Importing my own model and using wind on it

[TimWork]

Hi

Sorry if this is an easy question to answer but I can't seem to be able to get what I want to do to work. I have a speedtree model which has been exported to maya as an obj and has been cleaned up and various pieces combined together....my question is...I want to reimport my cleaned up version of the plant into speedtree and then create movement on it using the wind wizard. I just can't seem to get this to work...no matter what I do my reimported geo does not move....what am I doing wrong?!

thanks
Tim

[Dave Ohlman]

Hi Tim,

Unfortunately, when you edit a SpeedTree model in another application it loses the vertex data necessary to compute wind animation. The data is effectively lost due to the export to OBJ. It's no longer a procedural model.

Out of curiosity, can you tell us what kind of edits you did in Maya?

Regards

[TimWork]

Hi Dave

That's a shame! Well when the model was exported from speedtree originally it exported as one whole piece of geometry (after looking at the export options more it appears I can export geo based on textures so this would fix that so it wasn't all just one piece), but the main issue was the UVs as they had to be redone as they were all over the place (again, is this something you can control on export?.....rather than being contained within a UV tile, they were spread out everywhere and randomly placed).

So if I'm understanding you correctly you can only use speedtree to compute wind animation on models that have been made in speedtree? If we had a tree for example that was modelled completely outside of speedtree we couldn't bring this in to get some basic wind animation?

many thanks
Tim

[Dave Ohlman]

Hey Tim,

is this something you can control on export?.....rather than being contained within a UV tile, they were spread out everywhere and randomly placed

Take a look at our documentation on exporting unwrapped meshes. It may get you close to what you're looking for.

So if I'm understanding you correctly you can only use speedtree to compute wind animation on models that have been made in speedtree?

That is correct.

If we had a tree for example that was modelled completely outside of speedtree we couldn't bring this in to get some basic wind animation?

Also correct.

Sorry for the bad news.

Regards