Importing a 3D model

Introduction

In this tutorial, we discuss importing a model to Aximmetry.

Supported File Formats

For models:

• COLLADA
• OBJ
• FBX

For 3D animations:

• COLLADA

Importing

Open Aximmetry Composer and create a new compound. 
Use the file browser to find your exported model. Drag-n-drop it to the flow editor:
You can use external file browsers too, you can Drag-n-Drop from them as well.

This will create a new compound in the flow editor that contains your model.

If the exported model is updated Aximmetry will automatically reimport it.

Double-click your model's compound to enter it.

Nodes that you find inside the compound are automatically imported and represent the model's components

You will find the objects in a hierarchical order.
In this example, we had two separate planes each with its own material. A total of 7 objects were imported.

Scene Node - Scene Node is the basic building block of a 3D scene. They have their position and orientation. You can connect 3D relevant objects to it, like lights, models, and cameras. Scene Nodes are in a spatial hierarchical structure.
The Scene node moves everything under it. It moves every module that is connected to its Children pin, it also moves every module that is connected in a similar fashion to its connected children, and so on.
The camera renders everything that it is connected to. It doesn't matter if it is a parent or children, or how many modules are between them in the chain references.

Shader - In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene. We can also call this Material in Aximmetry.

Mesh - Collection of vertices, edges, and faces that define the shape of the object.  If the object has more than 1 material it will have as many mesh nodes as materials.

Compounds needed to render a 3D scene using Aximmetry's render engine

To be able to render a scene in Aximmetry you will need some of our ready-made compounds:

• Render_General / Render_General_PBR / Render_LEDWall_4-Wall  compound - this node represents the camera that renders the 3D scene and the Post-Process effect
  
  
  • Render Compounds are extended versions of the basic Camera module.
    
    
  • You can learn more about the basic Camera by selecting it inside Aximmetry and pressing ctrl+F1.
• Virtual / Tracked / AR / Ledwall camera this compound will be responsible to control the camera movement and place the talent in the virtual space
  
  
  • Camera Compounds are extended versions of the basic Camera Mover module.
    
    
  • You can learn more about the basic Camera Mover module by selecting it inside Aximmetry and pressing ctrl+F1.
  • For a quick test, the Camera Mover can also be used instead of the Camera Compounds mentioned above.
    NOTE: with the Camera Mover there are no camera animations or billboards
• 3D model of your studio
  
  

Which renderer should you use?

[Common_Studio]:Compounds\Render\Render_General.xcomp

This compound should be used when you are not planning to use PBR shaders.
This compound can be used with:

• Virtual camera
• Tracked camera
• AR camera

[Common_Studio]:Compounds\Render\Render_General_PBR.xcomp

This compound should be used when using PBR shaders. Additionally to Render_General.xcomp this compound can blur the planar reflection according to the roughness of the surface it is applied to.
This compound can be used with:

• Virtual camera
• Tracked camera
• AR camera

[Common_Studio]:Compounds\Render\Render_LEDWall_4-Wall.xcomp

This compound should be used with 

• Ledwalls

Recommended Renderer to use

We suggest using Render_General_PBR.xcomp for your scenes with a Virtual or Tracked camera.
For Ledwall scenes, you should use Render_LEDWall_4-Wall.xcomp.

Setting up the connections

Import the components mentioned earlier by drag-and-dropping them to the flow editor and set up the connections like so:
In this tutorial, we will be using a Virtual Camera, but the procedure is very similar with other cameras as well.

You can learn how to add camera movements and video input in these tutorials.

Number of Objects

Currently, there is a maximum of 200 objects that can be imported from a single model to Aximmetry.
This is primarily for performance reasons but also managing more than this amount becomes unreasonable.
This number includes the following:

• Scene Nodes
• Shaders
• Meshes
• Sequencers for animations
• Lights
• Cameras

If you are having too many objects you can reduce their number in different ways.

Reduce Object count

Let's say we have 4 cubes:

This will give us 12 objects in total:
5 Scene Nodes, 4 Meshes, and 3 Materials

Merging objects with the same material

You can reduce these numbers by merging together meshes that use the same material thus not only reducing the object count but also making it easier to set up in Aximmetry.
Note that you need to export your model after the modifications, but Aximmetry will automatically reimport it.

Sticking to our 4 cubes example, we can merge the two red cubes together in our modeling software.
We got 10 objects: 4 Scene Nodes, 3 Meshes, and 3 Materials
NOTE: Both the number of Scene Nodes and Meshes has been reduced.

Disadvantage:

• You can only move the object together. In this example, you can only move the two red cubes together

Merging objects with different materials

You can also merge objects with different materials together.
Note that you need to export your model after the modifications, Aximmetry will automatically reimport it.

In this case, the object will have a separate mesh component for each material. This will reduce the number of Scene Nodes thus reducing the total object count.

Sticking to our 4 cubes example, we can merge the two red cubes together with the green cube in our modeling software.
We got 9 objects: 3 Scene Nodes, 3 Meshes, and 3 Materials
NOTE: Aximmetry separates the meshes but the number of Scene Nodes is reduced.

Disadvantage:

• You can only move the object together. In this example, you can only move the two red cubes and the green cube together

Merging objects and materials

To have the least number of Objects you can create a texture atlas and use one material(with the correct UV map to separate the texture islands) for many objects.
Then you can merge all objects together into a single object.
Note that you need to export your model after the modifications, but Aximmetry will automatically reimport it.

A texture atlas is a single texture that contains several smaller images, these smaller images count as a separate texture and allow the user to use only 1 material for different surfaces.
A texture atlas is usually generated in a 2D (Photoshop etc.) or 3D (Blender etc.) software, but can also be created in Aximmetry.
Example:

Sticking to our 4 cubes example, we can merge all cubes together in our modeling software and use 1 material with the texture atlas that we created earlier.
We got 3 objects: 1 Scene Node, 1 Mesh, and 1 Material
NOTE: Both the number of Scene Nodes and Meshes has been reduced.

In our case, the texture atlas looks like this with the UV map over it:

Disadvantage :

• You can only move the objects together. In this example, you can only move all of the cubes together. 
  
  
• You need to create a new texture atlas to be able to change the color of the cubes.

Setting the importer options

You can select what components of the model you would like to import. Right-click on your model's compound and select the Set Importer Options... menu

A new window will pop up. Here you can set which components you want to import
The default settings are the following:

You can select which objects you would like to import:

• Geometry
• Light
• Cameras
• Materials - When working with PBR shaders we suggest turning off Import materials.

In the next document, we will talk about setting up the materials for your model.