Hi Steve. It is a legitimate problem. Modo has tools for setting up UV's. But for certain types of surfaces, even simple ones like a revolved disc there is no easy way to get uniform UVs to match the desired concentric anisotropy. Well, there is a method using morph targets, reshape the surface into a cylinder, apply UV's, relax the morph, etc.... But the best and fastest way is just use the inherent UVs from the original Nurbs model. Now imagine the surface can be much more complex than the example i posted (which in fact, they usually are) and you'll understand why i don't want to spend time (possibly a LOT of it) to make UV's by hand which are inferior to the originals anyway. I need to spend as little time as possible setting up a render if I am to expect to meet my deadlines. And i do expect to! :)

For the moment, I am using Rhino to export all components which we're producing in various metal fabrications (about 60-70% of my workload) until i have the free time to experiment...

jonah

I can think of a few more reasons! :)

Hi Jonah, I kind of need some more information than just your original screenshot to be able to diagnose the problem.

It could help a lot to have the .3dm file posted, and also some other information that I mentioned previously:



Also one other thing that may have an effect is if you are exporting in N-gons from MoI but triangles from Rhino... Maybe the way this function works in Modo makes it want to have a center UV point in there instead of only points around the outside...

I can certainly understand if you don't have time to do this right now, but it is pretty difficult for me to make any progress on this without some extra information.

- Michael

Hi Michael. Might be a little while, but i definitely will send files to you because i would like to see it resolved if possible. Or perhaps it really is a Modo issue... Also i will have to add "all quad/triangles from MoI" onto the test pile...

Do you also want the Modo test file?

thanks,
jonah

Hi Jonah,

> Do you also want the Modo test file?

Sure, that certainly might come in handy for testing as well.

If you did have a big n-gon at the top there with the MoI export, then that is most likely to be the single biggest difference between the Rhino export and the MoI one. That would mean that Modo wants to have an actual poly vertex at that central spot to make it work correctly, it is otherwise trying to some kind of interpolation across a polygon which is not working right. Right now that is kind of my best current guess but not verified of course.

- Michael

Hi Ed,
>>I use Hypershot for my renders. It is still a relatively new product and requires that UV coordinates come in with the import.

I use Hypershot also, but have had no problem so far. I always export the model as .obj from MoI, because no matter what Hypershot allows you to import it always converts it to .obj.

Cheers

Hi jonah,

>>It is a legitimate problem.

It sounds like Modo is a pain on this point.
Can a 3rd party mapper, such as UV-mapper help? http://www.uvmapper.com/ (there is a free version)

Thanks for the suggestion. But I'd rather not have to do any mapping at all. In that case, I'd rather just export from Rhino. Let's see what can be resolved using software which I already use... Modo actually has some nice UV tools, but missing something to handle a "revolved" disc...

jonah