January 26, 2011, 07:05:24 pm
Hello there,
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My main problem between Softimage and 3ds was that I usually export the project from 3ds to Softimage, and most of the time in Softimage the scale is not right, even if I tweaked a lot with the import options settings...
So far ( just about Softimage and export to Lumion ) as Morten says, Softimage do not use metric system, by that I mean that you can't setup millimeters or meters when you create a scene, but there are some trick in order to do things properly, even if you can't input numeric values when you create geometry...
Right now if you create a cube ( Primitive>polygons mesh>cube ) and set the lenght to 10, if you export that cube into Lumion using .dae exporter that cube is 1mx1mx1m, you can double check this by exporting a 1mx1mx1mx cube that you create in 3ds and use Opencollada exporter and import into Lumion and see that the two cubes match.
Said that, when you work directly in Softimage and you want to export in a proper scale into Lumion, you have to remember that the value of 10 means 1 meter in Lumion.
You can help yourself by using visual cues on each window ( except the perspective ), to do that you Shift+S in the window>Visual cues>enable Rulers, so you'll have reference of what you're creating...thats it, is not very comfortable, but at least you'll have a proper scale when you export...
Another method ( quite comfortable actually ) is to assume that a cube with lenght 1 in Softimage is 1 meter, so you'll build everything and when you're done you simply scale all the meshes in the scene by 10, and you'll have the right scale into Lumion...but be sure to Freeze all the transforms before export, otherwise the Collada exporter will remember that the object is scaled, so keep that in mind...
About 3ds to Softimage to Lumion I'm still experimenting, because OpenCollada exported seems to cause lots of problems, so I'm doing some experiments using .FBX...tomorrow probably I'll tell you about that if you're interested
