LW - RW SD Exporter

Owned by thomas (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 25 Jun, 2013
3 min read

The "RF SD Exporter" writes LightWave scene data to RealFlow SD files. The exporter can be found in the "Next Limit Plugin Manager" master plugin’s "SD Export" tab. The SD scene can consist of polygon objects and an optional camera. Objects can be collected in a table to export. The "Add" button appends the object which are selected in the "Object" combo box to the list. The "Add All" button selects all available scene objects. The "Add Selected" button adds all objects to the export list which are selected in "Layout". The "Delete" button removes the selected objects from the table while the "Delete All" button clears the selection. The color of the objects comes from the item color used in "Layout". The export mode (transformation matrix or pre-vertex deformation) can be set in the table by clicking the “Mode” column of the object’s row.

 

Exporting objects to SD file with the "RF SD Exporter" plugin.

 

The "RF SD Exporter" plugin parameters are:

  • "SD File" is the path of output SD file.
  • "Start Frame" and "End Frame" indicate the frames you want to export.
  • "Inc Frame" indicates the increment to generate the frames when exporting.
  • "Scene Scale" applies a global scale factor.
  • "Add Camera" exports the selected camera to the SD file when checked.
  • "Object", "Add", "Add All", "Add Selected", "Delete", and "Delete All" are used to specify the objects meant to be exported.
  • "Export" starts exporting the scene.


SD files accept only triangle polygons. When adding an object with non-triangle faces the plugin shows a warning message (see below) and tries to execute the triangulation automatically. For complex faces (like texts) the adopted algorithm might create wrong results. In this case, a manual triangulation process is required. Objects with non-triangulated polygons are marked with ‘(!)’ in the table of the "SD Export" tab.

 

Warning message on exporting object with non-triangulated polygon(s).

 

Only face-type polygons are written to the SD file. When an object contains polygons of other type (such as curve, metaball or bone) a warning message is displayed.

 

Warning message on exporting object with non-face type polygon(s).

 

When an object contains bones the deformation is exported only in vertex mode.

 

Warning message on exporting object with bones in matrix mode.