Export Progress

[devMidgard]

Hi, could a progress bar or something be implemented while you're exporting as ply, obj, or whatever?

When I'm working with large gox models I may be waiting for a while without really knowing how much time left or at what percentage of the export is the software at.

[guillaumechereau]

Thanks. This should be done yes.

[YarlBoro]

I humbly second this request.

I tend to export large models too. Often it takes 2-5 hours to get out mesh smoothed with Marching Cubes. During this time Goxel UI freezes and cursor changes into (notorious) spinning beachball. Someone might think that Goxel just hanged/crashed. Without looking at statistics on MacOS „Activity Monitor”, it looks like Goxel does nothing in this time(while in fact it works hard to get things done).

Please ad all „geeky” details into progression window, if You don’t mind. Number of verticies exported, voxels left...etc

Thank You

[guillaumechereau]

2-5 hours?? Do you have a file you can share that takes that long? I would like to see what's going on, there might be some optimisations to make this faster.

As for the progress bar, I will try to do it maybe before the next release, since there is a critical bug in the cycles rendering on windows that prevents me from doing the release I was planning this week. This is not trivial though.

[YarlBoro]

Yes, I'll send it to you when I get home.

I'll also send you OBJ with texture that I generated from PLY in MeshLab. I have spend a lot of time on finding a way to get usable models with good(enough) textures out of PLY files. OBJs that I get this way look bad in all OpenGL previes & renderers (Cinema 4D included), but look nice in raytrace renderers. Like in C4D build-in one or RadeonPro renderer.

My method in MeshLab so others can use it too or suggest improvements:

• import PLY file
• save with File>Export Mesh as.. to as OBJ to generate file
• use Filter>Texture>Texture Parametrization: Trivial from Per-triangle, set texture size as big as necessary. Try 2048, 4096 etc.
• use Filter>Texture>Per Vertex Texture Function (without this step Meshlab hangs on next one!)
• use Filter>Texture>Vertex Color to Texture, set texture size to same resolution that you set two steps before. Check 'assign texture'.
• resave file as OBJ file that you saved before

This is best I could get. Model that you get this way is not perfect but usable for me. For Unity it would be probably unusable... Is this proper way to deal with PLY files conversion?

Progress bar - ok, great that you plan to make it happen.

[guillaumechereau]

I just started an experimental branch for the progress bar (action-thread), I am not quite sure about my code though, so I will need to test that properly before I push it. Once I get your files I will see what I can do: first if I can optimize the export function (2 hours is just crazy), and then see if my progress bar branch actually work.

[YarlBoro]

I've sent it all via email. M

[guillaumechereau]

Thanks I am having a look. Goxel shouldn't take more than a few minutes to export even big models like that so I will first try to see what makes it so slow.

[YarlBoro]

No problem.

Few minutes? That would be one hell of time saving :) Even 50% less time to export than now, would be nice

[YarlBoro]

I compiled from 'action-thread' branch. On attempt to export anything to PLY or OBJ, Goxel crash.

Here is crash report from PLY export: goxel-crash-23-04-2018.txt

[guillaumechereau]

Thanks, yeah I see what's the problem. Well this is mostly an experimental branch, I don't think I will merge it in the end.

[guillaumechereau]

Alright I just committed a change in the obj/ply export that should make it much faster to export big models. Please try it out and let me know if you run into any issue.

[YarlBoro]

It is blazing fast! Every model that I've tried to export so far is saved in mere seconds. This makes me think about some very big models that I gave up on exporting few months ago :)

I've noticed that Marching Cubes can be applied to OBJs too, even with Vertex Color - nice.

From commit comentary: "We also need to support simplified mesh export with merged faces" - yeah, optimised meshes straight out of Goxel would be awesome.

Thanks for so many substantial improvements!

[guillaumechereau]

Great! Then maybe I won't do the progress bar for the next release, and keep it for the following one since it's now less critical.