using Blender to better understand OBJ features/usage i am relatively new to the 3D world.  i understand the theory of 3D modeling, but lack practical 'real world usage' experience...  i need to better understand the OBJ file format as I've used a program to create an OBJ file that requires what i call 'downstream rendering'.  the program ive used is called ViewDog 0.6 (part of gul.sourceforge.org).  this program has a very powerful feature.  you supply it with a grid of regularly spaced x,y sample points having z values.  this program has a routine called 'nubmbas' that uses 'multi level Bspline approximation' and it will 'best fit' a Bspline surface to your point cloud data set.  ive fed this program sample data, and it has both: a) rendered a 3D Bspline surface in its ViewDog gui renderer, and b) has saved the resulting Bspline surface as an OBJ 'cstype bspline' object definition.

the link to the surface as rendered in ViewDog 0.6 is here...

gregaiken.com/webgl/test1/viewdog_nubmbas_iterations7_deg4.JPG

the link to the matching OBJ file that ViewDog 0.6 creates is here...

gregaiken.com/webgl/test1/log150-8000_4N.obj

now being a 'newbie', i assumed that if i opened any valid OBJ file in Blender 2.72a, that i would see this 3D object in the Blender window.  in fact, when i open the above OBJ file, i see NOTHING in Blender.

my questions are:


my OBJ file only contains the definition of the geometry of the Bspline surface using 'v'(ertice) commands and the other Bspline related 'knot' definitons, etc...  there is NO material library reference in the OBJ file.  can anyone tell me definitively what is missing from my OBJ file that causes it to NOT display in Blender?
can anyone please give me the exact steps one would need to do in Blender to select this invisible object (once its been 'File - Imported - OBJ imported' into Blender), and then apply a trivial 'material' to the object to then cause it to be visible in Blender?


if anyone can help me, i would be most grateful.

sincerely,

Greg Aiken
The file is imported, however it ends up behind the camera.

After importing, press Numpad . to snap the selected objects to the center of the view.