dreamcutter opened this issue on Jan 26, 2012 · 12 posts
ShawnDriscoll posted Fri, 27 January 2012 at 4:23 AM
dreamcutter,
For every modeling/rendering program, there is another version of the OBJ format. No two programs import/export the same OBJ format.
I am from the old days (mid-'90s when OBJ was only triangles and no UV mapping for most apps) where models were made of individual objects. Each object has its own name in the scene. Each object has its own material name. Each object is UV mapped if it is using a texture image. Since I only work on one model at a time in my modeling program, I don't need to group my objects.
Once a model is finished, I export each object of the model as its own OBJ file. Then I import each OBJ file into my rendering program. I then apply the texture images to each object (often times re-assigning its material name also). I only group the objects together if I plan on moving the model around in my scene before rendering.
If I try to do this workflow any other way (using the same programs), it will take longer to fix issues and get my renders looking the way I want.
The Collada format fixed this OBJ problem for about three months until other programs began using Collada formats of their own. Everyone is supported to be using the MAX format anyway. :)