Saving A Mesh To Disk¶
- The main output of SEQUOIA is a file on disk containing the resulting data from the meshing process.
- Supported file formats include Thinkbox’ XMesh files, .OBJ files, .PLY files, and .STL files.
- There are three approaches to saving a mesh to disk:
- Select the Mesher object to save and use the Main Menu > File > EXPORT Scene Data > Export Selected MESH In World/Object Space... menu item.
- Select the Mesher object to save, expand the “Export” rollout and press the [Export Object Space...] or [Export World Space...] button.
- Select the Mesher object to save, expand the “Hacksaw” rollout, adjust the subdivision settings and press the [Export Object Space...] or [Export World Space...] button to generate multiple XMesh files. See next topic for details.
- In all cases, if the Mesher does not contain a valid mesh yet, it will be updated first, and then the resulting mesh will be saved to disk.
- The resulting mesh can be loaded back into the same Document or into a different Document to check out the output using a Mesh Loader object.
Which Mesh Format To Use?¶
- Each mesh format has its own benefits and drawbacks.
- You should pick the format that has the most benefits and is supported by your target platform / software.
- Within SEQUOIA, we recommend using XMesh exclusively.
XMesh¶
- XMesh is a binary format which offers very good compression and supports all necessary channels.
- Its drawback is that outside of SEQUOIA, it is currently supported only in Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and The Foundry’s NUKE.
- The XMesh Loaders for these applications are free of charge and more are planned in the future.
OBJ¶
- OBJ is an ASCII file format with no compression whatsoever and supports only a very small set of basic channels.
- OBJ files written by SEQUOIA do not contain Vertex Color data.
- Resulting files are huge and take long to save and load.
- On the positive side, OBJ is supported by a very large number of applications, so it is the Least Common Denominator of geometry exchange.
PLY¶
- PLY is binary and produces much smaller files than OBJ, but a bit larger than XMesh.
- It is recommended as an alternative to OBJ when supported by the target platform due to its size and the fact that it supports Vertex Colors.
STL¶
- STL was originally designed for providing data to 3D printers.
- It is binary but uncompressed, so it is smaller than OBJ, but larger than XMesh and PLY.
- Below is a comparison of the file sizes produced from a mesh with 147,256,034 faces and 74,297,325 vertices:
Format Size on Disk Zipped Supported Channels Rating XMesh 2.36 GB 2.35 GB Vertices,Faces,Colors,Normals 1 OBJ 12.2 GB 2.56 GB Vertices,Faces,Normals 4 PLY 3.36 GB 2.27 GB Vertices,Faces,Normals 2 STL 6.78 GB 3.25 GB Vertices,Faces,Colors 3