I just purchased Kaol's 'Golden Hind' sailing ship. It's a very nice looking model as are all of Kaol's ship models but I'm having a bit of a problem though...

Both the description on the product page and the readme indicate that it's "easy" to show the model with either furled sails or fully extended sails and the promo pictures show both versions.

When I import the model into Bryce (or Poser for that matter), it loads with both the furled AND the fully extended sails together. The product is furnished as an .obj file with a .mtl file and 50-some-odd textures in jpeg format all in the same folder.

Obviously it's not "easy" for me...  I have no clue how to go about showing one version or the other. Does anyone have this model who can advise me how to do this? I have contacted the artist but have had no response yet. I really would like to take advantage of some free time this weekend and play with my new toy...

TIA for your help
W.

I don't have the model, and don't know how much help I can offer. Are the sails one object group for fully extended and another object group for furled? If so, or if possible, maybe can ungroup them?

I'm assuming that both sets of sails are in seperate groups from everything else that would allow for this.

Of course in Bryce, you would just look in your Groups section to see if selecting one of the Sail groups would be possible.

I examined this product a little more carefully and here's what I came up with. The ship is one group only made up of 54-some-odd individual meshes.

Only 3 meshes called 'sail1_1', 'sail2_1' and 'sail4_1' make up both versions (Full & Furled) of all 6 sails. the rest of the meshes are various other part of the ship. Those three meshes are a weird combination of furled and full sails a shown in the accompanying  illustration. (I made an error in PS and labelled the third mesh as 'sail3_2' - it should be 'sail4_1')

Unless I'm missing something, there is no way that I can show this ship with all full sails only or all furled sails only...  and if that's the case, I'm surprised that this has not been discovered earlyer. This product has been in the market place for some time now.

I have not heard from Kaol yet but then it is a weekend...

If there is no, or I cannot get a satifactory resolution to this problem I would think that I'd be entitled to get my money back since the product IS NOT as advertised in both the text description and the promo images. That would be a shame though because I really like this ship...

W.

Just seems like some Important instructions is missing on how to achieve this.  But my initial thought was, what AgentSmith said.... Select the version of the sails you dont want to render and delete it.

Have you tried Deleting Sail1_1 doing a render and see how it looks? and than Deleteing Sail2_1 and rendering and seeing how that looks? and Finaly Deleting Sail4_1 and seeing what that looks like?

And Finaly maybe you need to CTRL+Click the Sails you want to delete and see what it selects.

I'm Just throwing some ideas.

I did something similar with landing gear on an aircraft model. (Having both raised and lowered on a mesh.) I thought it'd be simple enough to figure out, but I think it probably drove a few people nuts. Hopefully the subset items shoud be named in some manner to help indicate which set are furled vs. unfurled. You just have to do some ctrl-clicking to pick and delete the set you're not using.

Unless I'm way off base, here's what the results would be if I selectively delete 1 or 2 of the 3 sail meshes:

I have numbered the sail #1 to #6 for easyer reference (I'm not a sailor so I don't know the names of the individual sails...).

Deleting mesh 'sail1_1'  will leave the following sails visible:
#1 and #5 - Both full and furled (not acceptable)
#3 - Full only
#6 - Furled only

Deleting mesh 'sail2_1' will leave the following sails visible:
#2 and #4 - Both full and furled (not acceptable)
#3 - Furled only
#6 - Full only

Deleting mesh 'sail4_1' will leave the following sails visible:
#1 to #5 - Both full and furled (not acceptable)
#6 - Furled only

Deleting mesh 'sail1_1' and 'sail2_1' will leave the following sail visible:
#6 - Full only

Deleting mesh 'sail1_1' and 'sail4_1'  will leave the following sails visible:
#1 and #5 - Both full and furled (not acceptable)
#3 - Full only
#6 - Furled only

...and finally deleting mesh 'sail2_1' and '4_1' will leave the following sails visible:
#2 and #4 - Both full and furled (not acceptable)
#3 - Furled only

I hope I got all the combinations right. In any case, deleting one or two of the sail meshes will leave an unrealistic combination of simultaniously full and furled sails which is simply not acceptable except in one case (deleting 'sail1_1' and 'sail2_1' ) where only sail #6 will be full and none of the others will show at all...

