I have been modeling Corbusier's LC4 chaise. The subject says it all. How do I smooth out the surface?

You can see in the Moi3D pic the Meshing Options slider is hard to the right. In the C4D pic, you can see the segment lines. Subdividing in C4D results in total mesh confusion.

The curves used for the boole were made in C4D, exported to AI and into Moi3D. They are included in the attached file.

This was incredibly easy with Moi3D. Love it!

Leonard

I used "RebuildCurve" to get nice smooth curves from the inputs. THen I extruded the top one and shelled it. It did seem to change the shape a bit though, but look at this file to see if it can produce the results you need.

Thanks for your suggestion, BurrMan. I will give it a try.

I was about to edit my original post. I solved the problem by tracing over my curves with Moi3D.

Leonard

Yeah, the RebuildCurve command is a great tool for this. You specify the amount of points need to maintain the shape of the curve. I think I used 50 on yours. You can specify to delete the original curve. It gives a little outline of the original while your rebuilding to compare the results before you commit. It would do your tracing in just a click or 2!

Good luck.

Hi Leonard, I'm glad that you have it solved now.

So the problem is that the curves that were created in Cinema4D are not actually smooth curves at all, they are instead just a sequence of line segments.

There are enough little line segments so that it kind of looks like it is a smooth curve when it really isn't.

If you zoom in to examine them and turn on some points and move them slightly you will be able to see that more clearly.

I think Cinema4D is mostly focused on polygon modeling and not on actual true spline curve drawing, so that's probably why they generate a curve that is actually more like polygons, just made up of lines instead of smooth pieces.

Once you extrude something in MoI that is made up of a bunch of little lines, it generates a bunch of little planes in the extruded part rather than a smooth extruded surface.

So you're probably better off drawing the curve from the beginning in MoI rather than drawing it in Cinema4D for something where you want to produce a smooth surface when it is turned into a surface in MoI.

- Michael

Thanks, Michael. Yes, I reconstructed the four principal splines with Moi3D and it definitely improved the quality.

"Once you extrude something in MoI that is made up of a bunch of little lines, it generates a bunch of little planes in the extruded part rather than a smooth extruded surface."

That's topical. I imported the all Moi cushion into C4D and at the rounded corners, the little planes are not behaving in a desired way. The normals are fine. Is this right or am I doing something wrong?

Key to pics.
Pic a, the wire.
Pic b, the light to the right "off", light above & behind "on".
Pic c, the right light on, light above & behind off.
Pic d, both lights on at same intensity.
Pic e, both lights on at same intensity but doubled.
Pic f, top view of scene

Leonard

Hi Leonard,

> Is this right or am I doing something wrong?

As far as I can tell it looks like your model is all correct and it has imported into Cinema4D properly.

Are you seeing a dark edge there due to it being in a shadowed part in relation to your light source? That's what it looks like anyway.

I tested exporting your last posted model as an OBJ file out of MoI and then into Cinema4D v10 and I could not find any problems, it looks like this after the import into C4D:


And doing a render looks like this:




Since I did not add any lights manually that ends up with the default "headlight" that just shines straight forward along the viewing direction.

You could try either deleting all your lights which I think will get you the default headlight again, or you might try moving your lights more to the side or something to get more even illumination?

Or if there is a global illumination option for getting more diffuse light evenly spread out you might want to enable that.

- Michael

does C4D do N-gons?

Hi Burr,

> does C4D do N-gons?

Yup, Cinema4D has very good support for N-gons.

- Michael

To get the best results in C4D use the RipTide (Pro) plugin:
http://skinprops.com/riptide.php


The V2 beta's surface assignments come in great using this pluign.

-Will

Michael, you are right about the default light; same here. I made no changes after importing. Since you have C4D v10, the file is attached with one light off; render the perspective viewport. All the lights have soft shadows and contrast set to 50%.

I think it will all clear up when I work with the general lighting.

Thanks for the help.

