Hi Steve,

> No there is not. There is an option to output "N-gons"
> which will produce an output of N-gons, quads and tris.
> Even Michael stated earlier that it is not possible to output
> without tris.

When you use "Output: N-gons" it outputs the underlying n-gons that were created by the refined surface intersected with the trimming boundaries, without doing any further tessellation of them into triangles.

The only way that you will get a triangle with that option is if the underlying surface fragment is actually a triangle itself. For example if you create a triangular plane, then that will create a triangle in that kind of situation.

But on any typical CAD model that will be pretty rare.

The n-gon option produces polygons that essentially follow the same topology as the original NURBS model - it has quads that follow the UV structure of the NURBS surfaces, and those quads are trimmed into n-gons where they intersect the trimming boundaries.

So for example in a case like the original block where there aren't any triangular trimming boundaries, absolutely no triangles are created:



If you have some utterly bizarre goal of wanting to have no triangles in the output mixed with n-gons, even when a even when a triangle is the most accurate thing to be created to fit on a triangle in the original CAD model, then I would suggest creating such meshes by hand in a polygon modeler - that will allow you to custom make the polygon layout to follow whatever particular odd goals that you might have...

- Michael

And just to clarify:

> Even Michael stated earlier that it is not possible to output without tris.

This is not accurate as a blanket statement. For example the block model posted earlier in this thread can be output without any triangles, here it is again:




If your model actually has a triangular plane in it, then it will naturally generate a triangle in the polygon output there as well, since a triangle is the best kind of polygon to fit on a triangular trimming boundary.

- Michael

Hi Steve,

> I do not turn around to a customer and tell them
> "you really dont need that" and send them a model
> with n-gons/tris, then say, well it renders perfectly.

But guess what - it is actually true that your customer does not really need that at all.

They are not gaining anything by having you spend a ton of time trying to reconstruct the model, and in many cases it will take you an enormous amount of time to make something that renders with no glitches in it. Meanwhile the original model just exported directly from MoI already renders a perfect result with no glitches. It's far more likely that all your extra work will actually introduce artifacts and since rendering the original model is completely glitch free already there is no chance that you are actually going to be improving the model.

So you're doing a bunch of work for potentially worse results. The best case scenario is that you're doing a bunch of work for the same result. Either one of these is a big waste of time and is fairly ridiculous.

Maybe you need to find some way to educate your customers better so that you don't have to do a lot of work for no purpose at all.

Your situation is fairly unusual because for most people doing a lot of work for no actual gain is a nonsensical thing to pursue.

- Michael

Hi Steve,

> Well my last post.

> This is a section of that model.

> Render of vertex normals

> Render of smoothing.


Looks pretty good! It's hard to tell in detail though with only looking at a single view angle, reflection imperfections are easier to notice when moving the model around some.

But anyway, great job doing a bunch of work to get the exact same rendered result as before.

For most people though doing a bunch of work to get the same result is completely pointless.

- Michael

And really this thread has become pointless as well, I'll close it so that nobody has to waste their time on it anymore.

- Michael