[SOLVED] Converting dxf to 3ds ...

intmain · Last edited by intmain on Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:15 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi!

I'm developing a 3d game for a school project using the irrlicht engine and have designed some levels with AutoCAD as I have no experience with other 3d modellers.

The problem is that the 3ds export feature of AutoCAD has many bugs and if I load these levels in my game, many objects (or parts of them) are missing.

Is there any tool for Linux to convert dxf files to 3ds, obj or x?
I have already thought of Blender because it supports dxf, but I have no idea how to import the dxf. If I choose File/Import/DXF and my dxf file, Blender does not display my model.

i4dnf · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject:

i was going to suggest blender.. but i can see you've already tried...
got an idea about what might be happening.. try scaling the model down in autocad (i'd suggest about 10 times smaller), and then importing it in blender again.
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frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

I don't know this particular engine. Do they recommend using AutoCAD for designing levels?

I once tried to convert a 3ds file to a game level as well, but failed miserably. The main problem is not the conversion of the file format, but rather the way stuff is built. A game engine has totally different requirements from a 'normal' 3d renderer; on Quake-based engines for example, you have to make sure that the scene does not have any leaks, otherwise the engine can't optimize visible areas / delete polys that can never be seen / prevent that the player falls of the map :lol:

, and so on. Other problems I couldn't solve at the time was alignment and scaling of textures, as well as one-sided polys.

I'm just posting this here for the mere possibility that it is not the conversion that is at fault, but rather that AutoCAD builds stuff not the way the 3D engine wants it to be.

As for converters, I haven't found any for Linux, but there seem to be several around for Windows, which I'm sure you've already found using a search machine, so maybe you can get one of them to run in Wine?

intmain · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:45 pm Post subject:

First, thanks for your replies.

@i4dnf: scaling down the level didn't help, I suppose that blender can't read my dxf which is of old version 2000.

@frostschutz: you are right, it must have something to do with the way AutoCAD builds the objects, there are only problems when exporting complex levels, exporting simple objects, for instance only some platforms, works well. The irrlicht project does not recommend AutoCAD for designing levels, but as AutoCAD can export 3ds I thought why not use AutoCAD for designing levels (currently I have not very much time for learning to use a new 3d modeller).

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

The Blender DXF importer assumers everything is in the first block. You would probably have better luck if you exported to VMRL.
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intmain · Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:41 am Post subject:

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

intmain · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:15 am Post subject:

Thanks for your help.

I already managed to import the dxf into blender by using older versions of dxf (R12 and R13). It seems that blender has problems with newer dxf versions, meanwhile I also had error messages that the file is no valid dxf, but when I tried these older versions it worked correctly.