I a using Vue 6 Infinite.

I imported a plane object (a square) and selected centered and when I look in the vue coordinates it's position said:

X: -19.35
Y: -58.06
Z: -9.265

When it should read:

X: 0
Y: 0
Z: 0

How can I get Vue to use coordinates like other 3D applications. I need to line up an imported object precisely.

I created a box in a 3D app, then imported it into Vue. I then added a roof and imported it into Vue but when I look in the Vue coordinates the X, Y, Z of the cube and roof do not match up. Is there a way to get Vue to use coordinated like other 3D apps? 

Let's say I want to align the cube at X: 20, Y: -20 and Z: 0 then import another object and align it to the same. it doesn't work the newly imported object imports with a totally different set of coordinates.. Frustrating.

Is there a way to fix this?

As far as I know, "centered" in the import dialogue is not relative to the world, it's relative to your camera viewports (top, side and front). The object is imported and centered in those viewports.

What do you mean exactly "Vue to use coordinates like other 3D applications"? What applications? If you look at Poser or Zbrush or Geocontrol, for example, each one has their own coordinate systems and their own way of handling them.

Don't forget that you can simply force an exact coordinate position in Vue. It doesn't matter to where you originally import it. After import, you can go to the object properties panel and manually input the exact coordinates you want. 

Not sure I understand what you mean. What were the coordinates of the object in your other app? Was it 0,0.,0? Vue uses the pivot point as the coordinates center for an object. In world space. Was the pivot point properly centered in your other app? In Vue, you can always change the pivot's position, using the numerics  tab of the Objects properties panel.

 Hi, let me try and explain better.

1. In my external 3D application I set the models axis point at: X: 0 Y: 0 Z: 0 (see image 1)

1. When importing into Vue I select only the "Center Object" option.

Problem

1. The model imports at the center in Vue but the models axis is no longer in the center of the model. (see image 2)

Option #1

First I could go into Vue's "Position" and reset the position to X:0 Y:0 Z: 0 but this doesn't work because on import Vue changed the model's axis point to be off center so the model will be off center.

Option #2

Next in Vue I "Manually" moved the model to the center of the viewport, I then selected the "Pivot Position" button and then set the pivot position to X: 0 Y: 0 Z: 0. The axis did move to the center of the viewport and the center of the model, but  the problem with this is if you look in Vue's "Position" panel the X, Y and Z positions are all messed up. If you reset them to X:0 Y:0 Z:0 it will move the model off center again. (see image #3)

So currently I have no solution.  I can't  get an imported model to be centered in Vue with an position of: X:0 Y:0 Z:0

Ok, I see. But in C4D, did you move the object so it lies on the grid? In C4D a cube center is indeed at 0,0,0, but it's the center of the cube that is a t this position, but the bottom polygon lies below the the grid, did you modify the object's position and the object's axis? This would mean that this operation was lost when exporting. Did you try several export formats?

Ok, Just tried exporting a C4D cube, and indeed, the pivot point is moved in the object center, both 3ds and obj after importing into Vue8.5. Dunno if this is a bug or not, but to change the pivot position, it's easy: go to the numerics tab whith your object selected, then click on the pivot icon on the left to activate the pivot position coordinates. Activate show pivot and relative pivot, now you can chaghe the pivot position so it lies at 0,0,0, so you can position your obejcts in your scene.

Thanks Bruno,

The object was exported just as you see it (in image #1). As you probably know, you can use the "Axis" tool to locate the axis wherever you want in Cinema 4D. I needed the axis at the bottom and center of the object (see image#1) so that's where I put it. I then exported the mesh as an .obj from Cinema.

I don't see why moving the axis location before exporting as .obj. would be a problem. Can you explain further?

Quote - Ok, Just tried exporting a C4D cube, and indeed, the pivot point is moved in the object center, both 3ds and obj after importing into Vue8.5. Dunno if this is a bug or not, but to change the pivot position, it's easy: go to the numerics tab whith your object selected, then click on the pivot icon on the left to activate the pivot position coordinates. Activate show pivot and relative pivot, now you can chaghe the pivot position so it lies at 0,0,0, so you can position your obejcts in your scene.

Yes I tried that too. It doesn't work. Here's why.

1. Build a simple object in Cinema 4D like my house or even a cube should work and then place the axis like I did at the bottom center of the object.

2. Now export from Cinema 4D as .OBJ

3. Now open in Vue. The axis will be off center.

4. Now from the Vue Pivot Icon, select the "Show Pivot" and "Relative Pivot" like you said. Then move the pivot point to the very center of the object. Looks good so far.

5. Now in Vue set the X and Y "Position" coordinates to "0".

6. Now look at your "Top" view in Vue. The object will not be centered in the viewport.

There's no way to re-center the axis point on the model and still have the model be at the center of the viewport.

Which version of Vue? I just moved the pivot to the bottom of same imported cube, and cube hasn't moved, it's still centered...

