3D File Formats
 

Description	Extension	Import	Export
Alias Wavefront	OBJ	yes	yes
3D Studio	3DS	yes	yes
3D Studio ASCII	ASC	yes	yes
3D Studio Max ASCII	ASE	yes	yes
AutoCAD	DXF	yes	yes
Cinema4D	C4D	yes	yes
Collada	DAE	yes	yes
Google Earth	KMZ	kmz
Truespace	COB	yes	yes
Autodesk FBX	FBX	yes	yes
Lightwave	LWO	yes	yes
Lightwave Scene	LWS	yes
Luxology Modo	LXO	yes
Sketchup	SKP	yes	yes
Microsoft DirectX	X	yes	yes
Microsoft XAML	XAML		yes
SoftImage|XSI	XSI	yes	yes
AC3D	AC	yes	yes
Anim8or	AN8		yes
Artlantis Studio	AOF,ATL	yes
Away3D	AWD	yes	yes
Blender	XML	yes
Blitz3D	B3D	yes	yes
BioVision Hierarchy	BVH	yes	yes
Celestia Space Simulator	CMOD	yes	yes
Cartography Shop	CSM	yes	yes
DarkBASIC	DBO	yes	yes
3D GameStudio	MDL	yes	yes
Genesis3D	ACT, BDY	yes
Goo Create	zip,bundle	yes
Leadwerks Engine	GMF,MDL		yes
Metasequoia	MQO	yes	yes
MilkShape3D	MS3D	yes	yes
Nichimen Nendo	NDO	yes
Ogre 3D Engine	MESH, XML	yes	yes
OpenGL CPP	CPP		yes
POV-Ray RAW	RAW	yes	yes
POV-Ray POV	POV		yes
Rhino 3D	3DM	yes	yes
SpaceEngine Space Simulator	SM	yes
Torchlight - Runic Games	MESH	yes
Torque Game Engine	DTS, DSQ	yes	yes
Unity Javascript	JS		yes
Apple Quickdraw 3D	3DMF		yes
Adobe Illustrator	AI	yes
Hollywood FX	HFO	yes
ATI NMF	NMF	yes	yes
Stanford Polygon File Format	PLY	yes	yes
Stereo Lithography	STL	yes	yes
Object File Format	OFF	yes	yes
VRML 1.0, 2.0	WRL		yes
Extensible 3D	X3D		yes
Battlefield 2	staticmesh	yes
Battlefield 1942	SM, RS	yes	yes
Black & White	L3D	yes
Call of Duty 1/2/4	xmodel	yes	yes
Command & Conquer: Renegade	W3D	yes
Descent 3	OOF	yes
Delta Force 5: Black Hawk Down Delta Force 4: Task Force Dagger Delta Force 3: Land Warrior Delta Force 2 Delta Force	3DI	yes
Diablo 3	APP, ANI	yes
FarCry, Crysis	CGF, CAF	yes
Freespace 1/2	POF	yes
Half-Life: Opposing Force Half-Life 2 Team Fortress 2	MDL	yes
Half-Life: Opposing Force Half-Life 2 Team Fortress 2	SMD	yes	yes
Homeworld	PEO, GEO	yes
Homeworld 2	HOD	yes
MikuMiku Dance	PMD,PMX,VMD,VPD	yes
MotorRacer 3	F3D	yes
Mount & Blade: Warband	BRF	yes
NetImmerse Format/Gamebryo Dark Age of Camelot Freedom Force The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Sid Meier's Civilization IV	NIF	yes	yes
Neverwinter Nights	MDL	yes	yes
Quake 1	MDL	yes
Quake 2	MD2	yes	yes
Quake 3 Arena	MD3	yes	yes
Return to Castle Wolfenstein	MDC	yes
Kingpin: Life of Crime	MDX	yes
Quake 1/2/3, Half-Life	BSP	yes
Doom 3	md5mesh, md5anim	yes	yes
Wolfenstein: The New Order	bmd6model	yes
Heavy Metal: FAKK2 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Spearhead Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Breakthrough	SKB,SKD	yes
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division Blood 2: The Chosen Aliens vs. Predator 2 The Operative: No One Lives Forever Global Operations	ABC	yes
League of Legends	SCO,SKN,ANM	yes
Lula 3D Psychotoxic	V3O, VMO	yes
Orbiter Space Flight Simulator	MSH	yes	yes
4x4 Evolution	SMF	yes
Rainbow Six Rogue Spear	QOB, ROB	yes
Rome: Total War	CAS	yes	yes
Empire: Total War Napoleon: Total War	variant,rigid	yes	yes
Runescape	DAT	yes
Sonalysts Combat Simulations Jane's Fleet Command Sub Command Dangerous Waters	J3D	yes
Strike Fighters 1/2 First Eagles 1/2	LOD	yes
SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle	GSM	yes
Tread Marks	LUV	yes	yes
Re-Volt	PRM	yes	yes
Serious Sam	MDL	yes
The Sims	SKN, BMF	yes	yes
Second Life	BMP	yes	yes
Birth of the Federation	HOB	yes
Star Fleet Command 1/2	MOD	yes
Star Trek Armada 1/2	SOD	yes	yes
Star Trek Legacy	M3D	yes
Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force	MDR	yes
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2	3DO	yes
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast	GLM	yes
Star Wars: Empire At War	ALO	yes
Star Wars Battlefront 1/2	MSH	yes
Star Wars Battlefront 3 (pre-alpha)	RAX	yes
Star Wars Battlefront 2015	meshSet	yes
Star Wars Galaxies	MSH, MGN	yes
Star Wars: Starfighter	MSH, MDL	yes
Supreme Commander 1/2	SCM, SCA	yes	yes
Unreal Tournament 3D	3D	yes	yes
Unreal Tournament PSK/PSA	PSK, PSA	yes	yes
Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption	NOD	yes
Watch Dogs	XBG	yes
World of Tanks World of Warplanes World of Warships	primitives primitives_processed	yes
StarCraft 2: Wings Of Liberty StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void	M3	yes
Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos	MDX	yes
World of Warcraft WoW: The Burning Crusade WoW: Wrath of the Lich King WoW: Cataclysm WoW: Mists of Pandaria WoW: Warlords of Draenor	M2, WMO	yes
Worldcraft	MAP, RMF	yes

