Command-Line Interface
You need a Studio license to use this feature. It is included in Transmutr v1.1.0 and higher.
This feature is currently under development. Please report any issue to transmutr@lindale.io
General usage
The CLI (short for Command-Line Interface) is a very powerful tool that allows users to easily process large sets of models. To use the CLI, first open a terminal and type the path to the location where Transmutr.exe is stored.
If you installed Transmutr per user (the "Only for me" option in the installer) then it should be located at:
C:/Users/YourUsername/AppData/Local/Programs/Transmutr/
If you installed Transmutr per machine (the "Anyone who uses this computer" option in the installer) then it should be located at:
C:/Program Files/Transmutr/
To simply convert a model, add the convert
command followed by the path to the model. This will convert your model to a Sketchup file with the same name, right in the current directory. Please note that the path to transmutr.exe will slightly differ on your system.
C:/Users/Frodo/AppData/Local/Programs/Transmutr/transmutr.exe convert C:/models/tree.obj
Typing the complete path to Transmutr's location is quite verbose. If you prefer to avoid this, you can add the Transmutr's folder to your environment's PATH
variable, like in this guide.
In this way, your computer knows where to look for when you only type transmutr.exe instead of the whole path. We use this method in the rest of this documentation to keep things short.
You can specify additional options by adding parameters right betweenconvert
and the model's path. For instance, add the --output
parameters to specify the destination and the name of the converted model:
transmutr.exe convert --output C:/sketchup/my_converted_tree.skp C:/models/tree.obj
You have control over the same set of settings as in Transmutr's graphical interface. For example, to generate a Sketchup model scaled down by half, with 95% of its geometry simplified, you could type:
transmutr.exe convert --scale 0.5 --simplification 0.95 C:/models/tree.obj
To list all the available parameters, type transmutr.exe convert --help
. Please note that some parameters have a shorthand version that you can use to avoid typing long keywords, such as -o
instead of --output
.
You'll notice that executing transmutr.exe
without command actually opens the classical Transmutr graphical interface, which can also be useful.
Convert multiple models
To convert several models in one go, you can type their names one after another:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/tree.fbx C:/models/sofa.obj C:/models/lamp.3ds
When converting multiple models, the options that you specify apply to all the models.
Please note that options must still be placed right after the convert
command and before the paths to the models.
The CLI accepts globbing patterns to provide more flexibility when selecting models. For instance, *
is useful to select several files without writing their complete names. Thus, the following command converts all the models in C:/models/trees/
that end with .obj
:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/trees/*.obj
Likewise, **
can help you search for models in several directories. For example, the following command converts all the models named tree.fbx
located in any directory under C:/models/
:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/**/tree.fbx
Range operators are also useful to select names with some variations in them. The following command converts any model which name matches tree1.obj
, tree2.obj
, up to tree9.obj
:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/tree[1-9].obj
Similarly, we can select a range of letters. In this example, we convert any file with a name that matches furniture_a.obj
, furniture_b.obj
, ..., up to furniture_z.obj
:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/furniture_[a-z].obj
You can also combine different patterns by wrapping them in parentheses, separated by |
, following one of the @
, +
, *
, +
, or !
operators:
@
matches exactly one occurrence of the patterns?
matches zero or one occurrence*
matches zero or more occurrences+
matches one or more occurrences!
matches anything that does not match the patterns
For example, the following command converts any file that ends either with the .obj
or .fbx
extensions:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/*.@(obj|fbx)
In this other example, we convert any model which name matches treeX.obj
where X
can be any number with one or more digits:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/tree+([1-9]).obj
Finally, it's possible to combine different patterns to carry out very specific searches:
transmutr.exe convert C:/models/**/tree_collection_[1-5]/*_highpoly.@(fbx|obj)
Note that the paths and patterns are case-sensitive. So a pattern containing .fbx
will not match a filename ending with .FBX
.
Using the CLI for scripting
One way in which the CLI can be even more powerful is by including it in a scripting pipeline that automates tasks that would be tedious and time-consuming to perform manually.
This section contains examples that show how such tasks can be handled by combining Transmutr with your own scripts.
Ruby example: generating a library of LODs
In some contexts, it is useful to have several LODs (Level Of Detail) of the same model: for instance a high-resolution model for close-up shots, a medium-resolution model for mid-range shots and a very low-resolution model for distant shots. In this way, we can save performance without degrading visual quality.
In this example, we use a script written in the Ruby programming language to convert hundreds of models to three different LODs each and to sort them in appropriate output folders, all in a few lines of code.
Doing this manually would be a grueling and time-consuming job that would take several hours. Thanks to the CLI, it is now a matter of minutes.
Sketchup actually supports Ruby scripting, which means that you can run such scripts directly from Sketchup if you wish to. To do so, check out the Ruby console documentation.
.bat example: generating watermarked billboard proxies
Coming soon!
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