Quote - I created a box in a 3D app, then imported it into Vue. I then added a roof and imported it into Vue but when I look in the Vue coordinates the X, Y, Z of the cube and roof do not match up. Is there a way to get Vue to use coordinated like other 3D apps? 

Let's say I want to align the cube at X: 20, Y: -20 and Z: 0 then import another object and align it to the same. it doesn't work the newly imported object imports with a totally different set of coordinates.. Frustrating.

Is there a way to fix this?

I do all my modeling in one program and them export the objects of the model as OBJ into Vue.  Once inside Vue, i can group the object together and then re-size them all at once to keep things the same scale.  I can also move the model around a scene without any of its pieces getting left behind.

If I alter the model in my other program and then export as OBJ again into Vue, of course the model will be back to the original size and postion again and I have to start up with resizing it and re-positioning it.  That is why I freeze the model design at some point and only make minor adjustments to it once it is imported into Vue and I don't go back to the original model again.

If I need to do precise positioning of objects (aligning them, etc), I do all that in my modeling program and just do any necessary resizing of the whole group in Vue.  I use Imperial Feet measurements.  And no, Vue does not understand any measurements I use in my modeling app.  It just ignores them.

The x,y,z positions from Hexagon 1.21 are retained in Vue Infinite 8.0 as long as auto-centering/sizing is not used at import.

Was thinking also that  "center object" could be the culprit....Will check it out later

Quote - Which version of Vue? I just moved the pivot to the bottom of same imported cube, and cube hasn't moved, it's still centered..

Thanks Bruno, I am using Vue 6 and Vue 7.5. Did you check to see if your models axis point is centered in the center of the object in top view when you set the location of the model to: X:0 Y:0 Can you post your .obj and the steps you took exactly.

Quote - If I alter the model in my other program and then export as OBJ again into Vue, of course the model will be back to the original size and postion again and I have to start up with resizing it and re-positioning it.  That is why I freeze the model design at some point and only make minor adjustments to it once it is imported into Vue and I don't go back to the original model again.

I reread my post and I see worded it wrong. I now see it sounded like I imported the roof separately, but the roof and walls were all imported at the same time so that's where the confusion came in. I never alter the model without exporting all parts again. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks Bruno. I've done test after test and I think it's a Cinema 4D problem with not keeping the "Vertex order" on export. I've also been doing tests with Keith (Riptide) and using his OBJ exporter.

Other 3D applications (Maya and Blender for example) keep the pivot location fine on import to Vue. Blender allows you to "Preserve" the Vertex order on export and therefore I believe that's why it imports with the correct pivot location.

So not a "Vue" problem as far as I can tell. That's good news! :)

pg

Great, I tried too with the riptide plugin, but it was just the same. There are many export options in the riptide plugin that I didn't try though, maybe one could preserve this vertex order?

Ok, I went ahead and installed Vue 6 PLE so I could test this and as far as I can tell, it IS a bug in Vue - sorry. I will do some more testing tomorrow (erm... later today), but so far, I haven't found any rhyme or reason to how Vue is computing the center ("Position") of an imported mesh - it's just nonsensical.

Just to clarify a few points for future reference:

• There is no axis/pivot information in a .obj file - so the fact that Vue is putting it somewhere other than 0/0 is entirely based on some internal calculation of it's own doing - you would think that it would put it at the 'center' of the vertices that make up the mesh, but apparently that's not the case.
• Vertex-order has nothing to do with it (or at least "preserving" vertex order - preserving it assumes that you had some correct/working order to start with, but doesn't have any meaning for a newly created mesh.  And, just for the record, Riptide always 'preserves' the vertex order anyway :) ).

...I know that you've said that models from other apps are importing correctly, but the ('correct') example you sent me is also 'off' (not at 0/0).  It's almost like the program is using integer (or possibly low-precision fixed-point) math and converting that back to floats instead of floating-point in some cases (ie. it's "almost" correct), but in other cases, it's offset by many meters.

[If anyone has a sample .obj file from Hexagon or some other app that Imports correctly, I'd love to get a look at it]

My advice at this point would be to do what Shawn is doing - If you need to do some precise positioning of objects (that can't be accomplished by dragging the objects around in Vue), you should just set them up in C4D and then export them all together (already positioned how you want them).

Cheers, Mr Spanki! Time for a bug report to e-on's tech support. Shame I can't test this with an import from another app (the thought of reinstalling Hex2 makes me feel sea sick already!)

Yeah, after thinking about this more, I thought that maybe it was computing the center as the "average" of all the vertices instead of the average of 8 vertices that make up a bounding box around the mesh (which would tend to skew the center to a side with more vertices), but it doesn't appear to be doing that either.

I could knock up some quick models in Hex and/or Max I guess if that would help.  What kind of things would you want ?

