How do I make a 3D-Object of this Xara-Shape?

Hi everybody,

after an hour of trying, I totally failed in what I thought to be very easy ...

I am trying to do a 3D-rendering of the enclosed shape in Bryce 6 (it will get a texture too in the end)

First I tried it by creating a symetrical lattice in Bryce using this a a height map.
And while it principally worked, the quality is very poor and it also slows Bryce down quite a bit.

So I thought, I "quickly" extrude the shape to a coin-like 3D-Object and use this in Bryce.
Only that I could not manage to do it ... ;-(

I tried importing it into Sketchup to extrude it, but it did not work at all.
I also can't import it into Bryce and extrude it there.

Does anybody know of an easy way ... an Online-Service or a Freeware program perhaps ... to convert such simple shapes (or maybe even text) into 3D-Objects by simply extruding them along the y-axis and saving them in a common format like .obj or .3ds ??

I am totally inexperienced in the 3D-world, I really can do only simple things and I don't have any other programs than Bryce and Sketchup. Well, I have Blender installed, but no idea how it works ...

My first choice would be a helpful hint how/where to do it.
If that's not possible with what I have, maybe somebody could fix me a .obj of it and post it ??

Thanks a lot and Happy New Year !!!

Wolfgang

I know nothing about bryce and I'm not sure what you are trying to do but I've attached .xar file of the object extruded to a flat 3d shape.
If this is not what you are after I apologise. I assumed you wanted the tick on the surface of the object, again if not then I'm sorry.
Derek

Hi Derek!

thanks for your effort, but what I need is a "real" 3D-object.

Meaning an exported mesh-file (I believe this is the term?) in a format that Bryce can read, like .obj or .3ds

Such things can not be produced inside any Xara-program.

I would need a program that can export one of Xara's vector-formats, then extrude it (give it height) and export it as a 3D-mesh.

I also enclose a newer version of the shape, I checked your example and it seems by adding shaped I had missed some stuff in the background.
This version should be a clean simple shape ...

Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

To get a clean path I edited your .xar and removed the purple shapes behind the black shape.

I exported from Xtreme as Adobe Illustrator .ai which I opened in Cinema4D.

The .ai path was rotated to lie in the x-z plane.

An Extrude Nurb was put in the work space and configured to extrude the path 20 meters in the y direction and to put caps on both beginning and end.

The .zip file contains a wavefront object of the result.

As usual ... Bill to the rescue ;-)

For some strange reason, I can't download the file at the moment.
But by your description I believe it is just what I need, so the immediate crisis is solved ...

Sadly, I don't have Cinema4D or any other of those fancy programs.
I need such things very rarely, I have no idea how to use them and also they are much too expensive for my little fiddling around. I bought Bryce a while back and for my simple tasks it works well enough.

But I really would appreciate a small program or something, sort of a One-Trick-Pony, import shape, extrude, export, presto!

Xara 3D with the ability to export in "real" 3D would be more than perfect!
Anybody knows such a tool ??

Bill, I'll have a glass og champagne real soon and it will be in your honor !

Wolfgang

Edit: I tried downloading in IE and it worked like a charm. For some reason, in Firefox it doesn't ...

Glad you were able to download the file Wolfgang.

There was a very inexpensive 3D program that you could have used, but it seems to be no longer available.

Truespace 7.6 could be a good alternative, now that it is free. ;)

http://www.caligari.com/downloads.html

The learning curve is steeper than for Cool 3D but Truespace does much more.

You can download the Truespace manual from http://cdn.caligari.com/download/tS76PDF.exe

Wolfgang
I beleive you can create what you want in Bryce itself using its primatives
(cylinder, cube) and "boolean" operations. There should be a "Bolean Operations" chapter in your Help Files.

What Wolfgang wanted to do in Bryce should have worked, though there would be a slight angle on the sides (as though the part were cast in a die). I too had problems with symmetrical lattices not being 'clean' while other people used them effortlessly. My understanding is that it is a setting within the terrain editor that causes the 'jaggies' and an 'unclean' lattice terrain.

Good that someone helped you Wolfgang but you might still look into asking at Renderosity's Bryce forum about why your lattice is coming out with jaggies (I assume that's the problem).

