Hi ...

I'm just wondering if anyone here has created some 3d text, converted it into quads and taken it into modo, if they have I would love to see the wireframe and a possible rendered image from modo.

Thanks

Hi NZAPE,

I don't have MODO, but I am attaching some files for you to try. Straight text and text the I ran the flow command on. Let me know how it works out!

Michael T.

Hi All, we created this flip flop using the flow tool and rendered from exported quads in Modo501. A very nice tool for an almost impossible flow of the pattern in any other CAD.

Matt

Hi Matt - your textured flip flop turned out really great!

- Michael

Hi MattT,

Really nice command of Flow there!
Impressive detail on the flip-flop.

Hi Matt,

Sorry I didn't get back to you quicker, I just lost contact on this forum. Anyhow I took your Files and fed them into MODO 601, the MOI file did not read correctly but the 3ds, obj, and LWO all read ok. The 3ds file seemed to have the best results, but none came in as solely quads, see text_001.jpg. It's this aspect that's so frustrating the front flat faces of the text all had tri's and this can cause all sorts of problem when rendering, they look fine in modo when you render as flat faces, see text_002.jpg but when you try to subdivide the surface for more detailed mesh and then render the flat faces just fall apart, see text_005.jpg, however with modo 601 new round edge you can get some very nice edges on your text, see text_003.jpg but again if you go to far it falls apart, see text_004.jpg. I think the 3d mesh as a whole is not that robust and you may have to retopologies the text to get it to work in all situations. Although I did think MOI could save out meshes as just Quads or am I wrong on that, if it could I would seriously think about using it just to generate clear text as quad meshes.

So to sum up yes you can get some very nice visual renderings by taking a MOI asset converting it to 3ds and then taking it into Modo 601 to render it, however the mesh is not that robust so if you want to do more than just place and render you could be in for a lot of reworking to get a robust mesh...

Matt if you can export as quads only I will take another look.

Cheers
Andy

Hi Andy, yeah in general you won't be able to apply sub-d smoothing to meshes that you generate with MoI. That's because sub-d smoothing requires a particular arrangement and topology of polygons and edges - you can't just apply sub-d to any mesh and get good results, it has to be specifically constructed for sub-d. Usually the method to do that is to construct the mesh by hand in a sub-d modeling program rather than trying to use an automatic conversion mechanism, or there are re-topology tools you can use to assist you in creating a sub-d specific topology from a general mesh.

But why are you trying to apply sub-d smooth to an already smooth model anyway? The picture you show has fillets in it so the edges are already rounded. Once you have the model in the form that you want it like that you don't need to apply sub-d smoothing on top of the already existing smoothing, just directly render it.

For transfer from MoI into Modo, I would definitely recommend LWO format and not 3DS - just make sure in the export options for the MoI v3 beta to set the Vertex normals style for the LWO output to be "Lightwave v10" style, and not actually Modo style, since Modo switched how they interpret vertex normals with version 601 to be the same as LightWave v10.

.3ds is a very old antiquated format, it has various 16-bit era limitations in it on the size of a single mesh and worse yet does not allow for transfer of vertex normals for getting the best quality smooth shading to come over like you will get with LWO or OBJ transfers. Also .3ds only supports triangle polygons and not n-gons so that's another limitation that you will run into if you use .3ds format. Usually you should only use .3ds as a kind of last resort, avoid it if at all possible.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for that reply, for this experiment I was simply using the files Matt supplied, I haven't got MOI on my machine, is beta V3 available as trial version? Anyhow you are right the text looks pretty good, but you know what it's like when your trying different things out it's always great if you can get a robust mesh with all polys and verts joined, by going to sub-ds in modo you can add more mesh detail which is great for sculpting and displacement if you want to work the text or any object further done the line, great on close ups etc.

Michael if V3 isn't trial would it be a problem to supply a "&" as a text object in LWO format so I can have a play in modo with it...and push it up here for download...

Andy

Hi Andy, MoI can produce a mesh with all polygon vertices joined making a "water tight" mesh but that's a different thing than an "all quads" topology. To get a sub-d capable mesh you need more than all vertices joined, you need particular care in the edge flows and topological structure and that's typically something you get using your judgment and experience in arranging the polygons, not something that will come from an automated conversion mechanism.

If you want to do close-ups on small areas you just export a higher density mesh out from MoI and then render that.

If you're going to be doing sub-d modeling on the mesh, then mostly you should build the base meshes for such things yourself and not as a conversion process though. MoI will not be the right tool for the job if you need to do that type of stuff.


Re: v3 - sorry there isn't a trial version of v3 currently, there will be once v3 is released but that's a ways out yet.

I've attached an Ampersand LWO file for you here.

- Michael

The infinite demo (without save) is what version ?

Hi Pilou,

> The infinite demo (without save) is what version ?

V2, same as the 30-day trial version.

I will update both of those trial versions to v3, once v3 is actually finished and released.

- Michael