2D Graphics File Formats
 

Description	Extension
Windows Bitmap	BMP
Truevision Targa	TGA
Microsoft DirectDrawSurface	DDS
JPEG 2000	JP2,J2K
Joint Photographic Experts Group	JPG
Portable Network Graphics	PNG
Zsoft Paintbrush	PCX
Adobe Photoshop	PSD
Adobe TIFF	TIF
Pixar Image Format	PXR
Portable Pixel Format	PPM
Portable Grayscale Format	PGM
Portable Bitmap Format	PBM
Radiance High-Dynamic Range Format	HDR
Diablo 3	TEX
Serious Sam	TEX
Descent 3	OGF
Homeworld	LIF
Call of Duty 1/2/4	IWI
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2	MAT
Rainbow Six Rogue Spear	RSB
LithTech Shogo/Blood2/AvP2/NOLF/GOps	DTX
Warcraft 3/World of Warcraft	BLP

 

@ Hansmar and Mermaid : thank you both. If you like this model, you can find it at 3d warehouse.com but you've got to convert it to use it in Bryce because it's natively a sketchup file. So, here it is, decide to place it in a country side to make a big contrast between nature and modernism. I'm really proud of the result because I find it photoreal for bryce. Dandelions are coming from Vizpark product and they're very nice and suitable for some closed up because of there high resolution. There're all instanced manually and there's about 2 thousand species. Other plants and trees are coming from xfrog bundles.

One interesting thing to note is that including a physically huge set, even if it's low poly, increases render times. If the set covers five hundred by five hundred meters, it will take much longer to render than if the set covers twenty by twenty meters, even if the polycount is the same.

I've rendered a full Dubai Yas Marina imported from Sketchup and no problems with slower render times.

It seems that depending on any PC configuration it takes more o less time to rendering in different aspects of the scene, the only issue that covers all pc systems is using Caustics and Architectural, that options are longer in any PC configuration.

Here's the same free SketchUp Toyota in front of a restaurant, also from 3dWarehouse and also for free, made by Vitor Bandeira.

Please note that other than the (free) HDR image for lighting and background, not a single texture map was used for this render!

Cheers!

Here's a free Toyota Corolla from 3dWarehouse by someone named 'Import Guy', rendered in Octane for DAZ Studio.

There's always a bit (and sometimes a lot) of work involved in making SketchUp models fit for DAZ Studio, but the amount of free models there is simply staggering!

Cheers!

Oh, I forgot to mention: as an OBJ this great looking car is only 4.25 MB in size!

 

Working on another landscape project, I have decide to put a house in the center of this next scene and I would like to share the subject with you. It's a modern and autonome house that can be built easily and everywhere. I've find the model on 3d warehouse and have convert it from sketchup.

