Hello Michael Gibson!

Its me again with a sort of idea, if it is possible?
LWO has certain type for curves. They are drawn with Spline Draw tool.
Lwo files open up in Lightwave Modeler but also in Modo. Is it possible add such type curve to Moi?
And export it to lwo format also. I mean curves in three dimensions are great use also as animation paths besides
modeling purposes and deformers in Layout.

Hi Allan, I think that the type of spline curve that you're talking about is not a NURBS curve though, it's a different kind of spline, if it is the one that is labeled as a "CURV" type in the LWO file documentation.

So the curves that MoI use would not directly translate over.

It could be theoretically possible to try and make some kind of curve refitting mechanism that would try to recalculate the structure of a NURBS curve over into the different type but that would probably take quite a bit of work.


> Is it possible add such type curve to Moi?

You mean add in some completely new drawing tools and new curve snapping and intersection methods and all of that? I guess theoretically possible but probably quite a lot of work.

It would be a lot easier if Modo / LightWave used more standard style NURBS curves for that stuff, then they would be able to bring in curves from any CAD program.

- Michael

Hi Allan, also MoI can export 3D curves to 3DM, IGES, SAT, and STEP file formats (SAT and STEP are new for MoI v2).

So you might look for any converter that can take curves from any of those formats and bring them into LightWave or Modo.

And also one other - you can export curves to a 3DM file and use the DXF converter here to create a DXF file with the 3D spline curve data in it.

So that's actually 5 different formats that you can get 3D curve data out of MoI...

- Michael

Thank you Michael Gibson!

I study this theme further.

Right now this DXF converter does not generate any curve that opens with current tools in Modo or Lightwave.
Maybe they should correct some importer code?

Hi Allan,


Well ideally yes they would adjust their importer to read the curves in since that would do what you want!

But DXF files can contain quite a variety of different kinds of data in them, things like lines, curves, annotation text, drafting dimensions, solids, polygon meshes, hatch patterns, etc, etc...

Probably their DXF importer is only trying to read a specific kind of entity out of the DXF files, like probably only a polyface mesh entity and it probably skips every other kind of thing that could be in the DXF file such as spline curves.

So that's probably what is going on there, but it was worth a try.

Maybe you will have to ask LightWave or Modo support if there is any file format that they can import 3D curve data from.

- Michael