Flex Exports

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‌Flex Exports

Once you have a flex manually created or solved, you can prepare to export it.

You may want to use Script/Flex operations to resample the flex to equalize the distance between points along it. For example, to divide it into 30 equal pieces, or put a control point every foot or 0.25 meter.

Note: Flexes are not currently exported as splined paths as part of any regular exports. They are exported as straight-line segments. That makes pre-export subdivision crucial to maintaining the curve of your flex.

At present, there are six principal export paths:

 The USD ASCII export includes Flexes as part of its normal scene export. You should use Flex operations to create a suitably dense set of segments before exporting.

 Similarly, the Filmbox FBX export includes Flexes as part of its normal export.

 You can export flex(es) using the “File/Export/Mesh/Flexes as .obj” exporter, which produces a .obj file containing “line” primitives. These primitive may or may not be interpreted properly by downstream applications, they are much less common than the usual mesh facets. (There is also a “File/Import/Flexes from

.obj” importer that can read line primitives from a .obj file and produce flexes.)

 You can convert the flex to a lidar-style “mesh” that contains only points, using the “Script/Flex operations” panel. You may be able to work with that in downstream applications, or in SynthEyes.

 You can convert the flex into a sequence of trackers with the “Trackers/Convert Flex to Trackers” script on the Script menu. The trackers can be exported directly, or, more usefully, you can use them in the Perspective window to create a mesh containing those trackers. For example, on a building project where the flex is the edge of the road, you can create a ground mesh to be landscaped, and still have it connect smoothly with the road, even if the road is not planar.

 You can export the coordinates of the points along the flex into a text file using the “Plain Text/Flex Vertex Coordinates” exporter. Using that file is up to you, though it should be possible to use it to create paths in most packages.

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