I never really need to remove a post after I make one for two reasons... One- I usually forget them after I post them, two-  if it's a controversial comment, it will be removed for me and three- (did I mention it's actually three reasons), nobody cares what I say unless it strikes them as funny.

But I do agree, it might be a useful feature to have... Perhaps for forum members after they make X number of posts... But I could also see where it could be abused. Isn't there some issue with threads going wonky if too many posts get removed? I can't remember what it was, but the old forums (back in the Draper UT days) I remember when post would get removed there were slight problems.

Personally, as far as I can remember only once removed a bunch of posts... Someone had asked about how to import and fix SketchUp models and after going back and forth I offered post a quick but detailed tutorial... The person said that would be great, and after I posted it someone else who had like ten posts butted in and said it was all wrong, which it was not and the OP started thanking them and asking them for more info... The process the other poster was describing results in crappy imports and if that's what the OP wanted then fine, so I removed every post I made in that thread and replaced it with "Never mind"... It was childish of me but, it was just one of those days. Besides nobody gives a rats poop chute about SketchUp anyway.

I agree with the idea of editing old and obsolete information... CGI land is too full of it and it is overly confusing at times.

 

sketchup exports often have opacity at zero too.

what frustrates me is I can usually import obj textured from most apps but cannot export and reimport from DS itself without altering mtl files

I'm having similiar issues. (Textures not being imported into DAZ). I'm trying to import OBJ files exported from SketchUp 2016.

Some tests I performed yeilded promising results. For example I exported an OBJ file from DAZ, imported into SU using a plugin called Fluidimporter, then re-exported it from SU and re-imported it into DAZ again. The file imported with the textures (albeit, the clothing on my test figure was darker).

Also, files exported from DAZ then reimported all import textures as expected.

It's the OBJ files exported from SU native files (skp) that won't behave. Structuraly all is fine .... but no textures.

Ideas anyone?

In defense of the Spline modeler, there are some things it does extremely well, and it does some things that the vertex modeler wishes it could do but can't. ;-)

One thing the VM can't do, that the spline modeler can, is the ability to keyframe the curves, sweep paths, etc. on the fly, without having to piss around with morphs.

There are some very real limitations to the Spline modeler, which is why Carrara is so great! For things that the Spline Modeler can't do, there is the VM, Metaball modeler, terrain editor, etc. etc.

I remember having started with Spline Modeller some years ago, and honestly got lost, and I lost also some interest in do my 3D models in Carrar, I have stuck with SketchUp, but then some years ago tried up the Autodesk Maya, and AutoStudio software, and I have to say that both are superb, but for my needing SketchUp had always an advantage over these, but my renders were done always in Carrara. So one day I discovered the Vertex Room, and since then I am kind of in love with that kind of modeling, and being similar as the process learned in Maya the beginning wasn't so hard.

And I am with you also Evil, is just that I need what to do in the spline modeler, since I abandon it long ago...

 

Cheers everyone.

 

there's no one site, you just have to go out there. Some sites with OBJ's are clearly giving away (or charging for) pirated content from games and other artists, but I can't name names. Some free obj sites demand something in return in the form of money, models or other in return for points to allow you to download an allotment of models per day. I use Blender as hex was very limiting and unstable on many of my computers and it's years behind the curve but it will allow you to make obj's to import to studio. I post my stuff on ShareCG and often I include the blender source if someone with the desire to DL one of my models can tweak what I do provided they know their way around blender. There is also a blender exchange for that where molders post their scenes and other blender users can tweak the models or just look at how they approached the modeling and leaned new techniques. 

Sketchup is probity the most used free 3D package out there but it does have a pro version with all the bells and whistles for $659.00 US whereas Blender has many of the same tools as Maya, Sculptris, After Effects (to name but a few) and no cost involved with the core application. There is also no shortage of tutorials and content; most but not all are free and range from being taught by a kid home from school who nipped a little too much cough medicine to very professional and polished. Blender has become my one stop for all modeling and tweaking but as it is an extremely versatile program the interface should not be approached without several tutorials to take some of the mystery out of it's UI. Some will argue the UI is a disaster but the more I use Blender the more I have come across it is actually very thought out for what it needs to do overall , still others are put off by it and entitled to their feelings.

Hello everyone! I am learning Hexagon and would like to know where I can get obj props besides sketchup? Does anyone have any good sites that have free obj models?

I have sketchup make and it wont export obj so I guess I need to find a new program. I will build the sets in hexagon and import obj props.

