Turbosquid models - textures not importing

[ajemutt]

Hi all!

 

Looks like this gets asked fairly often, but in searching around, I'm not quite seeing a fix. I've bought a couple models from Turbosquid, and have been trying to import them as either .obj or .3ds. I'm downloading the textures as well, and putting them in the same folder. I'm then selecting the imported textures in the import dialog, but everything comes in as a white model.

 

I'm on 2023 SP5 on an M2 Mac Studio.

 

Can anyone point me to a definitive guide on how to wrangle this?

 

thx!

 

A

[BartHays]

You likely have to rebuild the textures in VW.

Most Turbosquid models are not set up for the way VW handles texturing.

 

Is VW creating textures in the Resource manager? Sometimes it will create the textures but can't find the images do they are all blank.

If that happens, look at the *.MTL file(text file), that comes with the *.OBJ file.

For each texture, make sure it lists an appropriate texture map: "map_Kd Texture_162.png" or similar (the Kd is for Diffuse or your base image map in VW)

 

If all the parts are there, you can recreate the texture in VW, Chances are that the mapping will work because it is baked into the geometry. You just need to get the right image maps into the textures.

 

If you don't have an MTL or it doesn't list diffuse textures then you have bigger issues.

Or, if you have an MTL file but no images, that can be another problem with how Turbosquid packages download. 

 

Bart

 

 

 

[ajemutt]

Thanks for the reply!

 

OK, the .obj came with a .mtl file, as well as .png's marked as "Diffuse, Metalness, Roughness, etc, etc)

 

I'm trying to figure out how to bring in the .mtl file that came with the .obj. There's no option to import it, nor does the dialog for importing the .obj give an option to select or interpret a .mtl file. I tried creating a new Renderworks texture, and I can import the .png's individually (but I have no idea where to begin tweaking them to work) - and VW doesn't recognize the .mtl to bring in that way.

 

I've also tried to drag and drop the .mtl into VW, but it rejects it.

 

I *did*  RTFM, but the page on "Importing OBJ" seems pretty vague on what to do with the .mtl (or any other texture files), so I'm a little confused about that. Didn't find much on point via YouTube either.

 

When I import the .3ds version of the file, it does bring a bunch of textures (solid colors) into the resource manager, but I'm not really seeing a way to assign them to specific geometry without taking the geometry apart and painting parts individually - which seems like not the way it's supposed to work, and is a little beyond my 3D skills to begin with ; )

 

Am I missing something obvious or well hidden, or is my gut fear that VW really isn't very good at importing some things coming true?

 

thx!

 

A

[Kevin K]

@ajemutt I deal with this all the time with imported files from turbosquid. Sometimes Importing a 3ds file works and other times it works better importing an obj file, pertaining to textures appearing correctly. My bailout many times is that I am fortunate to have cinema 4d, and will open the file in that app, then export it back out to a 3ds or obj format, then import it into VW.  
As Bart mentioned you need to many times create new textures in VW, then go find the images files from your download and attach them to the new texture.  One caveat is that because the imported items end up importing as meshes, they don’t always map correctly.  Sorry, I know all this gets confusing.it is a bit of a game.

But, if you wish, I can probably get it to work for ya if you upload the files you downloaded with an image of what it is supposed to look like. There are a few tricks to facilitate this.

Your call. 
I am using VW 2022, but any file I send back to you can easily be opened in 2023.

Also, if you don’t want to upload the files directly to the forum, feel free to send the files in a message.

Good thing about uploading to the forum directly, is that others may also be able to get you through this:-)

[ajemutt]

Kevin, thanks for the info. That all makes a little sense.

 

I'm working with some simple human/musician figures from Turbosquid. Nothing too complicated really, and I may well take you up on your offer, but for the moment, I'm gonna try and hack at it a little more.

 

I'm also a more than a little frosted about the lack of official documentation on this workflow. I know that the various 3d formats have been -  and continue to be -  a literal Tower of Babel, but I would expect that a platform as mature as VW would provide more/better advice and wisdom to help us.

 

While I'm still in a mood to get more familiar with what's possible, I've got the following questions:

 

- Am I understanding correctly that C4D is able to save out a 3ds or obj that specifically conforms better with how VW is able to understand the file?

 

- If yes, do you have any idea of Blender creates similarly 'clean' files?

