mirror or flip an OBJ or OCS proxy Tweet

[s3d-weyrauch]

You can mirror or flip a mesh in the Standalone, you have to give only negative values to the x / y / z scale.
I have tried it in the Plugin, and unfortunately it´s not possible. You can´t give negative values to the proxy scale. It´s equal for OBJ and OCS.
It is essential to connect the AC parameters with proxy parameters. Is it possible to let the objects somehow mirrored in the Plugin

[face_off]

Is this a one-off need, or something you need on an ongoing basis? If one-off, export from the plugin the Octane Standalone and then set the X Scale of the Placement for the proxy Mesh to -1.

If it is an on-going requirement, at the moment there is no easy way to do this, because the plugin searches for Mesh nodes in the ORBX, so any Placement node used to mirror the vertices (using a scale of -1) gets ignored.

I could modify the plugin so that it first searches and uses a "Geometry Out" node in the ORBX node prior to searching for a "Mesh" node. That way you could plugin the Mesh node into a Placement into a Geometry Out node to mirror the ORBX. This solution would not work for OBJ proxies (but in the rare situation would need to mirror, you could load the OBJ into an ORBX).

Would this solution work for you?

Paul

[s3d-weyrauch]

My imagination is to stear the proxy parameters with AC-parameters (connecting the real AC-object measures with the proxy). Than I can control and modify the position and size of the proxies without opening the plugin. I would do that for an object-library, it means it´s not a one-off need.

I work with OCS proxies because of the different material-variants. They load only one mesh and one texture with different colors and settings to the memory.
I don´t need OBJ, because I predefine the materials in an OCS before (instead of ugly MTL material definitions).

Is that Your suggestion?

OCS graph

OCS.jpg (38.53 KiB) Viewed 13046 times

It would be the best solution ever! It means, that I can do a placement correction in OCS before I use it in AC. A lot of object manufacturer makes a lot of mistakes, the objects are not at the zero, the scale is sometimes mm, or cm or m or inch or whatever. I should correct them in AC, but if you did for me this favour with placement and geometry out, I would save time!

[face_off]

In the next release....

[Daniel_Ward]

Hi Paul,

loving the new Edit Proxies feature!
Question; is it possible to load an .obj as a proxy, then save it as an Orbx directly from the ArchiCAD Plugin?

Cheers, Dan.

[face_off]

Question; is it possible to load an .obj as a proxy, then save it as an Orbx directly from the ArchiCAD Plugin?

Not directly - however if you copy a blank ORBX a bunch of times, you could load one of them as your proxy, edit it, and load the OBJ within the NodeGraph editor. Once the current ORBX editing has proven stable, I could add a function to better allow this to happen.

Paul

[s3d-weyrauch]

Hi Paul,
i´m lovin it! It makes everything easier and faster.
It could be even better, if we could save the edited Proxy as another version. It means, not only overwriting the original ORBX/OCS, but having the chance to make a little bit difference between the trees. In the reality is the same, the leaves have always colors. Or another example: putting cars on the Asphalt and making with few clicks different colors for them. It would be really nice!

Edited: But, yes, it´s true, I could copy the file on the location, and I have to change the proxy to the new element.
However, saving with different name in the Plugin results less clicks.

[s3d-weyrauch]

And I would have a wish again. There is no good connection between the AC-Plugin materials and the Standalone materials.

I already mentioned, that I work rather with OAM Materials, while the other option to import a material is only the ORBX. I use a lot of textures not only once (for example, Plaster on the wall, but mixed with different colors). If I used ORBX (LocalDb), I would get to many duplicates in the video memory.

I can imagine two solutions:
1. Importing OCS as a material. The OCS should have a Material-out Node, the same as a Proxy should have.

ocs-material

ocs-material.jpg (20.65 KiB) Viewed 12208 times

2. Copy with clipboard. Unfortunately there is no chance to copy an existing Material-Setting in AC-Plugin to the Editor. It would be nice to select a material or something in the material-node (for example a texture), copy it and insert it in the new Proxy-Editor.

But thanks a lot for the Proxy-Editor again! Best wishes!

[face_off]

My apologies for the late reply to this - I thought I had already responded.

Edited: But, yes, it´s true, I could copy the file on the location, and I have to change the proxy to the new element.
However, saving with different name in the Plugin results less clicks.

I had a look at adding a Save As button for ORB proxies. However I wonder if it is actually easier to simply copy the file in Windows Explorer. If you have the Explorer window open with the folder containing your proxy ORBX files, it is a single click to copy. Whereas it is multiple clicks in AC, and there are some complexities with AC regarding special characters in filenames, and the way it "remembers" the previous folder open which the Windows Explorer handles better.

1. Importing OCS as a material. The OCS should have a Material-out Node, the same as a Proxy should have.

If you import from OCS, the texturemap paths are absolute, so if you copy the pln file to another PC you have to copy all the teturemaps across. Whereas if you import from ORBX, the texturemaps are contained in the ORBX, so you need to copy the source ORB file with the pln. Either way I guess you need to copy the assets - however it's neater with ORBX. You can also "Import Material from the Local DB" and select an OCS from another folder and it should import OK (I didn't try it, but it will probably work).

2. Copy with clipboard. Unfortunately there is no chance to copy an existing Material-Setting in AC-Plugin to the Editor. It would be nice to select a material or something in the material-node (for example a texture), copy it and insert it in the new Proxy-Editor.

I will add an option to copy/paste to/from the Windows clipboard.

I also also looking at offering an option to edit the material in the NodeGraph (as you do the proxy). Pls see https://youtu.be/UwPthyrV6zw for how this would look. I need to wait until all the issues are found with this workflow in the Poser plugin before I migrate it to AC.

Paul