Using Textured Mesh Files (3DS or OBJ) with nXtRender
nXtRender allows you to import meshes with texture coordinates welded to the vertices. These types of meshes are commonly used for "entourage" objects, such as 3D people or plants. Many different software packages can create these meshes, and many ready-made objects are available online. Current file support includes .obj and .3ds. This feature is not available in AutoCAD 2007.
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To Import a Textured Mesh Object:
- Make sure your mesh file, its material library (if .obj), and any texture files are located in the same folder.
- From the Widgets menu, select Textured Mesh Objects->Add...
- When prompted, pick a location for the objects.
Your object, its materials, and its textures will all be imported.
Additional Notes:
- AutoCAD may have trouble dealing with large meshes. It is strongly suggested that you set _SELECTIONPREVIEW to 0 when dealing with these, since the selection preview mechanism does not work well with large meshes.
- Most mesh objects can be exploded once into individual meshes.
- You may need to scale the mesh once inserted.
- These meshes are nXtRender custom objects. Make sure nXtRender is loaded when converting a drawing from 2010 format to 2007 format. These will be proxy objects when nXtRender is not present.
- A single grip and object snap point is provided. Osnap responds to "insert" or "nearest".
Textured mesh objects are stored as nXtRender custom obejcts. They can be moved, scaled, copied, deleted-- but they cannot be otherwise edited and different materials cannot be assigned to different meshes. Using the procedure below, you can convert this custom nXtRender object to one or more native AutoCAD "polyface" meshes. If you do this, you will lose the vertex texture coordinate information. This is generally not advised for objects with complex texture mapping such as people or plants. However, it may be advantageous to do this for other models, such as furniture. Once converted, you can use native AutoCAD editing tools, materials and mapping assignments, etc..
To Convert a Textured Mesh Object:
- From the Widgets menu, select Textured Mesh Objects->Convert to AutoCAD Mesh <
- Select the custom objects you would like to convert
Additional Notes:
- Meshes in AutoCAD are limited to 65,535 vertices. Any mesh which exceeds that limitation will not survive the conversion process. This is not a problem with the 3ds format, which shares the same limitation, but may be a problem for obj meshes.
