It is possible to upload 3D files types eg DXF

Has there been any progress on the ability to upload 3D models to SL?

Love
Fur Yifu

How are you defining "progress"? And since what time?

Sculpties were added about 10 months ago. They are uploadable 3D models. You can make them in any number of third party 3D modeling apps (Maya, Max, Blender, Rhino, etc.) and then upload them into SL. They must be created in a specific way though. Not just any old arbitrary model will work. You have to learn the rules, and build your models accordingly. See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims for more info.

And of course, prims.Blender by Jeffrey Gomez has been around for a long time now. It enables you to create SL style parametric prims in Blender, export a text-based description of whatever model you build out of those prims, and then use that data reconstruct the same model in SL via script. Maya To Second Life, which Adrien Linden started a while ago, but never finished, does the same thing for Maya. I think there's one for Max too, but I don't know its name. Search the building and scripting forums for more information on these.

There's also Henshin, which will construct models in SL from AutoCAD files. Search for it on this forum.

Jeffrey Gomez's OBJ Importer allows you to reconstruct a mesh model out of prims in SL by replacing every polygon with a triangular prim. You'll find it in the scripting forum. Its results are obviously incredibly prim heavy, so it's not practical on an every day basis, but it is useful for certain things.


But to answer your specific question, no, it's not possible to upload DXF files into SL.


Anyway, keep in mind that while SL's internal modeling tools are a bit different from what you're probably used to from other programs, they are considerably more powerful than they first seem. They're well worth mastering for two reasons. The most obvious is that getting good with them will allow you to create great stuff in SL. The less obvious, but in my opinion much more important, reason is that they force you to exercise a kind of problem-solving intelligence that more traditional 3D modeling programs allow you to bypass. Learning to model well in SL, in the absence of all the crutches present in other programs, makes you orders of magnitude better as a modeler, both inside SL and out.

Just about every 3D artist I know has ended up agreeing with me on that. The pattern is almost always the same. In the beginning, people with experience complain about SL's seemingly limited tool set, and they constantly say "If only I could upload my Maya models...", or "If only I could upload my Max models...", etc. After a few weeks working directly in SL though, they inevitably find that they've learned to "think in prims", and they never look back. Their poly counts in other programs end up going way down, since they're now able to approach a great many modeling problems from a point of view they weren't well able to consider before. 2D texturing skills increase almost immeasurably. It's all positive.

That's not to say it wouldn't be great to be able to use arbitrary mesh models in SL. We all want that. Don't hold your breath waiting for it though. It's highly unlikely we'll see it any time soon. And even when we do, prim-based modeling won't go away. Parametric objects will always load faster and run smoother in an environment like SL than meshes will. Prims are here to stay.

So master what SL can do at present. Don't waste your time today pining for what you hope it to be able to do tomorrow. Just dive in and create great things.

You really went to a lot of trouble writing that reply! You are very kind!

Love
Fur Yifu
x

Google Polytrans, it will import DFX and export to .X or 3DS or whatever. Short leap from there to .obj and you can get .obj converted for use in SL as Chosen said above.