kicad 3d VRML with textures support

[easyw]

Hi,
at the moment kicad doesn't support vrml texture, but I found a tricky way to add VRML texture support for a board generated in kicad and exported to VRML 

if you just export your 3d board and VRML models with kicad copying the models to 3D path, and then change your VRML model without texture with a model with texture in that folder, you can have a VRML representation of board and modules with the desired texture

that would be nice/useful e.g. for povray generation of 3d realistic rendering or blender picture rendering or animation

3d screenshot in kicad

and the
3d screenshot in FreeCAD with texture (VRML file exported from kicad)


Maurice

[timofonic]

Did you use StepUP? That's what appears in your screenshots

[easyw]

Hi,
all the modules comes from kicad StepUp tool conversion http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/ that helps in converting 3D STEP models to VRML models, with the right alignment, and convert the board to MCAD. (almost everything I do with 3D is developed in kicad StepUp  )
Then the VRML models are rendered in kicad 3d-viewer and exported by kicad itself to VRML pcb assemblies.
To add the texture I just added a thin plate over the central VRML QFP chip, and I changed that plate in the 'shapes3D' folder with a plate with texture inside.

This trick will let you display your texture image for example for http://www.povray.org/ PovRay or http://www.blender.org/ Blender artistic rendering or animation.

The devs are thinking to integrate texture natively in kicad, but this task has a low priority.
This dirty trick is a small hack
Maurice

[timofonic]

Hi,
all the modules comes from kicad StepUp tool conversion http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/ that helps in converting 3D STEP models to VRML models, with the right alignment, and convert the board to MCAD. (almost everything I do with 3D is developed in kicad StepUp  )
Then the VRML models are rendered in kicad 3d-viewer and exported by kicad itself to VRML pcb assemblies.
To add the texture I just added a thin plate over the central VRML QFP chip, and I changed that plate in the 'shapes3D' folder with a plate with texture inside.

This trick will let you display your texture image for example for http://www.povray.org/ PovRay or http://www.blender.org/ Blender artistic rendering or animation.

The devs are thinking to integrate texture natively in kicad, but this task has a low priority.
This dirty trick is a small hack
Maurice

Sorry, I didn't know you are the StepUP developer!

Thanks for your efforts. Some people see 3D as a gimmick, but it could be useful for many stuff and MCAD is the most interesting one. I just hope KiCad gets native STEP support eventually and they switch their 3D models to STEP, that would make things even more interesting

[easyw]

Hi @timofonic,

it would be just a great 'STEP' ahead to switch from Wings3D to FreeCAD to model all the parts...
FreeCAD can export 3D model to STEP and to VRML, so the two formats can co-exist ...
that will make much easier to manage MCAD conversion and will keep models with dimensions as per the real world 

HyOzd and me have tried to suggest to start a parallel repository, but at the moment the community is still on Wings3D side ...
https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-library/issues/186

FreeCAD is a solid mechanical sw and is fully scriptable (kicad python API are really poor at the actual state)

Thank you for your interest in this subject
M