I'm going to try your figure in my Bryce6 and see what happens.

Thanks to everybody !!!

Bill, I had a very early version of Truespace a long long time ago (on 3.5" disc actually ;-)) and I remember quite liking it.
So I might very well check out the link you gave me, thanks again !!!

Jerr, while I can actually do a lot with primitives in Bryce, sometimes it's just plain faster to import a ready object.

Burpee, that sounds very interesting and you are right that the jaggies are the main problem. If you figure out which setting is responsible for it, please tell me. I will get into it myself tomorrow and see if I can find it. I already used the "planetary" resolution of 4096 pixels and still could not get it clean ...
If there is such an option, SymLat would be really doable ..

Wolfgang

Hey Wolfgang, I opened your jpg in Bryce but had to take it into PSPXI for some fine tuning. I had to remove the black frame, make it a negative image, soften the edges then opened it in Bryce. I made the lattice thin by moving the height bars near to the top and very close to gether. This is what I get:

I can zip and attach the Bryce6.1 file if you want to look at it and see what I did in the terrain editor. Just let me know.

Edit: We cross posted Wolfgang. I hope you get this message.

Editedit: Geezers, I haven't opened Bryce in 2 years and I'm surprised that I still remember how to get around. Was kind of fun. I used to be pretty good with this software and even though I own Vue6Infinite I think I still like Bryce better just for the sheer fun of playing with it....Vue is more like work.

Burpee,
thanks a lot for your effort!

The enclosed image still shows a lot of jaggies, just like the version I made myself.
Bill's object on the other hand works perfectly and is absolutely clean. I had to do some work when I applied the texture, like offsetting it and so on ... don't know why but in the end it worked nicely.

I just got up, but later I will check if there is a setting to get a cleaner lattice like you mentioned ...

Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

I think the adjustments for the texture are probably due to the units I use in Cinema 4D. The object file is set for Meters.

I did not think to convert to the same units you used in your .xar file. :o

Hi Bill,

that may be possible, but I managed to fix it.
No worries ... ;-)

Thanks!

Wolfgang

Your jpg had these jaggies in PSPXI. They were very obvious in my program. I did not clean them up but used 'soften' to eliminate the harshness of the outline. With a better jpg you'd get a better end result in Bryce or perhaps making the terrain lattice smaller to begin with would help. A small scale jpg on a large lattice is going to show jaggies.

Of course, now I'm curious and will have to check for myself :) I'm going to make a clean shape in XX and see if it works better in Bryce.

Well, that was an exercise in futility. The best results I got were with a png (but I don't think it would matter which extension is used) that had 'soften more' added to it 3 times.
The biggest problem is the flat pixels at the 4 segments. You can see them in the image. It didn't seem to matter which resolution I applied to the lattice as long as it was above 512. Plus you can see the seam where the lattice is symmetrical.

....I just exported the lattice as a 3ds and brought it back in and smoothed it. The lattice seam is gone but the original jaggies from the photo are still there. I've seen people do completely smooth lattice work but I don't have a clue how they do it...apparently :(

Top object is the 3ds.

Today, I finally found the time to get back to Bryce and check for the terrain-issue.
Sadly, I did not find the magic "Jaggie-B-gone" - setting.

Even if I exported the shape with 4096 pixels width from Xara and used the same big texture-setting in Bryce, I still got the jaggies. And most of all ... rendering takes forever!

But thanks to Bill, I could use the .obj he supplied.

The enclosed image is by no means meant to be a perfect rendering or anything.
I just checked, that there are absolutely no jaggies that way. Works perfectly for me.

Still, I would very much like to have said "Shape to Object"-program to do such things myself.

@Bill: I downloaded and tried Truespace, but I basically can't get anything done with it. I found a lot of tutorials on the Caligari-site, maybe I will try them out.

Once again, thanks to everybody who helped. I can now create my Wallpaper quick and jaggie-free ;-)

Wolfgang

You will always need a 3D program to do this kind of bridging.
I'm enclosing a obj file generated in MoI. The advantage of MoI is the clean meshes it produces, very superior to most of the app I know including C4D.
Just open it (import) it to Bryce and get the picture.

Cheers

Emanuel
www.homographicus.com