[Solved] Obj previewing incorrectly when importing as Spline Profile

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Anybody seeing this odd problem? When I import an obj to the Spline panel, it previews rotated 90 on z. When I complete the import and use the object on a curve, the orientation is correct. 

I could probably be okay with that except for the fact that since I can't adjust the spacing during import accurately because of the wrong orientation, I need to do this multiple times before I have the spacing reasonably correct through trial and error.

I'm seeing this problem in 2022-54 and -55. 

If anybody knows in which past release of 3DCoat this works correctly, please let me know.

Or...is there a way to adjust the spacing of the object after it's been applied to the Curve? I expected the Spacing parameter to do this but adjusting this is not doing anything. It's possible that I'm using this incorrectly, or maybe it's another thing that's not working correctly for me in -54 and -55?

Thanks in advance for any helpful information or suggestions.

Edited January 1, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Yup, that fixed it for the laptop too. Maybe this info will save someone else from a headache. 

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Yup, that does the trick. Be sure to delete the 3DC settings files from your Documents folder. Just uninstalling and reinstalling 3DC will not fix this problem.

[Carlosan]

Check this,

hope this help

 

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Thanks Carloson!

I've seen most of that material so I'm guessing the orientation issue in the preview on import is a bug then. I'll try installing an older stable version to be sure.

Will also review some of those tutorials to be sure I'm not missing something.

Edited December 31, 2022 by D.R. Greenlaw

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Before I start installing older versions, here's what I'm seeing.

When import an octopus tentacle OBJ I created elsewhere, the preview is incorrectly rotated 90-degrees on z and looks like this...

FYI, this object is actually using the same orientation as the tentacle OBJ that comes installed with 3DC.

When I click OK, the orientation seems fine when I apply it to a Curve. Like so...

The problem is that, because the preview orientation is incorrect, I can't properly adjust the overlap setting. (Which is why it looks awful in this example.)

If I orientate the geometry prior to importing so I get a correct preview orientation, the object is then applied along the Curve with an incorrect 90-degree offset orientation. From this, I gather the Curve tool is working fine but the import preview must be at fault.

Just wondering if anybody else is seeing this problem in 2022-54 or -55.

Going to try an older version of 3DC now and see what happens.

 

Edited January 1, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw

[poeboi]

Something to consider is that 3DCoat uses Y as it's upward direction by default when orienting meshes, which is why there can occur discrepancies between/from applications that has Z as it's upward direction by default

If an object is exported from such an app with such orientation and it appears the longitudinal direction is up, it can occur when imported in 3DCoat the direction will be rotated +-90 degrees

Might help to go into settings, toggle the setting which makes it so Z axis is up prior to importing

[D.R. Greenlaw]

That's what I thought at first, although the program I exported from is Y-up, not Z-up.

I don't understand why the mis-orientation is only in the import preview (where you set the spacing) and but the orientation is correct after importing and applied to the Curve.

Still going through older versions with no success, but will also try exporting from a different Y-up 3D program.

 

Edited January 1, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Ok, now I'm getting somewhere: the Import Preview works correctly for me in 2022-29; I now see proper orientation in the Import Preview as well as after importing and applying the object to the Curve.

Now I'll start upgrading 3DC forward from there to find when this feature broke. If it works all the way up to -55, then I'm guessing this may have been related to another problem I was having today that i just solved. Here's the thread in case anyone else needs this info...

Edited January 1, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Man, that was a chore...and not exactly how I expected to spend the last day of 2022.

After deleting the user files and installing every stable version of 3D Coat from 2022-29 onward, this feature is now working properly for me. It even works fine in 2022-55 beta, which is where I first started having problems.

So I'm going to say the problem was caused by a corrupt config or user preference file that 3D Coat stored in the Documents folder. (This also solves the Module4 error as described in the thread linked above.)

Hope this info is helpful to anyone else running into this very strange issue. Thanks to all for the suggestions...that helped me narrow this down.

Happy New Year everyone! 

Edited January 1, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Hmm...I have interesting update about the incorrect orientation error I was seeing last week: 3D Coat 2022-55 is still working fine on the desktop computer I was using last week, however today I launched 2022-55 on my laptop and I'm now seeing the error on this computer.

The common link between these two computers is that I had updated 3D Coat using the 'online' updater to -55 when this error appeared.

I'm assuming that if I follow the same steps I took for fixing this issue for my desktop computer (uninstall, delete settings, install with the standalone installer) but for my laptop computer, that should solve the problem. BRB.

Edited January 5, 2023 by D.R. Greenlaw