#72 U3D exporting fails on linux

[Anonymous]

Hello!
I am running on an ubuntu 8.04 linux 64 bit machine.
I have tried to import an obj file and export it to
U3D without success.
I get the same result with two versions of meshlab:
the 1.1.1 version and the newest svn version
as of 22nd Nov 2008.

Compiling is no problem, with the U3D shared library available in the plugin directory.

However, when I perform a 'save as' choosing a u3d file extension, I get the following a popup dialog with the following message:

Failed conversion executable ' -en 1 -rzf 0 -pq 500 -input "/tmp//bla.u3d.idtf" -output "/home/wscott/tex/test/chimeratest/bla.u3d"'

BTW, bla.u3d is the file I am attempting to write.

If I click on the OK button of this dialog, I get another
popup with the following message:

Error encountered while exporting file /home/wscott/tex/test/chimeratest/bla.u3d:
Conversion Process From Idtf intermediate file to U3D format aborted

Perusal of the code in meshlabplugins/u3d_i/u3d_io.cpp shows that in the case of win32 and OSX, external helper programs are invoked. However, I am assuming that for linux this is not/should not be the case, and the shared library should be used?

It seems to me, however, that the code is not loading
a plugin, or even trying to do so.
If I delete the libu3d_io_debug.so (in the case of v 1.1.1) or libio_u3d.so (in the case of the svn version)

I get exactly the same error. I would have expected a
message with respect to a missing plugin...

Thank you for your help and kind
regards
Scotty (wscott@chem.ubc.ca)

[Paolo Cignoni]

The u3d exporter needs the IDTFconverter executable that should be built from the sources of the u3d library that is available from http://u3d.sourceforge.net/
Actually this plugins just export to idtf (a verbose ascii format) and call the idtfconverter to convert this created file to u3d format.

Btw in the absence of the idtf converter the error message should be clearer....

p.