 

Thank you for your ideas and help

Danny Bright

A very early WIP, just to keep the thread alive : )

The ship is from 3D Warehouse (SketchUp) by Mandun.

 

@David Brinnen...Thanks for the info. I will look into it. I have done some meshing using sketchup 7 & 8. I have done some stuff in blender. I get stuck in the uvmap part, after working in sketchup for another 3D platform. I got spoiled on how to do texturing. It is easier to 'pin' stuff than make uv maps. lol I loke to make things in real life and in 3D, so I will look up Wings for sure. I like to have options. :)

UV mapping can be a bit tricky, I have learned (the hard way) that if you intend to UV your object you can make your life very difficult if you don't model with that process in mind.  I have UV mapped in Wings, but it is a bit clunky.  For my UV mapping now I use UV layout - but this is not a free product.  To make life easier for myself I try as much as possible to use only quads and avoid tryangles in the mesh, the reason for this being that tryangles put an end to edge loops which are very useful for cutting up large meshes into managable flattenable chunks.  The other thing to do is to make your model from as many discreet components as is practical - copy the construction of the real world object if that is appropriate.  Since it us usually easer to UV map 10 objects than it is to unwrap one big complex object.  If you go about things the right way, UV mapping can be a pleasant challenge, the wrong way and you will end up pulling your hair out in bloody clumps.

@sriesch, thank you for the tip.

@Horo, it is easier for me to know, because there is no soft shadow setting in this render, so with little deduction that leaves only the clouds as being responsible.

Here's another Blake's 7 inspired "quarry" landscape this time under a sky from the deep space HDRI 1

 

@David Brinnen...Thanks for the info. I will look into it. I have done some meshing using sketchup 7 & 8. I have done some stuff in blender. I get stuck in the uvmap part, after working in sketchup for another 3D platform. I got spoiled on how to do texturing. It is easier to 'pin' stuff than make uv maps. lol I loke to make things in real life and in 3D, so I will look up Wings for sure. I like to have options. :)

Yes, and the SubD rules appear to be the same as what is used in the DAZ Studio newer figures as well, making it a really sweet workflow for those looking to make content. For example, if we make an item in Carrara using SubD, but not ever 'converting' the SubD result into actual vertices, and then we export that .obj and bring it into D|S, if we then apply SubD in D|S we get the same result as we had in Carrara's SubD. I'm not sure if this isn't true from other modelers (since I don't use any others), but it surely does make it convenient for adding the new content creation tools of the latest D|S as part of our workflow for using the new Genesis figures in Carrara. Genesis 3 isn't compatible (yet), so I haven't been working with that one, but the others are happy to recieve my models as conforming clothing items! 

Also, I just seem to enjoy modeling in Carrara.

Some folks and friends tell me to try Modo or LightWave for modeling. So in all seriousness I go looking into them and, yes, I agree that they look like fantastic tools to use. So then I search for tutorials about people whom are making models that I might make, or doing projects that I might do, and in the end I find myself feeling that I'm just as happy using only Carrara for all of this stuff, rather than having to add yet another type of having to transfer back and forth via conversions or whatever. Carrara handles my needs just fine and then has the multitudes of tools for me to proceed to the next step, and the next, and so on. 

I am not familiar with the use of human characters, I am very tempted to do it I hope to have the time soon. But I can't imagine how SubD can work on the use of Genesis, it intrigues me :)

Oh yes I have received the same suggestions in to use other software, and I have tested and learned two great programs, one is Maya, I love it, but at the time of work with logos and rendering is not what I need, I feel more comfrotable in Carrara, the other great program is Alias AutoStudio, its a fascinating software that creates surface models based in vectors, its cool but again, to my professional purpouses I'm still with the blend of SU+Carrara.

The following are some professional works made in SketchUp and Carrara, to illustrate of what I have talking about, and why I prefer by much to these as my usual modelling software:

 

Thank you Dart, I've started to model in Carrara because I found that the rendering room in this program is so versatile and so useful, unless to my needings, I regularly model in SketchUp and once the models are done there I go to Carrara to get the renders, in my day by day job I work with logos and this software combination is really good to me, but as I said before at the time to UV map the models made in SU some mess always happened, it was the case of a metal texture I needed to model, but couldn't add the texture properly, that opens to me the way of the vertex room, and the possibilties are endless.

Here a sample of the work made in the metal textures:

In this previous case I wanted to have the texture as a real thing and be able to UV map correctly, I was very happy with the results.

 

Here a couple of more samples:

 

Later will try some other samples.

And thanks again!

