Jar Contents: Importers

With Mesh Repair Off: bad edge ordering	With Mesh Repair On

Videoscape 3D / Aladdin 4D Geometry Importer

A utility that attempts to read and translate .GEO files for use with AoI. This file format was used in an old Amiga application called Videoscape 3D (by Allen Hastings) and is also supported in Aladdin 4D. This importer is designed to make it possible to migrate models from Aladdin4D to AoI. Only the object geometry is imported.

Lightwave Geometry Importer

An import utility that attempts to read and translate Lightwave LWOB files. The importer reads object geometry from a Lightwave (.LWO) file, and appends it to the current AoI scene. This utility doesn't attempt to read Lightwave Scene files, nor does it import all of the properties that may be included in an LWO file. In particular, this version does not attempt to import texture or surface information. Only the object geometry is imported.
NewTek changed the Lightwave LWO file format with the release of version 6.0. This plugin attempts to import both the older LWOB as well as the new LWO2 forms.
Also, if you have access to Lightwave, I'd recommend running your model through the "Align" tool before saving it to a file. You'll want all of the polygons to be 3-sided; and you'll want them all "flipped" in the same direction.

Digital Elevation Model Importer

A utility that attempts to read and translate Digital Elevation Model files for use with AoI. DEM is a raster file format that represents elevation values for terrain as measured by the US Geological Survey. Lower-resolution DEM files are available free of charge via FTP download at the EROS Data Center.

Some confusion was introduced by a commercial landscape visualization package called VistaPro which defines it's own file format, also unfortunately called DEM files. VistaPro is still available for Windows and has at times also been available for the Mac. In addition to the USGS format, the telefish DEM importer will also attempt to read VistaPro DEM files. However, documentation for this format is incomplete, so results may vary.

NOTE: DEM files can be very large. This in turn leads to very large memory requirements. For this reason, the importer will prompt the user to select a sampling level for the resulting AoI triangle mesh. The smaller the value, the higher the resolution of the resulting mesh, and the greater the memory requirements. A value of 1 will result in a vertex for every data point in the DEM file. A value of 2 will result in a vertex for every second data point; etc.. On my computers, values lower than about 5 will almost always result in Out Of Memory errors. Fortunately, AoI features a very nice triangle decimation utility in the Simplify Mesh tool. I'd recommend using the lowest sampling value your hardware will support, then using the Simplify Mesh tool in the mesh editor to reduce the polygon count. BTW, be sure to select the region you want to work on before invoking the simplifier.

DEM files do not contain color or texture information.

To invoke the importer, select it from the FILE->IMPORT menu. DEM files can take a long time to load, so be patient.

What about SDTS files?
When searching for DEM data, you may come across SDTS files. SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer System) is a newer format for transferring geospatial data, and is intended to replace the older DEM format. At present, there is no SDTS importer for AoI. Luckily, a popular utility program called SDTS2DEM, written by Gregg Townsend, can convert most SDTS files into a suitable DEM file. It's available at this site.

3D Studio Importer

This is an import utility that attempts to read and translate 3D Studio files. The importer reads object geometry from a 3D Studio (.3ds) file, and appends it to the current AoI scene. This utility doesn't attempt to import all of the properties that may be included in a 3DS file. In particular, this version does not attempt to import texture or surface information. Note also that .max files are not supported. Only the object geometry is imported.

AutoCAD DXF Importer

This is an import utility that attempts to read and translate AutoCAD DXF files. DXF files are vector drawing files that may also contain some 3D model information. The importer reads object geometry from a Data eXchange File (.dxf) file, and appends it to the current AoI scene. This version of the utility imports only the "3DFACE" entities found in the input file. All other entities are ignored. Note also that the utility works only on ASCII-style DXF files. There exists a binary version of the format as well, although it is rarely seen in the wild. As with the other importers here, this utility doesn't attempt to import texture or surface information. Only the object geometry is imported. More information about the DXF file format is available here.

Note: The DXF importer uses portions of the YCAD libraries, without modification. YCAD is an open source project developed under the auspices of Y Systems. The source code is available under the terms of the LGPL at Sourceforge.

POV-Ray Mesh Importer (for POV Tree)

I think that I shall never see... a realistic ray-traced tree!

I added this utility because I wanted to be able to use the trees generated by Gennady "Gena" Obukhov's excellent POV-Tree utility with AoI. POV-Tree is based on Tom Aust's TOMTREE scripts for POV-Ray, and is capable of producing some truly amazing output.

Because POV-Tree is written in Java, my initial thought was to incorporate it as an AoI plugin. With Gena's kind permission, I did actually do this, although I never released the plugin. The reason is that it was FAR TOO SLOW! Although POV-Tree is quite fast when used as intended, the AoI tool was only slightly faster than actually growing a live tree! It was also extremely memory intensive. So I was working on redesigning the tool to match AoI a little better when I learned from Gena that a commercial version of POV-Tree was in the works. This version would add several new features, including the ability to export Wavefront OBJ files! Of course, the OBJ translator in AoI is quite good, so we can look forward to another very good tree modeling tool that works well with AoI in the near future.

Meanwhile, the free version of POV-Tree is impressive in its own right, and the ability to use the models it generates with AoI will no doubt appeal to many other AoI users besides myself. Because it's Java, POV-Tree runs everywhere that AoI does. You can get a copy of POV-Tree, and see some examples of it's capabilities here.

The importer ignores everything in the input file except the "mesh" declarations. As with my other importers here, all color and texture data are ignored. The importer was tested with version 1.5 of POV-Tree.

There are several other tools that write POV-Ray triangle mesh data as well. This importer may also be able to read those files, but that has not been my priority.

Notes:

POV-Tree can generate geometry using blobs and heightfields as well as triangle meshes. No attempt has been made to support these in the importer. If you want to import a POV-Tree into AoI, stick with mesh modeling.

POV-Tree generates some HUGE data files, specifying mesh objects with tens of thousands of faces. Because of this, it can take a few moments to read the files and load the data into AoI.

The mesh objects that POV-Tree generates are not completely compatible with AoI. In particular, it creates two groups of disconnected meshes to represent the wood and the foliage. Several of the tools in AoI are designed to work on a single connected mesh at a time. For example, the Simplify Mesh tool expects that only a single mesh is selected; but the tree actually consists of many unconnected mesh objects. For this reason, some of the AoI mesh manipulation tools will not work correctly with POV-Tree models.