Importing Vectorworks OBJ's

[DMclean]

I'm working with some models that have been sent to me from Vectorworks in OBJ format. Import works fine and all the textures are assigned and in place, but all the texture files that are being exported from Vectorworks are extremely low res (256 x 256). I'm not overly familiar with VW, but the person sending me the files has not been able to find anything in the VW export settings that allow the textures to be sent out at higher res. The textures he is working with in the program are much higher res, but when he exports the OBJ the files that get saved out are all low res. Anyone here familiar enough with VW to know how to get the high res textures out of VW?

Thanks,

 

Douglas

[Shibui Design]

Not finding any means to control export options here. Are these custom textures created by the model author or are they stock materials in a Vectorworks library (referred to as 'resources") in VWX?? If they are custom textures, it should be easy to just replace them with the original higher-res versions simply by managing files.

[AsOne]

Not sure about OBJ, but 3DS export has a quality setting for curved surfaces (polygon count) and choice to export textures as jpg or png

[DMclean]

ShibuiDesign... Thanks... There's a combination of materials... some are custom textures created with imported images, and I think some of them are resources... I've thought about replacing the exported images with the originals for the Custom textures, and will probably wind up doing that... I was just hoping that we were missing something in the exporting that would be a one step fix for everything... looks like "no" is the answer to that...

AsOne... Thanks... I think the export to OBJ has the same sort of thing to increase the quality but that seems to only affect the geo, increasing the polygon count but not making any difference in the texture resolution. PNG and JPG both seem to be suffering from the same dilemma. It is likely happening in the export when any cubic mapping is converted to UV's. It then seems to feel that the 0,1 UV space only needs to be 256x256 pixels... maybe that is the default size of procedural texture in VW, I don't know... any large map that he has been using , say a map that's 2560x1280 gets shrunk into the 256x256 form and comes out as a 256x128 map, and all the procedurals come out as 256x256... strange and irritating... oh well...

Thanks,

 

Douglas

[Tech]

Though Form•Z's OBJ exporter does offer the option to Compress texture files, the OBJ importer does not affect the texture maps in any way. Do your textures appear this way if you were to render your project as well or do the textures just look lo-res in your Shaded modes?  The Display Options palette does have an option in both Shaded Work and Shaded Full mode to control the viewable resolution of the textures while you're working on them. Adjusting this higher will give you better integrity of your texture at the expense of having a more graphics-intensive view for your machine to process.

[DMclean]

Sorry, just noticed this reply today... The viewable resolution isn't the problem... the textures that I am receiving from the Vectorworks file are in fact only 256 x 256... was hoping that someone has had some experience on the Vectorworks side of things to know why this was happening... it's not that formZ is converting them to 256 x 256 or anything, the image files "I'm receiving from the Vectorworks export are only that size...