More Export Options to the people!

Rhino Rhino for Mac
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This a personal pet peeve of mine about Rhino, the export options for some formats.

For example DAE files, export with 4 views attached, there is no option to turn it off. So when I import the file on AR Studio and/or SceneKit, I get all this extra unnecessary objects. My work around now, is to open the file on another 3D package just to re-export without the cameras.

Same goes to FBX, there is no option to keep the Z axis for example, or export by Layers, or as a single mesh or object name. I do AR/VR and video games using Rhino/Grasshopper to export the content to Unreal Engine/Unity. It would be great to have more control over the export, in particular, naming, grouping and which export version of FBX to use.

This is how you auto import collision meshes on UE4, using object names embedded in the FBXL https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Content/FBX/StaticMeshes#collision

Or the whole static mesh: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Content/FBX/StaticMeshes

Even a LOD (level of detail) export option would be super useful, like when selecting how detail the mesh should be on export, the user could select the number of LOD levels and set the quality for each with the slider.

I am only talking about FBX and DAE here, because these are the one I use the most (and OBJ, but this at least has many more option, shame it’s not as standard of a format as FBX).

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V6 , V7, binary and ascii export flavors for FBX will be in Mac V6. Rhino Z to FBX Y will also be in Mac V6. I’ll add issues for your other requests and we’ll try to get to them as we have time.

Tim

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Turns out that in V6 (both Windows and Mac) dae export pays attention to the “Geometry Only” checkbox in the file save dialog. I’ll probably make that a dialog internal to the plugin for V7 so that setting can be easily retained.

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Hi @tim To be clear at the moment the FBX is not working correctly. We need fixing not new features that can be also broke. I understand that won’t fix and new UI is in progress. That’s great news! THANKS

I do not know what “be easily retained” means in new V7 (where to find it? command?) but just to give more feedback:
We need to save settings setup for Unity, Unreal, CryEngine, Houdini etc…
Since each setup is different and depends on the object we are exporting.
Sometimes we return back to Rhino after few years of inactivity and so the UI must be easy to use and remember; save and load old exporting setups.

Since is V7 WIP: where is the list of settings we can set up?
Here is some suggestion we need to set up:

Export Parameters

  • Space Units (meters, kilometres, etc) A common problem that we are having is, for example, Unity (import FBX files) needs to be set up in meters. I make the object and often using the Rhino default (i presume) small millimetres. In the new Rhino, V7 setup need an option to choose meters and save that setup. Since is common practice in all these applications and VR to have one unite = 1 meter specially FBX is used for meshes. What we do now, is to open a new second Rhino in meters, import that object just for making the FBX export in meters. So that the final game does not need to convert and scale each time the player runs it.
  • Digits after coma (mantissa, decimal points or float precision). To reduce precision and increase FPS. Having more than 5 or 6 digits is not good. Reducing this, can help to reduce file size, memory allocation in the CPU, increase FPS when the game or VR is running since having execs of precision into the final result is visually useless and computationally expensive (example: phone battery drain).
  • Geometry (yes-no)
  • Geometry only
  • Geometry LOD
  • Naming Ability
  • Selected only
  • With Origen (yes-no)
  • Lights
  • Cameras
  • Materials
  • Textures
  • layer hierarchy transforms or Rhino layers
  • Bones
  • Animation (less important but if you import animation just to preserve it when export)
  • Etc…
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