Just check in Max/Hex where the axis center/pivot point (can be called differently maybe), import into Vue and check if the model is properly centered in Vue at 0,0,0, and if the pivot point is also centered in the model.
A simple cube would do, and is easily checked.
Thanks, Frank.

nope - not centred even though I selected centre on import.  The cube in MAX was at 0,0,0 and I centred the pivot to the object
Comes in at X= -3.711, Y=2.219, Z=19.684
The pivot is at 0,0,0 though which is right

It's even worse if I don't select centre on import.  Moves to X=-0.0001589mm, Y=-19.69m Z=19.684m.  Pivot is still at 0,0,0 though.

[edit]

Set the center of the cube at 0,0,0 in Max which should mean half the cube is above ground.  Removed "Drop imported objects" and indeed, part of it is below ground but certainly not half of it.  It's in the right place if I manually set the location to 0,0,0 but that definitely isn't right

Great (well, sort of), thanks Frank.

If you put the e-on ticked number here, I can add a Vue scene with the max cube imported (assuming I can add to other peoples tickets)

I don't think you can add to another users' ticket.

My Vue 8.0's 0,0,0 origin matches the 0,0,0 origin I used in hexagon while making the model.  Vue's centering for me seems to be based on a bounding box.  But I never use centering while importing.

Shawn, are you looking at the "Pivot" or "Position" values?

Ok, I finally (mostly) figured out what Vue is doing (which I consider 'wrong')...

• When Importing, Vue generates a Vertex-per-UVvert... so a cube would normally have 8 vertices, but since there are 6 faces, with (potentially) 4 separate UV values for each face, you end up with 24 vertices.  If this wasn't bad enough, somehow Vue comes up with 28 vertices for a simple cube (some not used for polygons).
• After the above vertex-expansion, it then does in fact do a averaging of ALL the vertices to find the center of the mesh - when it should be calculating an average of the 8 vertices that make up a bounding box of the mesh.

...I added code to one of my plugins to confirm the above and came up with the exact values that Vue comes up with (at least in some cases).  I did not check all cases (when no UVs exist, for example) and apparently the 28-vert cube example above may only use 24 of those (or something) to compute the center with, but a uv-mapped 3000+ vertex model I ran through testing came up with the exact same values Vue did.

Short story - this "bug" has nothing to do with how any app or plugin exports .obj files - it's a bug/feature of how Vue is determining the center of an imported mesh.

True.  Vue is not to be trusted when it comes to poly counts.  And if Vue's pivot matches the pivot used by a modeling app, that is probably by accident.  I do nearly all my pivoting/rotating within my modeling app if I'm modeling buildings with open doors for example.  Mostly what I do in Vue is re-size my models only.

I want to thank everyone for looking into this problem. I posted this problem on 3 separate threads to try to find a solution so this problem was looked at thoroughly. Keith Young (Spanki) who I consider an expert in the use of the OBJ file format has completed many, many tests and he has concluded the problem is with Vue. Vue is calculating it's own axis location for imported OBJ files. (Most applications calculate the axis point from the objects "bounding box" but this is not the case with Vue.)

Unfortunately there is currently not a solution and either 1 of 2 scenarios occur.

1. Your imported OBJ files import with an axis/pivot location other than center.
2. After import you have to use Vue's axis tool to "relocate" the axis to the center of the model. This will put the axis/pivot point at the center of the model, but then the models "location" will not be at X/Y/Z/ 000.

Note: The only exception I have found is if you import a simple cube or rectangle, then Vue will center the axis point in some situations, but importing more complex OBJ models into Vue results in the models axis/pivot point being "off center".

These are the links to the threads if you are interested:

forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2798936
www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php

Please make E-On aware of this problem so it can possibly be fixed in future versions. If you have found a solution please post it here or at any of the links above.

Thanks Lorne

Ah, this "bug" or whatever it is has been bothering me for years since Vue 5 upto the latest Vue Infinite 8.5. I do a search now and then on Google on the subject to see if any workaround has surfaced and found this thread today.

Interesting read, especially the finding on how Vue actually calculates it's own center point.

The biggest bother with this for me is that I usually have a workflow (in any 3D application) where I block out the scene with boxes or rough models how I want the composition and then start replacing the stand ins with detailed models as I work through the scene.

Making a few boxes, spheres, tubes, rough objects in an external app (I use modo or LightWave), and bring them into Vue for placement in the scene is fine, but as soon as I start working on the models to detail them and Vue updates them when it sees that the object file has changed they start pop around in the scene as the center point moves with each reload of the mesh. Haha, so annoying and frustrating that the pivot point can't stay in place, even between updates of the same mesh.

Anyway, it seems that the problem is at the moment unsolvable. Though, I was thinking, how are the Python possibilites regarding this? I haven't checked into the Python documentation for Vue more than briefly some time ago, but can one manipulate pivot points, how meshes imports etc from scripting? Then one might maybe be able to put together a script to deal with this?

Cheers,
Johan

Thanks for sharing..very helpful.