Have had limited success directly exporting to Maxwell using n-gons...anyone having success?

jvm

Hi James, I have not tested Maxwell myself but it is not too unusual for some programs to not really be set up to use n-gons.

When that is the case you need to set the Output: option at export time from MoI to Output: Quads & Triangles instead of Output: N-gons.

- Michael

Michael,

Thanks...I'm curious to hear if anyone has had a different experience. I'm trying to find a good solution to importing/exporting using MOI since it can read iges files. The n-gon export to c4d, on the otherhand, seems to work well and I'm trying to figure pros/cons for working with a mesh in c4d to then export to maxwell.

jvm

n-gon support in an app is nothing else than handling triangulation within an n-gon shape without the user noticing it. C4D actually uses triangels to represent n-gons. You just do not see it. But you can make it visible.
Rainer

Hi Rainer, yes that's true - however it is not particularly easy to make a good quality triangulation mechanism which handles complex outlines properly.

Unless some special care is taken during the triangulation process, it is easy to get things like triangles that "leak" to the outside of concave boundaries and things like that.

That's mostly why some programs do not handle n-gons well, they just do not have a robust enough triangulator.

Also until MoI came along it was not really very common to get a whole lot of complex n-gons in incoming data so in some programs it is just an overall less tested area.

- Michael