Hi macray - maybe Rich will chime in with what solution works for him, because earlier in this thread he mentioned that using vertex normals (represented by the normals tag) worked for him going into Maxwell.

How exactly are you going into Maxwell, is there a plug-in that you're using? Maybe there are some settings on the plug-in that you have to enable to make normals be transferred.

... I just did some browsing of the help file for the maxwell C4D plugin here:
http://think.maxwellrender.com/docs/maxwellrender_cinema4d_plugin_manual.pdf

There is an "Ignore Normal tag" checkbox option in the "Maxwell Object Properties" dialog, so make sure that is not set on any object that you're transferring, and also it says:

   "Note that Normal tags will be ignored automatically if the object is not already triangulated; in that case, the normals contained in the tag will not be suitable for rendering the triangulated object and must
instead be regenerated from scratch."

So that would seem to be your problem - try exporting out from MoI with "Output: Triangles only" in order to avoid this limitation of the Maxwell exporter that it ignores normal tags on quads or n-gons.

Once you do that you probably should not have to delete the normal tags or add a phong tag, and you will get the high quality normals used which will give you the best quality.

Also you may want to contact Maxwell support and ask that they remove this limitation in their plug-in that the Normal tag gets ignored unless your object is completely triangulated. Cinema4D's built in renderer is able to use normal tags on n-gons and it would be good if Maxwell's plug-in behaved in the same way and use the internal triangulation instead of actually requiring the entire base object to be triangulated.

- Michael

Hi again

Actually I was having some problems again today and I'm afraid I wasn't quite methodical enough to find exactly what tripped me up but the initial solution from Michael worked well in the end. I can say it seemed to struggle with a model which had some very long, thin triangles on it. I experimented with "aspect ratio" but ended up using "divide longer than" to dice it up a little more. I used Riptide to bring in the normal data and styles came across as very useful poly selection tags (thanks for that tip, Michael).



I also tried a standard OBJ import but that gave me shading errors. I tried the idea of deleting the normal tags and fiddled with the phong tag from 40° down to 1° but I have to say it didn't work for me on this geometry. Likewise I had a go with the script tip from L_AN but unfortunately that really screwed up my model, breaking a lot of the booleaned parts of the logo plaque. I imagine that a lot of these techniques can be dependent on the type of model you are building.

Can I just thank all of you for all the ideas on this problem, hopefully it helped some others too.

Hi Rich,

> I can say it seemed to struggle with a model which had some very long, thin triangles on it.

So often times that is also related to vertex normals not coming through.

I was looking at the documentation for the C4D Maxwell plug-in, and it seemed to say that the normal tag was ignored on objects that are not entirely made up of triangles.

So you may need to change the "Output" setting when exporting from MoI to "Output: Triangles only", it looks like you currently have it set to "Output: Quads & Triangles".

Possibly once you have it set to that you may not need to dice up polygons anymore, but if that's something that Maxwell is just generally sensitive to then it still could be necessary.

- Michael

An other solution is to bypass any 3d package and import the model in maxwell studio direclty.
It was working really well with normals shading when I try it that way ( after having lot of trouble with MoI model
reexported from 3dsmax or modo ... it has nothing to blame against MoI of course).

Hi Rich, Michael is right in his description of the situation with Maxwell. With exports in triangulated OBJ format everything must be OK, but working with this in Cinema is horribly (selecting, unwrapping, etc.).
I use n-gons mesh and triangulate it just before hitting render button. The trick is in triangulation without breaking vertex normals. For this I take a few steps:

1. Select imported polygon object(s)

2. Functions > Remove N-gons

3. Select all points

4. Structure > Connect

5. Render Scene

> I also tried a standard OBJ import but that gave me shading errors.

Hm, I have worked well in Cinema 4d R11.532. Of course, "Import normals" checkbox must be set.


Regards
L_AN

Hi L_AN, thanks for those steps on triangulating within C4D without losing normals!

Of course, if it is possible to do that with a few manual steps like that, it seems like it should also be possible for the Maxwell plug-in to do the equivalent thing so that you would not have to worry about this issue at all.

I would recommend contacting Maxwell support and asking them to improve their plugin to remove this problem where their plugin ignores the normal tag on all but triangulated geometry. If they need triangles, there should be some method in C4D that will allow them access to C4D's triangulation which includes the normals. That's what C4D's own built-in renderer does.

Including the normals is a very important thing for any rendering program, so they should never be ignored like that.

- Michael