Leonard

Will, I import Moi3D with and without RipTide (non-Pro) and both methods work very well.

Leonard

Hi Leonard, I checked out your file, and yes it does just seem to be not illuminated well...

Note that the edge that you are talking about is angled downward somewhat like this:



So that means that a light shining from directly above it will not illuminate it, it is hidden from that light.

The main one that could possibly illuminate it would be this light over here:



That's light#4, but you seem to have disabled it so that it does not do anything in the renderer currently, note that "Visible in Renderer" for that light is set to Off:



You'll need to enable that light and possibly adjust the overall lighting some more to make that edge not be so dark.


As far as I can tell your model data is all perfect, you just need to shine some light on that area if you don't want it to be dark.

- Michael

Hi Leonard, so for example enabling that light that is currently turned off and then reducing all of their intensities down will give you this rendered result:




But these lights are really powerful for some reason, maybe because they are quite nearby your object or something like that. So you can't just adjust the Intensity slider to reduce them enough, you've got to turn the light colors themselves down from white to a darker gray color. Here were the light properties I used for the above rendering, note the "Color" parameter adjustement:




If you don't darken them they will be blasting everything with too much light making every single spot white.


- Michael

These lounge is more designed by Charlotte Perriand than Le Corbusier ;)

She is on the photo!

She makes it's design very nice! :O

And very tricky!
That rolls on the base' support!
One of the best confortable thing!
Michael can make his Moi Demo from it without any problem :)

WOW! Michael, I did not mean for you to do all this on your Saturday. You certainly made vast improvements. Thanks and I appreciate your effort!

Yep, the lighting was just rough. Actually it was arranged for earlier C4D cushion attempts that had lots of geometry issues. About the turned off light, #4, it was off to demonstrate that the shadow area ended in a hard edge instead of a gradual transition to light despite lots of light and reflective surfaces. Scale is another factor. The C4D file I posted has the cushion about half the size it should be in that space with those lights.

Hi Pilou, you caught me short cutting, including omitting the "Le" from Le Corbusier. At least I did not refer to him as Corb or Corbu. ;-) This is what I have from my limited research: Le Corbusier (born Charles Edouard Jeanneret), opened a studio with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret in 1922. Charlotte Perriand joined the studio in 1927. The Chaise Longue, LC4, dates 1928 and is attributed to Le Corbusier, Perriand & Jeanneret. Source: Chapter 7, page 73, Master's Thesis "The Beauty of Fit: Proportion and Anthropometry in Chair Design" by Caroline Kelly, Georgia Institute of Technology, April 2005 and available here http://etd.gatech.edu/theses/available/etd-04182005-160711/unrestricted/kelly_caroline_l_200505_mast.pdf (Apologies for the sloppy attribution.)

That is a great picture, Pilou. I do not recall another picture with a person on the LC4.

Thanks again for the help. Have a great weekend.

Leonard

Read her memories ;)

I don't believe that exist in English :(

Pilou, is that your best shot? From a disgruntled employee? Just kidding. I am joking. ;)

There apparently is a 2003 edition available in English but it might be a reduced and diluted version of the original.

I did find this at the Foundation Le Corbusier:

"In 1925, at the time when he conceived the Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier turned to the problem of furniture as part of home equipment. He sketched several designs for furniture, and at the Salon d'Automne in 1929 presented, in collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret et Charlotte Perriand, several models, including an armchair with tip-up back, a big and small version of the grand confort armchair, a chaise longue, a table and standard storage units." Below this passage is a list of furniture with picture hot links and it includes the LC4. http://www.fondationlecorbusier.asso.fr/fondationlc_us.htm (English version)

Edit: Pilou, it would not surprise me that Perriand designed LC4. It is common (here) for partners to take credit for designs created in their firms by others. Much of the time they do not include the designer's name in the credits. Good firms include the names.

Again, the comment above was just joking.

Back to modeling. Michael, again, I really enjoy Moi3D!

Leonard