Export Metal/Glass Materials (fbx, dae, ...)

Hi there,

I am trying to export some 3D furniture with textures to then use them in a VR environment but I’m having quite a few problems along the way and was hoping that someone could help me out.

  1. Rhino Materials: I found that most materials work, as long as its just a diffuse texture, for example wood without any bump/reflectivity inputs. But for any other material I seem to lose all ‘Material Settings’ such as Gloss, Reflectivity, Reflection etc.
    The most basic case would be to export a simple metal sphere (attached). How is that possible?

Unlike many other people that posted here I didn’t have any issues with UV maps (yet…?).

  1. V-Ray Materials: Same goes for V-Ray Materials, is there a way to simply export my files with V-Ray Materials where the material is generated through ‘Settings’ (reflection, refraction, IOR, transparency, metalness, …) rather than through imported maps?

Thanks a lot!

what I export:


image
image

what I import:

torus.3dm (79.6 KB)

try exporting as obj-

Exporting as obj also produces a black shape. I also tried first baking the material but that also ends up black.

Might try fbx…

what VR engine are you using?

I tried fbx, obj, dae and even gltf with no success. The textures are not shown in any 3D viewer so I don’t think there if an issue with the VR application.

Textures that are assigned though a diffuse map in the ‚color‘ channel work fine.

which vr engine are you using?

Hi, I was wondering if you ever found a solutions around this? Im trying to export a very simple model into aero with a translucent material, and for the live of me I cant figure out how. I’ve tried exporting both .fbx and .obj with no luck. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!

you never answered the question…

what VR engine are you trying to export to?

Hi. So after learning more about file formats and their limitations I realized that most common formats simply can not store a lot of material information, especially values for metallnes, reflection etc, since each render engine reads this information differently.
I ended up exporting my files as a FBX either to Blender to clean the meshes up and do proper UV mapping before applying materials and exporting the model as a glTF 2.0 file (*.glb). Or, for models with simple geometries I would apply materials in Substance Painter and export a glb there.

The engine I’m using is a web application based on A-Frame.

The blender support page has a quite comprehensive article explaining the glTF 2.0 format and it’s PBR Material possibilities and limits. >Link

As far as I know, glTF is the only file format that is currently able to store materialized (PBR materials) and UV mapped models and their respective maps in one single package. A fully functioning Rhino implementation is not really there yet but there is a thread surrounding this issue on this forum that you can keep an eye on. >Topic

Alternatively there is also USD, another quite promising format that would enable a compression free model transfer. But USD is even less widely implemented so currently glTF seems to be the way to go.

This guide also explains the issue pretty well: Ben Houston’s Ultimate Guide to 3D File Formats

Hope this helps!

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