 

- Are there any 3d object sites that specialize in VW compatible models?  Or at least has their offerings better structured to import well into VW?

 

Thx!

 

A

[Kevin K]

@ajemutt I don’t have Blender, but yes,  c4d does a great job opening both obj and 3ds files….thankfully! 
To my knowledge I know of no sites that sort of specialize in directly dealing with the importing of obj and 3ds files for VW, and you are correct there is not much help / info that I have found in the VW universe pertaining to any tutorials relating to this topic. I don’t imagine you would want, nor need to buy c4d just to deal with this issue. Once you mess with it a bit, as I had to do over the years, you can get it all to work.

Again, if you hit the wall with your efforts, I am happy to lend a hand.

[Jeff Prince]

5 hours ago, ajemutt said:

I'm also a more than a little frosted about the lack of official documentation on this workflow. I know that the various 3d formats have been -  and continue to be -  a literal Tower of Babel, but I would expect that a platform as mature as VW would provide more/better advice and wisdom to help us.

in fairness to Vectorworks, this problem you are experiencing has more to do with the lack of quality on the model builder’s part than the software’s ability to import the file.

 

It could be as simple as the name of the image texture does not match the .mtl file.l (common problem with Turbosquid).  You can check this by opening the .mtl file in a text editor and comparing that to the names of the image files.  If that looks correct, the next step is to import the .obj file and review the textures created.

 

If the model is white, there is still a problem with the image names not matching the .mtl OR the image files are saved in a format that is hanging VWX up, usually a colorspace or bit depth issue.  That can be fixed by opening the image files in an image editor and resaving them (probobaly why C4D seems to fix things, it handles images a more robustly like Blender).

 

if the model is colored generally, does vectorworks have an image in the shader for a particular texture?  If not, you can map it.  If it does have an image in the texture bit you aren’t really seeing it, you likely have a units/scale issue.  That can be corrected with your import settings.

 

Once you get used to working with these files, fixing the issues will become second nature… there are a lot of poorly constructed models out there 😉

 

 

 

Blender mesh editing works well and can round trip back to VWX.

 

 

 

[ajemutt]

Jeff, that's great - exactly the kind of 'teach a dude to fish' info I'm been looking for. I'll play around with the image files and bit depth to see what's up.

 

FYI, I'm less upset that VW doesn't handle foreign files well than I am that there's no clear knowlegebase article giving the info you just shared. I would not have thought to search for meshes - I was only looking for .mtl importing, etc

 

thx!

 

A

[ajemutt]

Hey everyone - OK, I've learned a tiny bit more, but I'm still not able to get this to work.

 

I'll try and itemize my most recent attempt to give a full picture of what I'm doing.

 

- I downloaded the free trial of C4d, and have been importing the file (switched to a Sketchfab model because it was al little more on point for my gig), and outputting as .obj

 

- put all textures that came from Sketchfab and the .mtl file into the same folder as the .obj

 

- New VW doc, and import .obj

 

- Check "import materials + transparency + create RW textures (have also tried with these unchecked with seemingly the same results)

 

- Change units to inches (have tried keeping as mm as well)

 

- Click OK

 

- It brings in the object fast, but it doesn't show any other files coming in on the import window.  there's also no textures in the resource manager. only what looks to be some mesh files(?)

 

- I tried with the file as a .3ds and the import window does show a bunch of additional files being imported, but  can't finagle an attempt where any textures are actually showing up in the resource manager.

 

From what I'm gleaning, this might be due to the textures not being properly formatted/named by the original designer... but How would I go about fixing this? I don't see any way of selecting a part of the model and assigning a texture to it...  Nor do I see any place where I can figure out what the correct names should be for VW to ingest this correctly. Am I mistaken that there's no way to do that?

 

thx!

 

A

 

 

[Kevin K]

@ajemutt there is an import option to “import c4d textures” …that often times works well, since you now have the c4d trial version..

i know you seem to be enjoying solving all this hit and miss, on your own, but really, if you upload the files I am happy to have a go at it then explain in detail the steps necessary to get it to work as advertised. 
Or….you can just keep at it on your end 🙂

[Kevin K]

@ajemuttok....you owe me...I paused watching a Jason Bourne movie to do this for you !  🙂

I created something for you to practice with pertaining to importing obj files in VW.

