Hi;

Keyshot 5.0 now supports nurbs data. Hopefully this means you can import directly 3DM file from MOI into Keyshot eliminating extra step. I saw this on Keyshot forum

https://www.keyshot.com/forum/index.php/topic,8014.0.html

Thanks
-sharif

Indeed it does Sharif - That thread on the KS forum is one of my beta test pieces :)

There are still a couple of problems with MoI 3DM import that needs sorting, but that's all at KS's end, they should be fixed by the release date

Martin Spencer-Ford

So it's Keyshot who makes the polygonal transformation or it's another technic ?

Martin -

Is there an improvement in the KeyShot render, or is the only advantage just the elimination of the necessity to save MoI as OBJ?

As Pilou says, there has to be a transformation within KS. Hopefully KS does it as least as well as MoI.

Ed

KS5 will be able to do both, you have the choice. When a NURBs model/assembly is imported it will use the default mesher and tessellation engine it has always used, but you have the option to import NURBs data too, then when the model has been imported you have an option to switch to pure NURBs mode, a bit like Rhino does at present with it's render-mesh.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi Ed, there are a number of improvements in the coming KS5. The ability to create sun/sky HDRi environments directly in the map editor (pro version). In fact most of the enhancements are in the pro version. Motion blur has been added to the basic render engine so you can get more realistic results from animated objects. Instances will be in there. Another beta tester has just today pushed KS5 to render a scene with over 2.1 billion triangles on a 24gb 8 core pc !. There are some massive speed enhancements, material editing improvements. It's a big step forward this time. The areas where KS4 and KS3 were considered weak have been addressed in this release, still not perfect (if there is such a thing), but it's a real good start.

If you are the same Ed from the KS forum, you have been offered a chance to beta test KS5 too

Martin Spencer-Ford

I'm confused. I thought Keyshot has always imported 3dm files? Or was that just Rhino-flavered 3dm?

Yeap, you got it one, imported Rhino mesh data

Martin Spencer-Ford

Martin -

I should have phrased my question better:

Is there a difference in the render quality using pure NURBs mode vs an obj output from MoI?

PS - There are a couple of "Ed's" on the KS forum. I'm the one that normally posts ring renders from models I've made in MoI:

https://www.keyshot.com/cascadia-design-studio-custom-titanium-ring-design-with-moi-and-keyshot/2011/


Ed

Morning Ed. I hadn't tested macro/close-up renders until you just mentioned it, so here is link for the results ... Smooth as a babies bottom mate ;)

https://www.keyshot.com/forum/index.php/topic,8049.0.html to see the test results

Martin Spencer-Ford

** Edit **
Forgot to mention, KS5 new importer also supports the Style Colours and Names. It will also keep each surface as separate so you can assign a different material to each surface if needs be. It does not support the Object Names though, but that is of no real importance to me as a rendermonkey :P

Thanks Martin - Your example shows it works very well. Having one less translation in the workflow is a good thing, even though I've never had a issue with the MoI obj output.

It will be interesting to see how well KeyShot textures map to the NURBS. I've had to use box map on occasion rather than uv map in order to get textures to cover the model correctly.

Ed

Give me an example of a texture and i'll give it a go. Most things modelled in MoI, i.e large sweeping surfaces tend to map fine, but once the fillets get added and other features that suddenly change the density of the mesh generated to keep things smooth is where NURBs really falls down from a rendering perspective. Simple materials and textures still do fine though, such as plastics, metals, paints etc. Simple bump maps like sand, moldtech and scratches all seem to map well. But things like woven cloth with pattern would most probably still be a nightmare.

Martin