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

The KeyShot Black Friday Event


Friday, November 28th, 2014


Be ready Thursday night. At midnight, our exclusive one-day only event to bring KeyShot to you at a special price begins. Discounts start on Friday, Nov. 28th at 12:00 AM PST. These deals are good for one day with online purchases only. At midnight, coupon codes will be sent out to use for discounts on both purchases and upgrades of KeyShot. Keep an eye out and mark your calendars. You won't want to miss this special pricing.

Thanks Martin for sharing your workflow. Very interesting and gives me some ideas to play around with.

Hello,

Those furniture issues look like they're due to insufficient resolution on the HDRI, perhaps a lack of mesh density on the model itself, but it could also be that the image is so blown out that it's drawing attention to those problem areas that would be overlooked with a more balanced lighting setup. Those highly reflective and transparent materials can be unforgiving.

I upgraded to Keyshot Pro 5 today, with the black Friday special. :-)
It is "node-lockecked"

- Brian

Way to go Brian - Will be looking forward to viewing some renders from you :)

Martin Spencer-Ford

To Michael Gibson and to Michael Spencer-Ford: Since I made no request(s) and granted no permission for anyone on this site to take my images and mark them up with digital ink and then re-post them with subjective notations, I request that those images marked-up images by Michael Spencer-Ford be taken down from this forum page immediately, as I consider it vandalization of my original artwork. My work is owned exclusively by me, and I have never granted permission to anyone on this site to add their artwork [red ink] to my art/designs.

Like everyone, Michael Spencer-Ford has right to his opinion. However, Michael Spencer-Ford is not my lord and saviour, or mentor, or anything. He has nothing of interest to say to me--and in my view he is envious and childish, and his opinions are dead and hollow. I don't need anyone shoving their viewpoints down my throat, which Michael Spencer-Ford seems to think is a great idea.

Furthermore, I'm on this site to enjoy the creativity of others and to share my own, so beyond that I don't care whether or not anyone likes my work. So, Michael Spencer-Ford, I ask that you delete the vandalized images of my work from your forum posts, and to Michael Gibson, if Michael Spencer-Ford does not or cannot do this, because it is something admin must do, I ask that you delete said images immediately.

An additional parallel though: Michael Spencer-Ford, I noticed you posted a image of a ring you created. To that I have no comment.

In all the years I have been writing about the work or others artists, architects and industrial designers--whether at Art Digital Magazine, The Huffington Post, Truthout.org, Artworks Magazine, Triangle Modernist Houses, MaxEternity.com, or elsewhere--I have NEVER ever written a single negative word about anyone's artwork. However, on many occasions, I have said "no comment."

Figure it out.
__________________________________________________________________________

Moving on:

While I hold MoI in high esteem, I accept the fact that MoI is not a perfect program, and neither is Keyshot. This really doesn't matter, as for myself and the full-time, career artists that I know personally who's work has been presented all over the world--some of whom work in museums, some of whom are college professors, a couple who are Guggenheim Fellows, and a few who are published authors, editors, curators and publishers, like myself--for us perfection is never the goal...creativity and beauty is.

I can always find a "flaw" in the work of artists, architects, authors and designers, no matter how experienced and professional they are. Yet to have my mind focused on perceived imperfection, would be to totally miss the point.

Beauty is the ideal.

- Just as a sidebar, BTW, I often do screenshot captures, and not full renders, in the interest of time and CPU usage. Full renders and screenshots each have their own place, in my view.

What now follows is a re-post of my original thoughts about the title of this thread, which is "MoI export file for KeyShot." My original comment on that is followed by the images that I originally posted along with said comment. Thereafter, what follows are images of my latest line of supercar designs...is being: VTV E79 (version C)

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:







...and the latest supercar iteration:

Keyshot called this morning. Unfortunately Alibre/KeyShot3 doe not count for much for an upgrade to Keyshot Pro5
so I had to pay $560 more, for a total of $1196, plus $400 maintenance. Still saved some money.
Keyshot 6 may be released "late next year."
One seat is allowed, but, for example, Home PC seat can be deactivated (on-site) and then laptop or office pc can have an install. & vice versa.
re-activation is "easy." In an emergency, by a call to KeyShot business, if they are open, they can deactivate remotely.

Purchased Camtasia Studio and upgrade to SnagIt for 30% off today.

- Brian

you will have also a special Keyshot for the new ZBrush for 249$! ;)
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?190182-A-Sneak-Peek-at-the-ZBrush-to-KeyShot-Bridge

""""""""""He has nothing of interest to say to me--and in my view he is envious and childish, and his opinions are dead and hollow. I don't need anyone shoving their viewpoints down my throat, which Michael Spencer-Ford seems to think is a great idea. """""""""""""

Boy did you miss the boat Max. A complete misreading of what has been discussed regarding that....

It would be interesting though, to confirm if KeyShot 5 is "actually rendering the NURBS data" or just "doing their own meshing of the model upon import"..... BY FAR, the first one would be a superior result. If it was the second method, then Meshing in MoI would be preferred IMO.......

Ok guys this thread is getting a bit out of control, I'm going to lock it for further replies.

Please remember that it's very easy on a forum like this where you are not able to see facial expressions or other communication cues that it's particularly easy to misinterpret things.

- Michael

One last comment to hopefully end this thread.

Max, you wrote above:



I'm sorry but it's not really a very reasonable request.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use :



It's very clear that Martin was marking up the images strictly as a means of communicating his commentary, absolutely not as any type of vandalism.

This type of use of copyrighted images for means of commentary does not require any special permission from the original author, that's a standard part of copyright law.

I'm sorry that you are upset by this. For the record I think your renderings look very nice and I'd usually recommend the workflow that you posted about originally (save to OBJ for export to Keyshot rather than using a CAD file format), one other reason for that is that you will get sub-object materials (like different materials on different faces of a single solid) to work correctly with .obj export while it won't with a CAD file export.

- Michael

Thank you Pilou

- Brian