Martin - I have KeyShot Pro, but never tried importing 3DM from MoI.

Is there any advantage, other than it saves the step of exporting the model as obj?

Ed

Hi Ed - Render times are dramatically slowed down is the only disadvantage, but for extreme closeup work like jewellery rendering then you have the advantage of smooth NURBs surfaces, so i guess it's a case of swings and roundabouts. When importing 3DM from MoI you need to import the NURBs data

Martin Spencer-Ford

Thanks Martin - I just tried 3DM import into KeyShot. My PC has 12 cores and KS was indeed sluggish with the 3DM.

I wonder if the KS NURBs import is in response to other programs, because I've always had smooth output from MoI OBJ files, even with extreme closeups on curved surfaces.

Ed Ferguson

I have been using MoI and Keyshot together for a couple years. To render a MoI file in Keyshot, what I do is first create and save a MoI .3dm file. Then I save that file as a Keyshot .obj file, selecting the "quads and triangles" option in the MoI popup menu. Then I open Keyshot, and drag and drop the .obj file. When I drag and drop, an "import" popup window opens in Keyshot, and in the "Materials" section I always check the box that says "Keep individual parts" and on the drop-down menu in that same section of the popup, I select "Group by "Materials"." When I follow these steps exactly, I never have any problems.

Here is are images of some recent furniture designs...from my imagination, to MoI, to Keyshot:

Hi Max

Your models are good, but on all the curved surfaces i see the tell tale signs of polygon mesh and not NURBs clean curvatures, unless of course you modelled them that way. If you are more comfortable with OBJ that's fine, may I recommend you adjust the "Divide larger than" to produce a greater mesh density. Weld edges and, if you are only exporting to Keyshot then use Triangles only as KS will triangulate your mesh on import if it's a non triangular one anyway, so better to do it with MoI where at least you have some control over it.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi Ed, i have not asked the guys at Luxion what method Keyshot is using for 3DM support. On all other flavours of NURBs you get the tessellation option, with 3DM there is no such option, just the import Nurbs Data tick box, so i am wondering if they are using some sort of 'on the fly' tessellation routine with 3DM, I don't know if that's possible or not but would offer an explanation to why it's sluggish when rendering in the live preview screen. It might even be some kind of activity where KS is watching for live-updates from the Rhino plugin. Rhino does have the ability to redefine its meshing density without the user having to re-draw their object.

Martin Spencer-Ford

If I import .3dm with a lot of geometry viewport becom slow, but if I import the same geometry in .obj everything is good. So I prefer to import .obj.

In my renders, the material textures and the reflections of the HDRI environment may sometimes create a less than hypersmooth surface, which has nothing to do with meshes. That's what I suspect you're seeing, and mistakenly interpreting as hard edges that should be smoother. Thus I disagree with you on this, mostly because what I consistently hear is how fabulous all my designs and renders are.

And let's face it, most of us who look at CGI and CAD renders can always find some flaw or another, because we are the most observant in the field of what we do.

I won't bore you or anyone here with waving my credentials around, but let's just say [for starters] I'm an internationally exhibited artist, regularly published author, and I own a network of websites that get over 600K hits per month.

MaxEternity.com
ArtDigitalMagazine.com

I'm not in search of absolute [fool-proof?] perfection. I create things that are beautiful and inspirational to myself and others.

With that said, here's a link to a new story I wrote (the headline today at Truthout.org) about a guy who is working on a car that is 60% 3D printed, and is set to get over 250 miles per gallon of ethanol: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27430-the-urbee-3d-printed-car-coast-to-coast-on-10-gallons

And another render...of one of my [imperfect] super cars, which was designed in my mind, drawn in 3D in MoI, and virtually rendered in Keyshot, as prior described.

Wow Max, you seemed to have taken my advice personally as if i was attacking you in someway - I am sorry, I had no idea i was responding to someone that is so famous, and to think you would take such offence from some simple observations and an offer of guidance.

My apologies

Martin Spencer-Ford

PS ... Nice car :)

Thank you for the compliment on my car design. And while I have achieved a modest amount of recognition, I definitely do not consider myself "famous."

For those who know me personally and professionally, and if one looks at what I've written about the art and design of others, it is core to my belief and work ethic not to publicly criticize another artist's work. I might make unfavorable comments privately, amongst friends and colleagues, but never in a public space.

No offense - I disagreed with you, because I think you spoke without thoughtfully considering [or knowing?] exactly what you were looking at.

As someone who is often putting his work in front of the public, I know how easy it is for others to advise on something they themselves have not mastered, or to judge prematurely when they are not taking the risk of putting their own work before lots of discerning, and sometimes condescending, eyes and minds and tongues.

I have lived in several major US cities, and presently live in San Francisco. And one of the things I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that you never know who you are talking too.

I have been an artist and writer all my life. I'm almost entirely self-taught. I consistently work very hard, and I'm good at what I do.

Putting your work on a forum intended for learning requires one to be vulnerable to a certain amount of constructive criticism,
as well as the understanding that others aren't necessarily obligated to adhere to your personal ethical standards.

