.

412

Wonderful! :) These are the sorts of bugs I need to know about.
The very latest build on my site is sorta bleeding edge and it's iterating the scene a bit differently. Judging from the log it's finding all of your materials, but I can see there is a problem with the string cleaning there as there are a lot of spaces in the names. These will cause XSI to fail on import and I've just rebuilt the exporter and uploaded it. Hopefully it's fixing material names now as well. Other than that are these all of the objects in the scene that you expect? Your layer "Drop Tank" is reporting no geometry at all. Is this a bug or an empty layer? I haven't the slightest idea how empty layers will come across.
Generally speaking I'm not even paying attention when something is sub-d or not, so that shouldn't matter. It *should* only export the hull that you could in turn enable geometry approximation in XSI for the object.
Is the file confidential? Do you happen to have a file that isn't working for you that you could email me in order for me to test with? Especially a file that crashes Modo. That would be a huge help. I would really like to get export to be as stable as I can manage before I begin work on importing xsi files.

Thanks for helping out and reporting! :)

[leif]

Thank you so very much! :) This worked a treat now as I know where to put the .lx file :)

Model exported clean here and no crit so far - great work!

Leif

[photex]

I have it installed and it shows in the export list fine. The problem is that I either can't get it to export the .xsi (takes down modo 302 with it.) or when I tried other models and got it to export it won't load into XSI.


As I mentioned I think that had something to do with material names. I've posted an update just now that improves the reliability of names with special characters and spaces for objects and materials. There is an option to export as binary as well as an option to try export using the FTk supplied file checks (most of the time this will lead to bizarre results but can help... check for hidden objects).
There is also an option now to export Cameras and Lights, but the code is stubbed in this build, it will only log them.

Hope this helps, please let me know. :)

[photex]

Thank you so very much! :) This worked a treat now as I know where to put the .lx file :)

Model exported clean here and no crit so far - great work!

Leif


I'm happy it's working out for you. :)

[Ethangar]

OK.. got the new version and took it for a play.

On the file where I have it all in a single layer. It exports fine and loads into XSI. Maps aren't applied unless there is a UV map that they are attached to.

Original .lwo, where its in 16 layers. Won't export. Fails to save. When I tried again with the same model then Modo disappeared. Just poof.. gone.
416

If I cut all the extra layers out and paste them in the first layer. This leaves 15 named empty layers in modo it fails to save.
417

Now I can't get it to crash modo if I select all the polys. Names seem to be working fine it just doesn't like more than one layer. Any way to get it to take the layers and save them as objects?

I'm really looking forward to using this since LW->modo->XSI is the route I've been taking models. Mostly for the better .obj export out of modo over LW. That might change though with v9.5 of LW and Collada export. We'll see.

[photex]

Any way to get it to take the layers and save them as objects?


This is exactly how it behaves for me actually. I'm wondering if this isn't a memory issue perhaps (I haven't done any explicit memory allocation but who knows). Let me take a look at your attachments and see if I can't get this tracked down.
I've totally forgotten to handle the empty layer circumstance. And I need to associate images with at least a default UVmap.

Both logs indicate the exporter entered an endless loop once it hits the second layer it finds. In both cases they are hitting the condition where they are being processed as a child object when the parent object hasn't been hit yet. This normally happens when the order modo internally lists object is different than they've been arranged in the UI. In the 16Layers log the error at the end is what I throw when there is a segmentation fault so I know I'm getting into a memory violation of some kind.

Hopefully I can re-create this and get a fix going.

Thanks again for your continued help! :)

[Ethangar]

Got the newest version. I'll test it out this weekend. If it makes it past the small one I sent you I'll try one of my bigger planes. I've got one that is scattered across 68 layers in lightwave for all the parts that are animated.

[photex]

Got the newest version. I'll test it out this weekend. If it makes it past the small one I sent you I'll try one of my bigger planes. I've got one that is scattered across 68 layers in lightwave for all the parts that are animated.



oof! :) Trial by fire!