Hi Brian, that last one with the diagrams/snapshots was meant to illustrate this sentence that you had quoted:

"any time that you just sort of free-form position 2 pieces nearby each other without a snap"


In the example I show 2 curves, and the idea is to position them so that they touch end to end.

The first method is the "free-form" or "eyeballing" type method. This is the method that does not use an End object snap. It is the bad method - it is the way that can cause problems because it is just moving things with the mouse until objects just sort of look like they are close to each other. But if you zoomed in on them you would see that there is some space between them. That is a lot different then snapping them together to ensure that they are actually exactly touching end to end.

The second method that uses End object snap is the way to position 2 curves in such a way that they definitely touch each other instead of just being pretty close to touching.

Just moving things nearby each other is not generally good enough, especially if you want to start creating surfaces from those curves. The resulting surfaces will have gaps between them like the screenshot I showed earlier here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1604.4

If you use the second method that uses the "End" snap, that will avoid that kind of gaps-between-pieces problem.

- Michael

Thanks Michael.
At about 3am this morning I thought of something that may have been involved. Later today I will try and emulate that oringinal path and compare with your advice.
Busy day and its only 10 am. XP SP3, Carrara6.2 update---what next?
Brian

Michael
Not a very helpful couple of hours. I wont bore you with a lot of the other stuff.
I think, in the main, the problem relates somewhat (maybe/perhaps/inpart/also!!!) to the relationship between MoI and Carrara.

Here is that file you made exported as 3dm and obj from MoI.
!

Anyway, A shows problems in Carrara doing what I wanted to do.
B shows the same file as exported from MoI as an obj file.

MMmmmmnnmmm!

Brian

Hi Brian, I'm sorry I'm not really following you here.

Is your shot A showing problems in Carrara trying to do displacement type editing?

Maybe Carrara needs to have a more finely diced up mesh with smaller polygons to do a good job of that. You might try using the "Divide larger than" setting in MoI when exporting to divide polygons up into smaller pieces.

For example if you try putting in 0.1 as the "Divide larger than value", that will force polygons to be divided until they are no larger than 0.1 units, that type of dense mesh may work better for displacement type operations inside of Carrara.

- Michael

Michael the wierd thing in A is that there are different mirroring responses (soft sellection poly movement) on either side--left fine, right daggy!

Hi Brian, does it seem to behave better with a denser mesh?

If it is a problem with Carrara's movement tools, I'm not really sure what I could do about that. You might need to ask about that in a Carrara forum to find out more about that specifically.

But if you find out that Carrara would prefer to operate on a certain style of mesh like lots of little polygons (instead of a mix of some larger and some smaller sized polygons), then there are settings that you can adjust at export time to create something like that.

- Michael

Hi Brian,

>>the wierd thing in A is that there are different mirroring responses

I do see the same problem. But that is down to the 3dm importer in Carrara, it is not good.

Personally, on that model, I would output an obj file with angle of 3, and set the output as quads/triangles.


- manz

Hi Brian. I'm not sure what's the point to model this in Nurbs if you plan to sculpt in polygons anyway. You could have modeled a nose in subd in just a few minutes. And the toplogy would be vastly superior to what you achieved by all this extra work. Unless the purpose was just for study???

jonah

Hi Brian, ok now I understand that you are comparing importing .3dm files versus importing .obj files into Carrara.

When you import a .3dm file directly into Carrara, you are relying on Carrara's meshing code to convert NURBS surfaces into polygonal facets. It does not look like it did a very good job of that conversion in this case.

When you import an .obj file into Carrara, you are instead relying on MoI's meshing code to convert surfaces into polygons. MoI's conversion mechanism tends to work better, that's why you get better results when doing it that way.

- Michael

Sorry I was away. Yes, I was just reporting another queer thing.
Jonah. I was looking at an experimental exercise about taking a MoI file into the Carrara Vertex room and using the Displacement Paint.

With SR3 and the Carrara updates etc I wont be able to follow thus up with examples for a while.

Brian

Michael.
The attached shows the import adjustment settings available when importing 3DM files into Carrara.

Can you (or anyone) make any suggestions on where these settings should be set to improve the quality of the resulting files in Carrara please.

(I really don't know what the settings are designed to do/adjust! ---NO CLUE!)

Brian\

ps I presume I am right in that no adjustment to export settings for 3DM can actually be done within MoI?

Hi Brian,

The main setting to change is the "max angle", as that will control the amount of polygons produced over a curved surface.

As example:

Importing a sphere with default settings (20) will give a mesh:-



Changing the "max angel" down to 3 will produce a mesh as:-



I would still advise you to export directly from MoI (to obj) and make needed setting for export there (angle etc), it is certainly better (I find)

Maybe we need to start a thread with examples of exporting?


- manz

I agree, unless you're having problems with OBJs exported from MOI, you should just stick with MOI OBJ exports.

What's the advantage or your reasoning for working with 3DM imports? Unless this is just a test to see how Carrara behaves working with .3DMs?


The only reason I've ever attempted to load 3DM (in XSI I believe), was to try and keep the model in the NURBS domain - if it's going to be converted into polygons anyway, you're then stuck as Michael said with the quality of the target app's importer.

Frankly I'd rather export from MOI and point any problems to Michael (who has a way better history of fixing his code) than now depending on DAZ to fix any issues with their mesher / code...

-Will

one thing i can guarantee is you will NOT be seeing any improvements to Carrara's 3DM import (which i always found to be rather crappy). Working with CAD data is probably very far off of DAZ's radar...

jonah

Hi Brian,

> ps I presume I am right in that no adjustment to export settings
> for 3DM can actually be done within MoI?

Yes, that's correct - basically .3dm saves the same kind of data that MoI naturally operates on, so there isn't any kind of conversion options when you save to .3dm from MoI.

- Michael

Thanks all.
One of my reasons for asking these later questioms is just plain curiosty--the need to learn!
Secondly, there is a lot of good 3dm files stuff about and I have been quite happy in importing a lot of it into Carrara in the past.

Thanks for that Carrara import setting advice

For those with Carrara.
Michaels suggestion to move the angle in the Carrara 3dm dropdown to 3 did increase the number of polys and lessened but did not cure the problem as earlier reported.
OBJ, 3DS and lwo seem to be the better imports into Carrara from MoI---I obviously can confirm!

Brian