It isn't like you invite friends to your home to admire your work and everyone is expected to be polite
and if you are lucky, stroke your ego. It's better not to have a thin skin, but I know how you feel.
I guess the trick is to swallow your pride and try to learn from the experience, even if the comment
isn't on the mark.

I think you may be right about the HDR image causing pixelation on the tubular surfaces.

If you know a way to avoid that problem, perhaps this issue can be turned around
into something positive and used as a catalyst for learning for the whole community.

Here is something that i am working on at the moment. This model is a hybrid model part Rhino Render Mesh and Part MoI/Pure Nurbs. What was surprising here was that the Rhino NURBs imported fine and although the meshed surfaces were not displayed they were obviously imported by MoI as the saved file still contained the meshed surfaces. I am now intrigued if MoI touched the NURBs surfaces or if it left them untouched - as in no re-modelling - and just applied styles to the parts :\

The point of this exercise is to produce a catalog style render for a piece of Jewellery purely using Keyshot - No retouching at all



Martin Spencer-Ford

Just to clarify what i was trying to get across and not too well i fear.



The red ellipses are what i perceive to be tell tale signs of not enough mesh density, I would be very surprised if that was purely down to HDR aliasing but of course i could be mistaken, without seeing the model.



Again on this image red is as above, green is HDRi reflection aliasing from a HDR that's potentially too low in resolution for the scene it has been applied to, this is fine as most render engines give you the option to blur the reflections and to a certain degree this can be fixed with using anti-aliasing.

I hope this clarifies the points i was raising.

Martin Spencer-Ford

TpwUK,

Wow. Are you kidding? Those are stunning renders anyone would be happy to have in their portfolio and you're picking them apart? Sheesh.

cool gallery!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/maxeternity/

Hi chipp, I am not trying to inflame anyone, they are good renders and if Max is happy at that level of quality then so am I. The discussion was/is based on how to get the best out of MoI and Keyshot not the quality of the renders parse - I really don't seem to be getting my point across without upsetting someone. My comments are purely there to try and help others, not to offend.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi Martin,

OK, I understand. I thought you were just being hyper critical.

For me, I like rendering NURBs in Keyshot except for when I need to use the edge bevel render tool, which doesn't work on NURBs-- only polys.

I suspect a lot depends on what you want to do with the final render. If it's for print publication, then higher resolutions subdivides are necessary when exporting to polys. If it's for a website, then I think Max's renders are super. Only the most studied of professionals can find any sort of fault with them. Frankly, I can't really see the edge artifacting on many of the red circles of yours-- and if I can't see it, I doubt others can-- or care.

More important to me are the workflow issues-- like how to go back and forth between MoI and Keyshot with as little disruption as possible. One nice thing with NURBs is you can assign materials to just about all the different objects, including ones which have the same 'style' in MoI.

Hi Chipp,

No probs with misunderstanding - I have autistic traits so i sometimes come across that way without intending to :/

I love NURBs surfaces, and i get frequently pulled apart by so called 'real' modellers who work at prestigious companies like DreamWorks, that say NURBs are a dead technology and that SubD has effectively pushed NURBs into the realm of the hobbyist and geek - What blasphemy I say.

I have spent over thirty years working with graphics and 3D, going way back to Atari 800xl days and designing alternate character sets for doing animations and games set design. However, I struggled to get consistent work and moved into garden design professionally but still stayed with 3D as a hobbyist. I myself, like Max, am self taught, but have been coached by some great poly modelling guys that have given me some real confidence slaps, but i am grateful for them as they make me try harder. I won't ever abandon NURBs they are clean to me, and with my OCD they work for my smooth surfaces fetish.

Workflow wise, I drop down to low poly from MoI if i need to add further details via ZBrush, where i change the angle setting down to 40, export as quads and tri with divide all set to produce an easy on the eye mesh. Then it goes into another poly modelling app for further linear sub-divisions before importing into ZB for adding details. This way i keep control over the mesh and can remove vertices where they are not needed before they are imported.

If i am doing just smooth surface renders then all i do is set the angle and divides to give a nice dense mesh and export as triangles only, I will zoom into the mesh generated by MoI and make adjustments as needed to make sure I have nice curves before doing the final export as Obj or LWO or FBX.

If working with NURBs directly in Keyshot, then i keep my model open in MoI, and if i see something that needs fixing whilst in KS i will bounce back to MoI, do the repair and then on the import dialog with Keyshot i select update geometry and it's done, no loss of materials, it works great :) Like you I love the way Keyshot keeps the surfaces as objects, makes assigning materials a doddle with nice speedy results.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi Martin,

> What was surprising here was that the Rhino NURBs imported fine and although the meshed
> surfaces were not displayed they were obviously imported by MoI as the saved file still contained
> the meshed surfaces.

Yes, that's a feature in MoI's 3DM importer - if it finds any Rhino entities that it does not deal with directly itself (like meshes for example), it still reads them and stores them in an internal data table and writes them back out again when you save back to 3DM format.

That's so that data in files can still "round trip" back out of MoI instead of having things purged by opening and then just resaving a Rhino file.

- Michael

I got an email from KeyShot. (I have the Alibre .bip import version, which seems to me to be inferior, and "outdated".)
They do not say what the deal is...
- Brian

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