1) unzip the attached file folder

2) open a new blank VW file and make sure your shaded settings are set to high.

3) select file/import obj from that file folder that has the .obj file in it, and configure the settings noted below:

 

 

4) when it opens rotate it to an iso view to see the chair better and probably need to zoom in a bit.

5) you will have 14 meshes that create the chair and there should be two textures created from the obj import in the resource browser...one 'wood' and one 'seat'  and if you click on one of the meshes you will note in the render tab of the OIP it will say 'IMPORTED" for the rendering texture alignment!  

That is how you know you imported the obj textures as they should be.

 

*I did not attach the file so you could practice this and create it on your own....but if you need the file let me know.

 

Ok...I am going to get back to Jason Bourne!!  🙂

hans wegner wishbone chair obj.zip

 

[Claes Lundstrom]

18 hours ago, jeff prince said:

in fairness to Vectorworks, this problem you are experiencing has more to do with the lack of quality on the model builder’s part than the software’s ability to import the file.

 

 

I agree with Jeff. I never have any problems importing obj files from the source I use. Absolutely rock solid. 

[Kevin K]

Class is exactly right.

[Kevin K]

Sorry, typo …I meant Claes…..auto spell has a mind of its own! 🙂

[BartHays]

A, 

 

Can you clarify what version of VW you are using?

Is there any chance you are using something without Renderworks? 

 

Bart

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

@ajemutt

 

I made a quick video which shows some of the difficulties one can run into when importing .obj models.

It might be an hour or so before the HD and 4K videos are available on Youtube....

 

https://youtu.be/whCL5xvrLBk

 

[ajemutt]

Wow! Thanks for all the advice and pointers. I'm gonna dig into them this weekend, and will report back what I learn.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[jmcewen]

On 7/26/2023 at 3:41 AM, ajemutt said:

Kevin, thanks for the info. That all makes a little sense.

 

I'm working with some simple human/musician figures from Turbosquid. Nothing too complicated really, and I may well take you up on your offer, but for the moment, I'm gonna try and hack at it a little more.

 

I'm also a more than a little frosted about the lack of official documentation on this workflow. I know that the various 3d formats have been -  and continue to be -  a literal Tower of Babel, but I would expect that a platform as mature as VW would provide more/better advice and wisdom to help us.

 

While I'm still in a mood to get more familiar with what's possible, I've got the following questions:

 

- Am I understanding correctly that C4D is able to save out a 3ds or obj that specifically conforms better with how VW is able to understand the file?

 

- If yes, do you have any idea of Blender creates similarly 'clean' files?

 

- Are there any 3d object sites that specialize in VW compatible models?  Or at least has their offerings better structured to import well into VW?

 

Thx!

 

A

I have had mixed results just opening the file in Blender then reexporting a new OBJ.  Sometime it works, sometimes it doesn't.  In fact, that  is the whole reason i downloaded Blender.

[ajemutt]

Hi all!

 

Thanks again for all the advice.

 

Circling back in on this with some results - I was able to finally get the objects and textures to import together. My issue was that (at least for these objects from Turbosquid) I needed to *uncheck* "Create Renderworks textrures for all materials", and now things come in and render as I'm expecting.

 

Ironically, I was getting a little pressure from the band I'm working with to deliver something, so in order to get that over to them quickly, I actually dug the Human Figure tool out of the Legacy vault, created my people, converted them to meshes, which I then simplified and was able to deliver. Looks like junk, but at least I was able to show something.

 

Now I'm gonna go fishing a little more ; )

 

Much appreciated!

[ajemutt]

Oh. Just realized that I didn't fully clarify what my 'fix' was.

 

I'm pretty sure that I had tried all possible combinations of checking the two boxes for importing and creating meshes. The other day when I had the time to get back around to trying to solve this, I had moved to my laptop (also running 2023 SP5 - both are M2 processors) 

 

First attempt, no dice. Model comes in as just a mesh with no textures. I then played around with @Kevin K's model, and that worked great. I then tried my Turbosquid model, and no textures. Last attempt as unchecking 'create RW textures' and it worked. I then tried importing again and changing the import RW textures to positive, and it also worked.

 

So YAY! it's working. But I have no idea why it is now, and why it wasn't before. I don't think it's changing computers, since it wasn't initially working on either.

 

Maybe some glitched preference value got overwritten and 'unglitched'?