Hi there, I’m working with a project that uses feet and inches as the unit of measurement, so I’m treating a unit of 1 in away3d to mean an inch, and obviously multiplying any measurements in feet by 12.

In order to save having to convert measurement to metric in blender, I’m treating 1 metre in Blender as an inch, and the plan was to scale accordingly on import.

What I need to know is if I import a model from blender that is 1 metre tall, what does this equate to in away 3d? 100?

Thanks in advance

Hi Margaret,
I have to handle this headache on a daily basis, getting models from different modelling environments and countries of the world.
I have learned to take everything into 3d Studio MAX (though Blender is probably the same) and convert to generic units.
The units in any 3d engine are in principle arbitrary and you can decide yourself how they relate to the real world. (exceptions being, when working with raytrace lighting that requires realworld scales, or physics engines that may impose restrictions).

I have found using 1 unit to 1 cm gives a nice working scale. If I get a model in inches I scale it by 2.54 before using it. Metric models are often in mm.
The important thing I’ve found is that you 3d software should be in generic units, as this guarantees that the actual values you read in the program are exported without any conversion going on behind the scenes.
Another “gotcha” is that scaling doesn’t necessarily change the coordinate values in a mesh, but may just add to it’s stack. This is especially relevant in mesh hierarchies, and grouped meshes. Reset Xform is the solution to that one in MAX (I’m sorry I don’t know Blender that well).

To answer you question, or at least give you a hint, try exporting a box 1m x 1m and comparing to a cube generated in Away3d that is 100 x 100.
You may find that the exported coordinates have undergone a transformation if you choose to work in Blenders metric coordinates.

I did think about the exporting a 100x100 box thing, well, a 1 metre box compare to a 100x100x100 cube..

Having the units in metres seems to be a recent change with blender, previously it was ‘Blender units’ and that was that…

I guess I’ll keep experimenting…

Okay, so it seems that scaling an object that is 1 metre high in Blender by .02 makes it 1 unit high in away3D

Hopefully someone finds this useful