Medium - Export Pipeline guide

[MattHickman]

Hi all, 

As you all probably know we've expanded a lot of the export options within Medium at our V1.1.1 update. To walk you through all the options, what they mean, and how they all connect we made this little guide for you. 

Enjoy!

Let us know if you have any questions. 

*EDIT: Update to include origin information

[elefantopia]

The export pipeline is missing one step for drop-in use : texture inflating, to avoid black edges at high Mip.

[elefantopia]

Is export decimation % per layer or global?
The door and door frames were sculpted in lower res, they need more polys but the white part steals them all so I think it's per layer.

[JPBenson]

I am doing photogrammetry using 3dflow's zephyr. When I take my mesh with colored verts, import it as a mesh in medium, modify it in medium, then try to export it and import it back into zephyr, the orientation has changed!

I see some things about setting the orientation in the export guideline, but it's unclear as to what the workflow would be for accomplishing my goal of importing a mesh and then exporting it with the same orientation as it had coming in. Also, trying to use the orientation thing in the layer dialog is very frustrating. a more simple way to have your model get exported with the same orientation as it was imported would be a great feature to add!

Any help would be much appreciated. I want to spend hundreds of hours in medium sculpting my meshes, but this is preventing me from doing so.

[JPBenson]

I have been trying for multiple days to do this. I got it to import back into zephyr correctly once and got it to import correctly back into reality capture once. however when I go to reproduce what worked, it doesn't work.

It seems when I set the orientation to 0,0,0 for the space that it switches the object or sculpt's orientation to 0,.7,1 and when I switch the object and sculpt's orientation to 0,0,0 it switches the world's orientation.. but only sometimes! so confusing. How do you get things to import with their correct orientation and export with the same orientation?

[Smallpoly]

The automatic normal map creation for the low res is awesome!

[Clampinator]

I'm having a LOT of trouble exporting with the right orientation / scale / location.
I've used RealityCapture to create a very nice photogrammetry based mesh with texture.
So far so good.
I can import this into Medium, and it comes it at a given location / scale / orientation.
I want to manipulate it, rotate it to get to the corners, scale it to access the fiddly bits and move it cause I'm seated (I do this all day).
However as soon as I do so, the mesh loses all export location / rotation / scale information. The mesh can no longer be exported from Medium in the hope that I can re-import it into RC for texture re-projection.
This last step is vital, as Medium seems to be unable to export textures without re-lighting them.
As I want the flatted lighting that I got with RC (so I can light them in the game engine) I have to go back to RC fro re-projection of the original flat captured textures.

I guess what I'm asking for is this-
A way to either
a) have the clay / mesh use the original unlit textures created by RC
b) reliably export in a way that allows me to re-import to RC with the right location / rotation / scale data.
As RC exports with a .rcinfo file that contains the translation data needed to lock an import to the right place (if its export axis wasn't all gunked up by Medium) perhaps Medium could use this .rcinfo file? I dunno. I'm grapsing here. I've spent days trying to get Medium to either export reliably or not mess with the textures. Both have failed.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Clampinator]

How do we ensure that the exported mesh has the same location / rotation / scale that it had when it was imported?
So I can re-import it into Reality Capture for re-projection.

Alternatively, how can we prevent Medium from recolouring the textures? I need to have the flattened lighting created during capture time, so I can relight it in Unity.
If I can get that, I don't need to go back to RC.

[Clampinator]

Essentially, it seems the only way to ensure that the mesh exports in the right way is to never actually manipulate it. Which sucks because the manipulation tools in medium as so good.

[Clampinator]

Is it a case of zeroing out a few of the transforms?
If so, which ones? The world ones for the sculpt layer? or the object layer?
I noticed the circle on the ground seemed to only update when the sculpt layer was transformed, but not when the object layer was. Is that significant?

[Clampinator]

I may have figured it out. Took a couple of days, but is this right?
You can manipulate the transforms of the sculpt parent layer as much as you like. The export coords are taken from the object clay layer, which is always effectively 0,0,0, because you don't translate that layer, just the sculpt layer.

I think.