How to apply material to an imported .obj file?

Hello,

I think I have a small question.

I can easily apply material to basic geo shapes such as the torus or box within TD but when I import a 3D .obj file I don’t know how to manage it as a geo node cause it simply displays it as a ‘filein’ node with no such parameters like ‘Material’.

I wonder is there another node which converts that imported .obj file to a geo node so it can be played and manipulated? At the moment all I’m aiming is to apply a video on the imported .obj file such as the first demo shown when the TD loads for the first time.

Thanks you and best wishes.

If you place a new Geometry COMP, and zoom into it, you’ll see there’s a Torus SOP inside for demo purposes. Delete that Torus SOP, and drag your *.obj file in its place. That places a File In SOP. Connect a Null SOP to it, and enable the render flag and display flag on the Null SOP (the purple and blue dots bottom-right).

Now, if you zoom out you’ll see the Geo COMP has loaded your obj model. Now you can apply a Phong MAT to the Geo COMP, by dragging the Phong MAT to the parameter window of the Geometry COMP (to the page Render, parameter Material), and then place a Render TOP, Camera COMP and Light COMP to render the scene.

If you open Help → Operator Snippets → TOP ->Render TOP: you’ll find a basic example with a video texture as a material.

An if you want to change how a texture is applied to the 3dmodel, use a Texture SOP to assign new UV coordinates. See examples under Help → Operator Snippets → SOP ->Texture SOP

2 Likes

Thanks so much, it worked!

Hi,
I have been trying this method w/o success. There is still nothing showing up in the ‘render’ operator. I activated ‘render’ and ‘display’ as described, and I was able to successfully complete the TD sphere + noise SOP tutorial.

For some reason this does not work with my drag+dropped OBJ. Is there perhaps something about the OBJ that is not compatible?

hey imnotjohn, probably easiest to see what your issue is if you post a small example of your .toe file with the imported OBJ asset included, all in one ZIP file.