This Converter adds three entries to the conversion lists:

Imagine *.iob
Turbo Silver 2.0 *.silver
Turbo Silver 3.0 *.ts

Unless otherwise noted, this chapter uses "Imagine" to refer to both Turbo Silver and Imagine.

Turbo Silver and Imagine files have no special file name extension. Interchange creates Turbo Silver 3.0 objects with a ".ts" extension and Imagine objects with a ".iob" extension.

Geometry
Imagine supports triangle-based objects as well as mathematical objects such as Forms, spheres and flat surfaces. These Converters only translate triangle-based objects, including Turbo Silver's Custom objects. Forms, spheres, stencils and surfaces are ignored. Lone points and edges are converted.

Imagine saves objects from within the Forms Editor and the Detail Editor. This Converter can only read Imagine objects that have been edited and saved from within the Detail Editor.

Forms objects cannot be converted. Impulse has not documented the format of Forms Editor sub-objects, so Interchange cannot convert them. Instead, they are skipped. They become objects without any points or polygons. To convert a Forms Editor object to a Detail object, apply a small change in the Detail Editor and re-save it.

Imagine's hierarchies of sub-objects are translated and "grouped" to preserve the relationships between the objects. Imagine allows only one object at the root of an object's hierarchy. If there is more than one object at the root of the hierarchy, then a place holder object named "NULL ROOT" is created. This place holder object has no points or triangles. All former top-level objects become children of this parent object.

Loading and Saving Objects

Turbo Silver details
For Turbo Silver, the Converter makes objects, not cells. Cell files are not recognized. In Turbo Silver, objects are loaded and saved in the Cell Editor. In Turbo Silver 2.0, this is done with the "Group Load" and "Group Save" options. In Turbo Silver 3.0, these items are named "Settings Load" and "Settings Save" menu items. To load an object, select the "Load" item on the "Settings" menu, then click on the ".silver" file that Interchange created. To save a Turbo Silver object for conversion to another format via Interchange, select the parent object so that it is blue or green, then select the "Settings Save" (or "Group Save") menu item and specify an output file name.

For Imagine, this Converter reads and writes Detail Editor objects. It cannot recognize Forms Editor objects. In Imagine, objects are loaded and saved in the Detail Editor, using the "Load" and "Save" items in the "Object" menu.

Material attributes
Imagine and Turbo Silver have rich material attributes similar to the Interchange internal database. Turbo Silver 3.0 has settings for Shiny, Glossy, Smooth or Faceted, and index of refraction. (Turbo Silver 2.0 does not have Glossy, hardness or Bright settings.) Within an object, each triangle has color, reflect and filter values, all specified as RGB colors. These are translated directly, along with the refraction index and hardness settings. (Hardness corresponds to glossiness.) Both Turbo Silver and Imagine objects have specular coefficients, but Imagine added a specular color, and this is translated, too.

Although Imagine does not have distinctly named materials, Interchange creates materials from the polygons found in Imagine files. Each material is given a name based on the object's name plus an English representation of the material's color.

Subgroups
Turbo Silver and Imagine do not support named materials, but Imagine does have "subgroups." When making Imagine objects, this Converter makes subgroups that correspond to the named materials from other formats, making it very easy to select and change the attributes of similar polygons. Using this feature, you can "improve" an Imagine object by passing it through Interchange, then converting it back to Imagine format.

Smoothing
In Imagine, objects can be set as Faceted or Smooth. However, Smoothing is set on an object-by-object basis, while Interchange and many other 3D programs handle smoothing as a material attribute. When converting from Imagine to other formats, if the object has Smooth set, then all the triangles in the converted object are given materials with smooth attributes. When converting an object to Imagine format, if more than half the polygons are smooth, then the object will have Smooth set. If not, it will be Faceted.

Options dialog

To help re-size objects destined for Imagine, the Object size section has two values for controlling the maximum and minimum sizes of objects. They do not affect the import of objects.

On export, the greatest dimension of the object (such as height, width or depth) is compared against the Max and Min values. If this dimension is between these values, then the object's size will not be adjusted in any way. Otherwise the object will be uniformly scaled to fit.

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