KB101319088: Studio Tookit - Warning: "The imported shape is very small" is displayed on open/import of certain models

Summary

When opening a .OBJ file in the Toolkit application, the following warning message appears:

The imported shape is very small. If this was not your intention, then please check the scale of the object in the application that created the file.

Symptoms

Opening some .OBJ files will pop up the following warning message:

Solution

There is no solution for this within Esko software.

Since there is no unit specification inside an OBJ file, Studio Toolkit will always consider the given values to be 'mm' instead of 'inches'.

So to take this behavior into account, resize the original 3D model in the third party creator 3D app. Say for example, if you need 2 inches, and it imports as 2 mm, then try resizing it in the 3D application (Maya, Modo, 3DSMax, ...) by multiplying the dimensions by 25.4.

As for textures, there is no texture information stored in OBJ files. It is a limitation of that file format.

To avoid these issues, export the 3D model as a Collada file (.DAE) instead.

For Max and/or Maya, use the 'OpenCollada' exporter to export to Collada instead of the FBX Convertor which sometimes results in incorrect exports.