...so - I still have the dilema

Can you Un-Group those meshes that are combined?

Nope - nothing to ungroup 'cause they're not a group, they're ONE mesh.

Like I said before, the entire ship is only one group comprised of 54 individual meshes and only three of the meshes make up both versions of all six sails as outlined above in my illustration.

Elaborating on my last reply - I'm not a modeler and I know next to nothing about modeling so I can't catagorically say what it is or isn't.

All I can say for sure is that Bryce "sees" only one group (the whole ship) and 54 individual meshes (all the parts that make-up that group). I can un-group the ship and then Bryce "sees" only the 54 individual meshes.

Again, to repeat myself, only three of those meshes make-up all the sails.and only one of those three meshes is one individual sail (mesh "sail4_1" - my sail #6). The other two meshes are a combination of a number of sails, both full and furled together but still, only ONE mesh...

Actually, I thought it was Drake's Golden Hind, but I gotcha now..

You'r absolutely right pakled - to be technically correct, the subject should be "Kaol's Wavefront .obj model of Drake's Golden Hind... "

Also, (I'll throw in the obvious), contact Kaol, maybe they can help you or update the mesh to be more flexible.

I just wonder... if it's possible to select the individual mesh that you don't want to show, instead of deleting it, would just making that mesh hidden work?

No Fran, that doesn't work...   you see my problem is that the mesh itself is both the furled AND full sail. The individual mesh I don't want to show  contains both and I can't hide (or show) just part of that ONE mesh.

Oh, and btw AS, the first thing I did was to contact Kaol on Friday via the contact link on the product page and also again yesterday via the e-mail address in the readme. I've had no response yet, but then as I said earlyer, it IS a weekend...

j/k...;) Actually, if I remember correctly, the original Golden Hind met with an accident, and Drake renamed one of his ships in her honor (yeah, I should get a life..;) still, I know what you mean..

This is a little strange to follow, and I'm just tossing wild ideas. It seems if you delete one mesh, you have a combination of full and furled sails that remain. Let's say you wanted to keep the furled sails. How about do a crazy thing like copying a mesh, then boolean cut the sail you don't want. Paste the mesh.

My thought - Perhaps the model is optimised for Poser and requires transparency maps for the sails? In poser I would imagine that would make it very easy to show or hide them. Further to D@M - You could get a copy of Wings3D, export the sail meshes from Bryce and use Wings to create separate material zones.

Quote - My thought - Perhaps the model is optimised for Poser and requires transparency maps for the sails? In poser I would imagine that would make it very easy to show or hide them. Further to D@M - You could get a copy of Wings3D, export the sail meshes from Bryce and use Wings to create separate material zones.

Ah, I was just thinking that, it would be easy enough to do in Wings.

Have you actually looked at the Sail mats in a paint program. It could be that  by applying one mat you get the full sails, and by applying another you get a mat and transmap, which would give the furled sails?

Just my 0.2p

It's certainly a very basic readme for such a complicated model.

Thank you all for trying to help. Kaol has responded to my request for help and I'm now communicating with him about the problem.

In any case, my feelings are that one should not have to jump through hoops and perform all sorts digital acrobatics to get a $24 Bryce/Poser product to work as advertised...

I'll keep you posted of the outcome...

W.

I agree. Of course maybe some editing of the bought project might be needed at times, but not at the level of having to use A program, then B program, then know C feature of B program, etc.

