.MTL Files Support? about stop-motion-obj

[neverhood311]

Hey Mike,

Double-checking the code, I confirmed that the add-on as it stands doesn't do anything special to handle MTL files. My use-case was to import a sequence of OBJs (all without UVs), then create a Cycles shader from scratch. Didn't even think about MTLs.

Unfortunately, you've caught me during the tail end of a really busy semester, but I might have time to work on this in January. Or you're welcome to take a crack at it if you want.

[brondbjerg]

OK, great! Thanks!
I'll certainly have a dig in and see if I can have a go (don't hold out much hope though ;).
If you magically find some time, that would be great!
Thanks again for the add-on so far.. it's great!
M

[brondbjerg]

Hi Justin, just wanted to follow up on this. I didn't get anywhere with it myself (limited Python skills) but is it something might consider doing? I may have some limited budget if that helps find you some time? Thanks!

[neverhood311]

Hey Mike,

I'll look into this. Would you be able to send me a small set of OBJs and MTLs to test with? At least 4 or 5? That would be really helpful. A Dropbox link if you can.

Thanks

[brondbjerg]

Great! I will dig out the files I was testing with before, let me sort something out this weekend! Can you get in touch via mike [at] kultur [dot] design
thanks!

[neverhood311]

I figured out how to bring in multiple MTL files. I'm thinking of adding a checkbox to the sequence to enable/disable multiple materials (my main use-case is to use a single material that is shared by all of the meshes, so I want to have the option to switch between the two modes).

What should I call the checkbox? I was thinking something like "Per-frame Material" or "One Material per Frame" or "Material Per Frame" or "Dynamic Material". Do you like any of these? Or can you think of a better and/or shorter name that still suggests the meaning of the checkbox?

[neverhood311]

Give this branch a try and see if it works for you:
https://github.com/neverhood311/Stop-motion-OBJ/tree/multiple-materials

[brondbjerg]

Hi Justin, just gave it a try on both a simple a sequence, and a more complex (30 frames, each frame OBJ: ~400KB, MTL: ~ 120KB). the simple import was pretty quick, but the more complex set took a while.

But... after 10 mins, it did get there and the animation seems perfect... I'll do some more rigorous testing, but it seems great!

[neverhood311]

Glad to hear it. I'll do more testing, too. My guess as to why it's taking so long is because you have a different material for each face of each mesh. Blender has to create all of these materials and assign them to each object. I'm guessing it's not optimized for this use-case. (I wonder what the Blender developers would say if we told them to speed this up).

I'm interested to know what you think about using this feature. Do you think a checkbox to switch modes is the right idea? And what about the name?

[brondbjerg]

I guess as long as it doesn't crash we can live with it taking a while!

The feature is great, checkbox makes sense, but wonder if un-checked by default would be better for most user's needs?