@Fencepost52: Wonderful mountain scene. Looks very realistic. And the others are great too, specifically the terrain with the river. The balloons in this one are a bit distorted.

@launok: Nice city scenes. I like the version with the mountain more. Disadvantage of those Sketchup models is their plastic look. I think with Bryce textures you can get even better results.

@David Brinnen: Nice objects you have made, interesting workflow. I really like the colours of the ‘wheels’. Lovely clouds in your ‘Dreamworks’ render. Nice eye in the sky too.

@Rembrandt: Very interesting ‘Dutch seapainting’. I like the white waves. The waves up front look a bit sharp and glassy. The sky is wonderful storm. You may want to increase the quality of the sky or lower the thickness to get rid of the banding effect (top right). Last sky-scape is really, really good!

@dHandle: Wonderful looking abstract! The lens flare does add some spice.

@vivien: Very good looking terrain scene. And the bridge works very well too.

@Dave Savage: Wonderful New Year’s card; thanks a lot and best wishes for you too! And, I really like your Bryce farm.

@Jamahoney: You should be more careful with this dangerous stuff (Mercury, not Bryce, of course).

@Electro-Elvis: Nice portrait.

@orbital: Beautiful sci-fi render. Wonderful colours!

@Horo: Bad-ass machine and nice terrain. Why throw away a terrain? You can always find some use, I think.

@Ati: Welcome to the forum. Nice start of your render carreer!

@Atlantis: Somehow very alien and dangerous, your render.

Sorry, no renders myself, just now.

 

You guys just used a term I never heard of before... Winding Order... So I had to look it up... That lead to so many other interesting topics and articles ranging from quantum physics to data storage... So now I just spent an hour and a half reading things that have caused several hundred neurons to actually implode... But at least I now know it probably is possible to make an object (in real life) 100% invisible... Though, currently only if it's a super cold sodium atom... But anyway, all that interestingness did not yield an actual definition for Winding Order... But by reading through a bunch of threads and posts at various CGI and coding forums, I am lead to believe that...Winding Order is the process by which a program determines which direction the normals face for rendering?  That sound right?... So that leads to a different question... Aside from SketchUp which is terrible at that, isn't that pretty much automatic in most modeling programs and only needs fiddling with if something horrible occurs?... How is one adjusting the normals to affect how the model responds to light?... Does that mean reversing the normals, specifying that back faces are rendered, or adjusting the smoothing angle? Or is that so other option? I'm really curious about this because from what I picked up, it seems pretty important and not something one wants to mess with if its not reversed normals, rendering back faces or smoothing.

@Jamahoney: Thank you for your comment. Althought it has an I7-4600m processor, 16 GB ram and a SSD harddrive, I was a little disappointed myself with my new computer.  But now, I have solved the problem. It was the eco mode and the power management that build a team against me. First it had rendered very swiftly but after a half an hour it slowed down dramatically. I found out, that the eco mode reduced the number of cores from 2 to 1. I could see in the task manager that the percentage of the used CPU decreased from over 80% to 12%. Therefore it is no surprise, that the estimation of render time, which after the first pass with both cores was around 2 hours 45 minutes, increased due to eco mode to a amazing 20 hours :-D Now I do switch off the eco mode, when I am using Bryce. In the end I am fairly happy. My new computer is nearly twice as fast as my old one. A bit of disappointment remains because of the SSD harddrive. Word or Excel documents are stored lightning-fast, but large bryce scenes... You can nearly watch how the system writes bit by bit on the hard drive. But to be fair it was a scene, that needed more than 2 GB main storage. Maybe it has something to do with LAA? But I can live with it quite well. BTW your metaballs mercury blobs came out very nice.

@Fencepost: Lovely scene. I guess the trees are the reason for the long render time? Maybe the waves could be a bit smaller, though they look great in the foreground, but in the background in comparison to the mountains they look a little too big.

@launok: Good to know, that a lot of good-looking Sketchup models can be put into a Bryce scene. With Genesis 2 characters I have learnt, more than 7 let Bryce crash.

@Rembrandt: Great scene. That I call a storm.

@dHandel: The glare is a nice addition to your abstract.

@Vivien: A good start into the new 2016!

@David Brinnen: I had quite a similar experience like you with Hexagon and Wings3d. I few features in Wings3d are really handy. I like the materials of your objects.

@Dave Savage: Great fun! And lovely grass!

@Horo: Interesting picture with the skull. Maybe you could bring it on a blake T-Shirt? I also like your previous scene with the tree structure. Your island scene with the lighting experiment I like the second one best.

@Orbital: Simply perfect. Tremendous work as usual.