You don't mention which Bryce version you're using but if it's Bryce 5.5 or later (or any version of Poser/D|S) they only read .OBJ Material groups and it may be that the model is saved as Mesh groups. Or all the Sails have the same exact Material group name which Bryce reads as a single group. You might want to mention this to the author and see if this info helps. Best; Dan

Thank you for your input Dan. It is not the answer I wanted to hear but it's the one that makes the most sense to me so far (and who should know better than you?). Bryce grouping meshes by material group name and then treating/displaying those as a single mesh would explain the strange combination of furled/full sails that you see in my illustration way at the top of this threat...

I'm using Bryce 6.1 btw and when I read that the requirements and testing are in B5, I assumed that I'm OK since I have a later version (Note to self: never assume).

I feel I owe, and hereby offer, a  public apolgy to Kaol. Some of my comment might be construed to  imply that the product text description and graphic presentations are less than honest. That was not my intention. All I wanted is that the product worked for me as I believed it to be advertised and as I believed it should work

Again, my heartfelt and sincere apology to Kaol. I said so at the beginning and I'll say it again - I like this model - and somehow or other I'm going to make it work for me...

Speaking of which (and this is directed at dan whiteside as much as anyone else) - If I can find and re-install my old version of Bryce 5 and then use that to import and save the Golden Hind model and, providing everything loads and functions as it should, can I then open that Bryce 5 file in Bryce 6.1 without loosing anything?

My sincere thanks to each and everyone for your interest and attempts to help and also to paklad for the history lesson(s)

W

Bryce 5 should work if the model is indeed grouped by mesh but mesh groups that have the same name have the same problem as mat groups (they become one group). But if B5 reads it correctly, you should be able to save and load that into 6.1.

guslaw :
I have revisied the Golden Hind model and I think this is Bryce specific issue. I have tried to import obj version of golden hind into Bryce 5.0 . While the output look is the same as it should be , the mesh parts are weirdly named and did not contain the original geometry information.
When importing this model into XSI 5.1  I end up with correct mesh model (original mesh names and correct mesh parts )
It look like this in XSI 
**

**

and like this in Vue.
**
**

As you can see , there are original mesh parts&names , so there should be no issues like that.

I should try to prepare Bryce version , but it could take a lot of time ( I am kinda bryce noob :) ) and it could screw  the compatibility with others programs. it's somehow my fault that i did not check the geometry more deeply in Bryce. I'll update the product page with this issue

Anyway guslaw no need to apology , you acted really reasonable

kaol

If separate meshes have the exact same name, Bryce treats it as one object. This can even happen when exporting stuff from Wings3D if I recall correctly. So unless you want it as one object, each mesh has to have a distinct name. It would be a simple fix, execpt in cases of models with who knows how many parts.

There's also another grouping thing related to materials, but I'm not sure how XSI deals with that issue. Some programs have an option in regards to how to handle it. Otherwise you're stuck hacking the .obj/.mtl in a text editor to make it Bryce friendly.

There have been occasions when I have solved problems like this by importing the model into poser and then resaving it as an obj out of poser, ticking the box that says   *"use exact internal names except spaces"
*It does mean you can have an extremely long list of parts to cope with, but does solve a lot of problems with names of individual parts.

Bumping this, because I just bought the Golden Hind model for use in DAZ Studio 2.3x, and ran into the exact same problem as the original poster. I have Bryce 6.1, but have never used it - in fact, I probably never fully installed it. (When I just tried to open it, Windows couldn't find some component, so I've uninstalled it and will have to reinstall.)

So ... can Kaol, or anyone, give advice to an absolute Bryce noob on how to rejigger the model, if possible, so that I can use it in D|S? Or alternatively use Hex 2.5 to do this, which I also have but have never used?? The Golden Hind is such a gorgeous model that I really want to be able to use it!

Happy update - I took it into Hexagon and the options for the sails were instantly visible - without even really knowing what I was doing, I was able to make each sail either set or furled, and import it into DAZ Studio.

I still want to see if I can make the sails 'work' within D|S, but this is enough to give me basic functionality - I can set sails as desired in Hexagon, and use the model thus configured.