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Long term hobbyist-user of Carrara (formerly Ray Dream Designer) on MacOS. The last version I purchased was 8.1.0.151, dating back to about 2011. Recent changes in MacOS have rendered this app unusable except on older machines, so I am trying to find a substitute. (I'm not sure Blender is it.)

It would be nice to bring some older models into Blender without recreating them. Carrara will export to .obj (and .mtl files), but when I import any of the obj files into Blender, there doesn't seem to be anything there except the name of the object. I've tried zooming in and zooming out. I've selected the object and tried scaling.

Speaking of scaling, I selected the default cube and then the scaling tool, and when I did that, colored arrows and a white circle appeared centered on the cube. Moving them changed the size of the cube. When I tried the same thing on the imported object, I saw no scaling arrows and no white circle.

The obj file does (probably) contain valid information: when I open a blank Carrara project and import the .obj file back into Carrara, it appears just like a copy of the original. (To open it in Blender, I have to switch computers, so the potential for corruption is there, I suppose.)

I've seen other posts about not seeing imported objects. Maybe I've misunderstood the advice in those previous posts (I can barely do anything in Blender yet other than open and close files), but the main suggestion I've seen is that the imported object is either too big or too small (which I think I checked for) or that the obj file can't be read. Does anyone know if there's something "bad" about the obj file made by Carrara that renders them unusable by other programs?

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi :). Obj imports are sometimes considerably out of scale. Select the imported object in Outliner, and check how big it is ;) $\endgroup$
    – jachym michal
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 7:21
  • $\begingroup$ And check the location as well, maybe it's not located in the center of Blender's coordinate system. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Brinkmann
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 11:16
  • $\begingroup$ Just for clarification: if the object resp. its origin is outside the viewport, then you won't see the tool arrows because they are outside the viewport as well. And if no object is selected, you won't see them either. But do you have an object there? Is it listed in the Outliner window? If so, click on it there and then in the 3D Viewport hit Alt+G to reset the location. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Brinkmann
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 11:20
  • $\begingroup$ 1. Sorry, I'm so new to Blender that I don't know how to check on how big it is. I can find the object listed in the Outliner (I think) [the other items listed there are the camera and light, right?], but I don't know how to go from selecting it there to finding the size. $\endgroup$
    – Smith_USA_MD
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 19:38
  • $\begingroup$ 2. The origin is 0, 0, 0. I see a symbol indicating the object's center, nothing else. $\endgroup$
    – Smith_USA_MD
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 19:40

1 Answer 1

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No, Blender cannot import Carrara files converted to OBJ.

This is the response I got from someone else on the bug report site: "Your .obj file uses carriage return, \r, as the newline delimiter instead of the usual \n or \r\n. The Python importer opens files in binary mode and Python says "the line terminator is always b'\n' for binary files". It therefore interprets your entire file as a single very long comment line."

The commenter added that "...you can fix the line endings in practically any text editor to get it to import." Except that I don't know how to do that. So, bottom line, no .obj file made by Carrara can be imported into Blender. Blender simply won't see the data.

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  • $\begingroup$ Update: I found an app called CotEditor that would open the test .obj file (BBEdit would not, FYI). At the bottom was a small box that said "CR." The other options were "LF" and "CRLF." When I changed it to "LF," the file was automatically revised. After closing CotEditor, I tried importing the .obj file into Blender, and it worked! $\endgroup$
    – Smith_USA_MD
    Commented Jan 9, 2022 at 23:32

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