Hi Micha,

> Rhino and OBJ material import - attached a screenshot that
> show meshes after import from MoI. The rendered viewport
> show the right material (style) colors and the object properties
> show the material (layer) names.

Yeah, the basic information seems to come through, but every object seems to have its own local copy of the material and not any unified material table.

Where can you see the list of the materials that are used in the imported objects? Can you only see the materials one at a time when going to the object properties of one object? That is not good.

Also when I change the color of one of those imported object's materials, only that object changes, other objects that had that same material assigned to it in the OBJ file do not seem to change.

That's a lot different than the way a regular rendering program's OBJ importer works - normally materials are not copied to be only belong to an object in a private isolated manner, there is normally a material list where you can see all the materials that are used in one place, and also edit the material in that one place and affect all the objects that are assigned to it by doing that.

As far as I can tell, Rhino's OBJ importer is not really set up in the proper way like this.

- Michael

>Where can you see the list of the materials that are used in the imported objects? Can you only see the materials one at a time when going to the object properties of one object? That is not good.

Yes, there is no material list at Rhino.

> So you should generally plan in advance that to get new functions and improvements, it would be necessary to update to future versions of the software. That's just a very normal thing, there isn't really any way around that.

I understand that. The problem I see is, that the price of MoI grow with every new release and for "only-meshing" the price-performance-relation is the question. At the moment we have:

v1 ... good mesher, better than Rhino, 200$
v2 ... great mesher, multicore support, super fast, script connection to Rhino, 300$
v3 ... ??? 400$

For me it would be ok to pay 100$ more for an v3 upgrade that would bring for example a full integration of the MoI mesher to Rhino. The current mesher works 99% perfect, only little wishes are open. So, my idea was, if the connection to Rhino could be complete (3d support) now, than Rhino user could stick at the MoI mesher for 300$. But it seems to be a bad idea, sorry. Maybe this could be the key feature of v3 for Rhino-meshing-only-user.
I suppose so v3 will bring many new features that are not needed by "meshing-only" user. But maybe you are right and most Rhino user who need better meshes will pay 400$ too.
I know it was not your plan to offer a Rhino mesher and so I don't expect it. It was only an idea, since it seems to be so near and I thought it could be possible now. But if you say, it's a lot of work, than I understand that you can't pack it in v2. I'm sorry that my request caused trouble. Your work is great and I will try to help you with tests and requests that MoI grows.

Hi Micha, thanks - yes I can understand more of where you are coming from now.

And yes, you are correct that v3 will not likely have such a major advancement in meshing as between v1 and v2, that's because pretty much the major things that I wanted to accomplish for meshing are actually now implemented in v2.

Certainly there will be some refinements and maybe some new parameters and stuff like that, but nothing really huge like the 25x speed increase from v1 to v2.


But I think that MoI v2 will actually get what you need done. Your last main request about preserving layers is actually very close to being solved now, the remaining script that is needed on the Rhino side is not really that complicated.


One idea that I have had for MoI versions and pricing is that by the time I get to v4 I'll probably offer the v2 release as a "lite" version which will probably be a good fit for someone like you who only wants to use MoI for one specific purpose. But it will be a while yet before I get to that stage.


But yes, as you've seen the overall focus of my business is not only about making a mesher for Rhino - my main focus is about making a CAD program for artists to use for creating cool designs. Having a great mesher is an important part of that, but it is only one part of my overall project.

- Michael

Hi Micha, the other thing that I should mention is that it is pretty common for people who are using Rhino and MoI together to use MoI for more than just meshing, they use it for drawing things as well.

So it's not exactly the case that functions other than meshing that I work on are just "wasted" for all Rhino users, there are Rhino users who make use of these other functions in MoI as well.

- Michael

Yes, I am a case in point ... I do architectural work as well as landscape architecture. I use Rhino for all my 2d drafting these days. Rhino is a pretty good 3d modeler, too, but I have come to prefer MoI for most modeling as it seems faster and more intuitive for most work. There are a few things it won't do with surfaces that Rhino does well ... so, I shift back and forth between the two as needed. Because of the drafting aspect I do use Rhino more hours of the day most of the time ... modeling (including rendering) takes up to 20% of each project but the other 80% is spent with dimensioned, detailed, drawings and notes ... MoI is not the tool for that.

It would be wonderful if one tool would do it all perfectly ... but one should not try to use a hammer for fine saw cuts.

cheers,
eric

Hi Micha, just a note on object names.

For the next beta I've added an option to control whether to combine meshes for objects of the same name or not, it will be under
Options > Import/Export > Combine same named objects.

However, Rhino's OBJ importer seems to automatically combine objects with the same name even if they are listed as separate objects. Probably you can repeat this in Rhino, do something like make 3 boxes with all the same name, export to OBJ and read it back in again.

So probably you've had this combining behavior for a while without really knowing about it anyway.

But that export batch script will not have this issue since part of that script puts a unique name on every object.

- Michael

Ah, good to know. Thank you for the MoI option.