This geometry import converter reads in Alias triangle binary files which can be output from Alias Power Animator/Studio/AutoStudio/Designer. These files basically just contain raw geometry data in triangular format with normals/colors/texture-uv coordinates per vertex. In addition the file contains the texture filename associated with each polygon and the structure of the file describes the hierarchy of the original scene.
NOTES:
You must manually add the “.tri” extension to the end of these Alias files since Alias does not append this extension automatically.
When Alias outputs the NURBS surfaces to the triangle file it subdivides the NURBS patches into polygons. The level of subdivision is set by the environment variables ‘TRI_OUTPUT’. This should be set on the UNIX command line before entering Alias. For example: ‘setenv TRI_OUTPUT 32’ produces a highly tessellated triangle mesh. Higher numbers produce more polygons.
These triangle output format is a “poor man’s” method of exporting geometry from Alias. A better method is to export polygons or NURBS via the Wavefront OBJ file format and import the data into this program via the Wavefront OBJ reader which handles both polygons and NURBS. Please note that Alias PowerAnimator does not have the capability to output a Wavefront .mtl material file.
Triangle format files contain vertex location, normal, color and texture u/v data for each vertex. In addition the file format describes the texture filename associated with each triangle.
Dialog Box Options
The following information explains the various options on the dialog box:
Output Verbose Parsing About the File’s Contents
If this checkbox is enabled then the input filter will print out verbose information about the Alias geometry file as it is being parsed.
Describe Object Names. Do Not Load Any Data
If this checkbox is enabled then the input filter will print out the names of the objects within the Alias file. No data will be loaded in.
Dialog Box Options