There's an vrml2 import plugin for Ultimate Unwrap
Ultimate unwrap, if you install a plugin -a link to the user that made it is in his site- can import vrml2
that plugin hasn't been updated in over a year. and if it doesn't work well, then why bother? UU is not free ($40) and doesn't support VRML1/2 import by itself.
links to things I know will become convenient
"one thing at a time."
only one or 2 tools does the task 100% correctly
agree. and i have plenty of good tools. Maya and Pro/Engineer are just two. fewer the better imo.
because is 3d exploration 1.5 the thing to download in that page
it took 4 or 5 complete reads before i realized that was Exploration. could have used it a few years ago.
why a game programmer is so interested in such hi res stuff
1) my job is designing real products. hi-rez data for reference is good to have (well, maybe i need to limit my samples). esp of humans. another designer asked if i could help with conversion. thats the reason it's not a big issue to me. but it is of some professional interest. and worth doing anyways.
2) i've been waiting for hi-rez to enter game worlds. normalmapping now. higher polycounts later. it's all getting more real. not less. so my day job will intersect with game hobby pretty soon. just getting prepared :)
a scan needs a lot of retouch
i've worked with point clouds in product design (i can usually just create the virtual model by looking at the sculpted and not even bother with the cloud). spent some time at Little Tikes. long time ago. they had a huge version of Microscribe. big enough to scan outdoor playset parts. but they didn't use it that much actually. maybe now they use it more. i should ask. better yet, i could ask Fisher-Price (good freelance-contact opportunity)
It totally is, is the solution if you're worring about ply files
don't mistake my interest for "worry". i won't be using these .ply files in the near future. maybe eventually. but i will tell that designer how to convert now.
I just clean my registry
nothing to do with registry. or pc slowdown. just a personal organization thing. (next goal is to stop downloading reference images off the net)
it was WAY visble
i know. or i wouldn't have loaded it.
Another possibility is the non free one has a better viewer...go guess.
thought of that. but filesize is same. my theory is the convertor-viewer used to be customer-only. the CAESAR site links to login version (iirc). but Cyberware changed their policy and made it public. link to non-login is on their site. can download straight. but the link goes to one version of non-login viewer. there are two in that ftp folder. i loaded both. more recent upload is installed now.
I suppose you have a good computer
not especially. Pro/E handles the data beautifully.
As you see, a 3d scan "as is" comes with lots of weird bumps, produced by the scanning process.
like i said, i've worked with this data before. so i expect this. guess i'm thinking of another designer who said they had bought the dataset (US $4500 fyi) to design some medical equipment. i'd asked and he said the .ply data was better. i expected more. but he also said they extracted curves. so they must be converting to iges and pulling/rebuilding important curves in CAD. probably just around the head. don't think he knows. probably a CAD engineer who did the work and gave him the clean results.
anyway. looks like we have some good reference data. over time i will see if i can make something useful from this stuff.
thanks for the help Bob.