Local Space – Does it really exist in 3D Coat?

[vladius]

Is there actually a concept of local space in 3D Coat? When I import an FBX from Blender, seems like all local space information is lost, as I can't really use the Symmetry's local space options.

Edited October 4, 2016 by vladius

[Carlosan]

There is an option on Symmetry.

[vladius]

3 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

There is an option on Symmetry.

Yup. That's what I'm talking about. But what is actually that local space?

See, I have a scene in Blender with all those objects in it. I want to import those objects in 3D Coat with each object having its unique local space. I have some tubes rotated at 20 degrees. I want their axis of symmetry be preserved.

[ajz3d]

I just made a test by exporting a rotated and translated box out of Houdini and imported it back into 3D-Coat and Blender. Blender does preserve the local rotation axis, but places the box at the origin (though the axes are probably wrong because in Blender Z+ is up). 3D-Coat ignores local rotation axis, but places the box correctly.

A bug, behavioris intentionalis or user error? :P

Original:

Blender:

3D-Coat (Sculpt Room):

[AbnRanger]

For some strange reason, Andrew calls LOCAL AXIS, MAIN AXIS. I think that is the source of a lot of confusion because I've never used a 3D app that uses that term MAIN Axis. It's always called LOCAL axis. So, in the Tool Options dialog, you want to click TO MAIN AXIS. I've mentioned this issue to Andrew multiple times and nothing has changed. In fact, with the IMPORT tool, I don't even know what the heck LOCAL Axis is supposed to do.

[ajz3d]

Unfortunately in this particular "boxy" case, to main axis will just put the manipulator inside the bounding box of an object. It won't rotate it to orientation the object was originally imported with, which is strange because this button seems to be working much better in the retopo room, as it at least attempts to reorient local rotation axes. They still don't match the original orientation though (as seen below on the screenshot from retopo room):

Edited October 4, 2016 by ajz3d

[vladius]

16 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

For some strange reason, Andrew calls LOCAL AXIS, MAIN AXIS. I think that is the source of a lot of confusion because I've never used a 3D app that uses that term MAIN Axis. It's always called LOCAL axis. So, in the Tool Options dialog, you want to click TO MAIN AXIS. I've mentioned this issue to Andrew multiple times and nothing has changed. In fact, with the IMPORT tool, I don't even know what the heck LOCAL Axis is supposed to do.

Main axis is CALCULATED (based on geometry and/or normals, I suppose) It has nothing to do with real local coordinate system.

Seems like 3D Coat imports objects correctly, but it collapses the local coordinate system converting geometry to global space. Same goes for the export. All geometry exported from 3D coat is placed in 0,0,0.

Seems like there is actually an exclusion in Surface Sculpt mode, where Transform tool actually transforms the local basis.

Anyways, it's very tedious to deal with the lack of local basis in the Paint and Retopo rooms. Hope that proper local coordinate systems (or even hierarchies of those) get implemented in 3D Coat, having both import and export.

As of Blender, you have to specify correct global coordinate system in its FBX import/export options. Otherwise, you get mirrored and rotated results.