Surf format, save-as from 3D-XplorMath

The surf format is an export format from the 3D-XplorMath software. The format is ascii printable characters so it can be opened and inspected in any text editor. All surfaces are parametric of 2 variables, called (u,v), a grid.

• The first line should be "SurfaceDataFile", this can be used to check that any particular file is possibly a legal surf file.

• The second line is the version number, should currently be 3.

• The third and fourth lines are the dimensions (ures,vres) of the surface grid, namely the number of samples in the (u,v) parametric coordinates.

• The 5th line is the number of tiles, maximum number of tiles is 32 (3D-XplorMath limit).

• The next 19 lines contain camera and viewing parameters, this doesn't exist for version = 1.
  Camera position (vector)
  Camera view direction (vector)
  Image plane center (vector)
  Image plane horizontal vector (vector)
  Image plane vertical vector (vector)
  Focal length (scalar)
  Scale (scalar)
  Eye separation (scalar)
  Clipping plane distance (scalar)

• The next 3*ures*vres lines are the vertices of the (u,v) grid.

• The transformation matrix for each of the tiles, each is a four by three matrix.

• And finally a list of "normal correctors", either =1 or -1, one for each tile. These are used internally by 3D-XplorMath and aren't required for geometry translation.

procedure SaveSurfaceToDisk;
   var
      i,j,k:longint;
   begin
      writeln(MyTextFile, 'SurfaceDataFile');
      writeln(MyTextFile, 3);  //file version
      writeln(MyTextFile, uResolution);
      writeln(MyTextFile, vResolution);
      writeln(MyTextFile, NumberOfTiles);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewPoint.x);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewPoint.y);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewPoint.z);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewDirection.x);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewDirection.y);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ViewDirection.z);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneCenter.x);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneCenter.y);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneCenter.z);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneXDirection.x);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneXDirection.y);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneXDirection.z);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneYDirection.x);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneYDirection.y);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ImagePlaneYDirection.z);
      writeln(MyTextFile, FocalLength);
      writeln(MyTextFile, Graphic_Scale);
      writeln(MyTextFile, EyeSeparation);
      writeln(MyTextFile, ClipDistance);
 
      for i := 1 to uResolution do
      begin
         for j := 1 to vResolution do
         begin
            writeln(MyTextFile, MySurface^^[i,j].x);
            writeln(MyTextFile, MySurface^^[i,j].y);
            writeln(MyTextFile, MySurface^^[i,j].z);
         end;
      end;

      if NumberOfTiles > 1 then
         for i := 1 to 4 do
            for j := 1 to 3 do
               for k := 1 to NumberOfTiles do
                  writeln(MyTextFile, TMatrix[i,j,k]);
       for k := 1 to NumberOfTiles do
          writeln(MyTextFile, NormalCorrectors[k]);
   end;

surfconv

surfconv is a Unix style application that reads a surf files as exported by 3D-XplorMath and writes to standard out either a PovRay or Wavefront OBJ representation. This utility was written to enable the surfaces supported by 3D-XplorMath to be imported into other rendering/modelling packages.

Usage: surfconv [options] surfname
Options
   -pov     povray file (default)
   -obj     wavefront object file
   -geom    GEOM ouput format
   -smooth  estimate normals at each vertex
Example: surfconv -smooth -pov mysurf.surf

The PovRay and Wavefront OBJ formats both support vertex and index face primitives, this is standard for OBJ files and supported in PovRay with the recently introduced mesh2{} primitive [See PovRay documentation for details].

The surf format does not include colour information so colour is not available in the output file. For PovRay the surface is assigned a texture called "surf_texture" which can be declared by the user.

The surf format does not store vertex normals however these can be optionally estimated by the converter. Both the PovRay and Wavefront OBJ formats and corresponding rendering engines can use these to give a better rendering result.

Without -smooth.

Vertex smoothing enabled.

The Wavefront OBJ includes texture coordinates in (u,v), the converter assigns linear texture coordinates from 0 to 1 in both dimensions. For a tiled model each tile will have independent texture coordinates.

Reimann minimal surface constructed from 4 tiles. Rendering courtesy of Luc Benard.

No attempt has been made to transfer the camera specifications to the output files. While this is possible for the PovRay, it isn't for OBJ files and the purpose of this utility to transfer the geometry for editing within modelling/rendering/animation packages.

The normals at each vertex are estimated by considering the normals of the grid cells the vertex shares. The contribution of a cell is proportional to the area of the cell.