Issue with texture colour in model import from Vectorworks

Hi AndrewE,

If you could either attach or PM me the export as well as the original Vectorworks file, I'd be happy to take a look. (You'll likely need to zip the files to attach to this post)

3d objs.zip

Thank you so much. The attached Zip contains the Vectorworks 2020 file, the exported DAE file, and the EOS Showfile which has had the DAE imported into Augment3d. Any pointers greatly appreciated!

Taking a look at the files, the first thing I notice is that there is a reference to an image on your desktop in the VWX file that wasn't included in the zip.

Re-exporting as Collada (.dae) from Vectorworks (using Final Renderworks Settings) gives me the same behaviour that you are seeing in your file, but with more textures exported into the folder (not all). It looks like Vectorworks has set the BLK, CYAN, and PINK textures to be exactly the same (which is why they aren't showing as colored in your model. If you manually edit those texture PNGs and colorize them by hand in another program (I used GIMP) you can have the colors import to Augment3d. (The moire is fun)

It also looks like Vectorworks is creating the Collada export but is not actually exporting all of the textures so you will continue to get a request by Augment3d to point it at the missing textures:

This appears to be a Vectorworks issue (the missing textures are things like the stage deck).

The image on the desktop is something I know about - it was texture I had mapped to the "screen" object in my drawing, but didn't end up using - so that shouldn't be an issue. (I must remember to delete it though)
The cyan and pink textures are the same version of the renderworks texture as you say, but I used the "edit image color" dialog in the class texture settings to change the colour - which is why it displays correctly in Vectorworks. But I guess this doesn't get added to the model when VW exports to Collada... I wonder if that's a bug or limitation in Vectorworks in that case.

I did try colourising the PNG in another program like you suggested but didn't have any luck with that either unfortunately. I'll have another go though - it makes sense that if it's referencing a PNG file with the correct colour info in it, it should work!

Yes, looking at the Collada file itself, there does not appear to be any color data in the definitions of the textures with images so it would appear Vectorworks is applying that filter on top of the texture in the program and not exporting it into the texture itself.

You could go the long route and use Blender to apply the texture and color in a shader and then re-export again, but I think the simplest solution will just be to manipulate the PNG in a graphics editor like GIMP. A word of caution, the file name needs to be the exact same, in the same location as the original so you may just want to use GIMP's overwrite function to push your changes back to the texture PNGs directly.

Once imported into Augment3d, textures aren't constantly referencing the original file location (they're copied internally to the show file) so you will need to re-import the model to see the changes.

Tweaking the colour of the texture in another app and reimporting it into VW before exporting the models has fixed the issue. Thanks for the pointers - it does definitely look like VW just wasn't including the necessary information - so not an Eos issue at all. Much appreciated!

Tweaking the colour of the texture in another app and reimporting it into VW before exporting the models has fixed the issue. Thanks for the pointers - it does definitely look like VW just wasn't including the necessary information - so not an Eos issue at all. Much appreciated!