>No, I really didn't understand what your goal was for all of this.
I mean, in some aspects it is kind of like trying to put a square peg into a round hole...

yup that's me, a designer not following the crowd...)


>If your goal is to get the final output into SolidWorks, then that makes more sense to want to do these kinds of steps - I didn't know that was your final goal until your new message here though!
So does that final goal of export to SolidWorks also apply to what you wanted to do with that couch example you posted previously?

It has a dual purpose really.
a) create manufacturable data (in some cases as shown on example above...)
b) use as much of that data possible to create marketing material (photo real renderings etc.)


>With that one you still may be better off starting with a Sub-d modeler and making the general folds and ripples in it by manipulating the sub-d point cage. Then you bring that into t-splines and convert it to NURBS there. Right now that seems to be the main workflow for that kind of a thing.

Correct and that is what I have been doing all along. BUT I fund it counterproductive. (remodel just for the sake to get a "render friendly" output)
THERE FOR STILL IN SEARCH FOR THAT NEXT HYBRID.


>But that quadrangulate result you show after voxel sculpting is looking pretty good, that looks like it may be promising!
The nice thing about that voxel method is that it should not be sensitive to what you use as the starting shape - whether it is initial sub-d data or initial CAD data exported from MoI it should not make any particular difference because the final result is extracted from the voxel structure..

Indeed looks like it may be promising! Also I must say Michael Just your mesher alone has made a big difference...
All I see is Michael Gibson, Matthew Sederberg(tsplins) and Andrew Shpagin(3d-coat) each one holding a piece of the Rosetta Stone...) just put them together and we may have the answer to all questions.

I have yet translated two of these trio maybe I will ask the third :D
Thx for the idea :)

"@WillBellJr

Normals map and diplace are really different.

You can 'bake' an high res model over a lowres one. N-gones should not be a problem, but I never tried that.

You can use a software like x-normal (http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx), where you can import a low res object, an hires one, and transfer the details as a normal map.
However, I'm not sure if x-normal will load the MoI .obj with the right vertex normals info. If not, then the result will be really bad.

More less every 3d package can do this normal transfer now, the only problem is to import the high-res model. (x-normal is really optimized to import huge highres models).

For the displacement it's an other story, because your base mesh has to be ready to be subdivided with a clarmull-clark kind algo. So you really have to prepare this base mesh carefully (-> sds/poly modeler)."


Hi PaQ, yes, I realize the normals and displacements are different, I just lost track of the fact that for displacements, you need to be able to dynamically subdivide the model as you're working - so ngons from MoI at that point wouldn't work all that well.


I see however that I am able to get my models into ZBrush now using this high-tri export technique.

Thing is now, I have to reacquaint myself with ZBrush again since it has sat dormant, and out of my workflow for a while. :-P

With 3D Coat, the pixel painting import works fine also - I'm just waiting to see now whatelse ZBrush 4 is going to bring to the table.


The biggest thing I've been waiting for is MoI's export of surface assignments!


-Will

Hi Will,

> The biggest thing I've been waiting for is MoI's
> export of surface assignments!

That's actually what I've been working on all this week... It's still in progress but it is looking good!

There will be an update to use both object names and style assignments.

You'll be able to control clustering of mesh output by having the same name on multiple objects. Like if you assign the same name to several objects, when you export to OBJ they will get clustered as one mesh object in the OBJ file, or as one mesh layer in an LWO file.

Then style assignments come through as material assignments in OBJ, or as surface assignments in LWO.

- Michael

Not 3dcoat related but still on topic IMO.
:exports from rhino. obj, without chamfer and in Mudbox refine surface with subdivide selection:



also Tom Finnigan (tsplines founder) said
(I'm working on a T-Spline to SubD converter, which should work great with mudbox. It's still in an early state, but should be helpful.

I'm currently working on improving performance in 2.1, but I think I should be able to get it into 2.1 as well.

In the meantime, Juan's suggestion will work pretty well.)

http://www.tsplines.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=29265

As 3d Coat import OBJ absolutly no problem to import OBJ object (ngones) from Moi and tranform it in Voxels for crazzy images!
(here "voxels" (not polygons) Conceptual image of course :)