Importing 3D content to Vivaty - Issues and solutions

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Vivaty Studio (VS), being a Web3D specialized software is an essential tool to assemble, organize and animate VRML/X3D scenes and worlds. It is powerful enough to create objects, avatars and even edit some source code (scripts). Yet, sometimes, 3D artists may prefer to conceive complex objects with other programs they know better (Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, Sketchup, ...) and import them to VS. Besides that, 3D objects that we may want to use in our worlds are, often, freely available in public online repositories. Fortunately VS has features to import most popular 3D formats directly or via the Accutrans 3D plugin installed as standard. 

Things can go well and the import process appears as seamless but sometimes VS is (1) unable to import or (2) imports incorrectly (the objects are imported with several types of problems, in some cases the process is so biased that the imported objects are almost or totally unusable).  

​What to do for a seamless import process? Prefer VRML or X3D formats 

It's not an absolute statement but from my experience and despite the trickier nature of conversions in general, the best way is to convert objects to VRML or X3D before importing them to Vivaty Studio. Most popular 3D software export directly to these formats. Try this if importing from other formats is not giving the desired results.

The reason why vrml and x3d formats are better imported is most probably due to the Web3D specific nature of the program.
Anoter hint: by experience, x3d appears to be a format slightly better imported than vrml since we found some files that throw fatal errors while importing them from a vrml (.wrl) format (and the importation failed), but all went as expected when we imported them from a x3d format.

3D Converters

When a 3D program, like the free version of Sketchup, does not export to vrml or x3d (the paid version of sketchup does export), or if some library objects you want to use are not in that format and the import process throws an error, a good converter like the full available version Accutrans 3D is useful. With it most popular 3D formats can be converted to vrml or x3d as needed (including collada, one of Sketchup export formats). Accutrans is one of the tools available in babelx3d Tools-Tutorials section. 

Bs contact, a viewer used also as a 3D converter (!?)

Yes, as documented, besides vrml/x3d, bs contact can read other 3D formats (see File types supported by bs contact ), one of them is the popular Collada (.dae) and can also save/convert the files to vrml and x3d formats that, hopefully, can be imported to Vivaty Studio. This save/convert process is done via "the Save State As" option available in the file menu of bs contact (in stand alone viewing mode). The fact that bs contact reads collada files makes it easier to import files from the free version of Sketchup, from Google warehouse repository and other sources.

For comments and discussion please use the forum thread: Importing 3D content to Vivaty - Issues and practical solutions

Vitor Cardoso

(aka vcard