Hi Brian, wonder if it's a KS5 pro thing, but here is a screen grab showing NURBs surfaces only, no mesh data as i don't use Rhino on the Mac OS X platform.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi Gregor,

> I found the key just a minute ago.
>
> Don't export N-gon. Instead choose Quads and Triangles. Then it works. Thanks a lot.

Yes, some programs can get confused by complex n-gons and have problems converting polygons made up of many sides into a triangulated result which is usually needed for the actual rendering.

To solve that use the "Output: Quads & Triangles" option when exporting out from MoI, just like you found - that does the triangulation inside MoI where it's more robust.

- Michael

Hi Martin.

Do you have a test Moi .3dm which imports to Keyshot5?

With Keyshot5 demo, I get the error message:

 

Brian

Hi Gregor,

> Tried that one as well but I get an error message when trying to import MoI .3dm files. Translated, it means
> 'There is no 3D geometry. In Rhino, select view/shaded before saving the file.'
> No idea how to solve that one in MoI

There isn't any way to solve that in MoI, when you run into this it means you should use OBJ format instead..

Basically Rhino can in some situations save the display mesh used to show shaded surfaces in the 3DM file - it does this because it's rather slow to generate the mesh and so once it makes one it tries to cache it to use later on.

Some programs do not really read the real NURBS objects out of a 3DM file and instead only look for this cached display mesh data only.

MoI does not write that display mesh data because it has a very fast display mesher and writing the display data into the file tends to bloat up file size by quite a bit.

It's not really a good idea for programs to only read this cached Rhino display data as the main way for data transfer, because there are many situations where Rhino itself does not write it either, like when you do a "Save small". But some programs try to do that as a shortcut to avoid having to process the real solids in the file.

- Michael

Yes Brian I do ... Here is the eye 3DM

Martin Spencer-Ford

The Eyeball-Base-Model.3dm does not open, nor import, into the Demo Keyshot 5.

- Brian

Hey guy's, when I had an earlier version of KS .step import was quite successful, not sure how much development went into that side of things since. The only thing was it came into KS as one colour.

-

Thanks for the chart Marco, that clears things up nicely, hopefully this will help too ...

KeyShot Pro version 5 Imports the following formats and supports these MoI object settings

fbx = no style - no object name
iges = style colour - no object names
obj = style colour - yes object names
sat = style colour - no object names
skp = no style - no object name
stp = style colour - no object names

KeyShot 5 Pro will import 3DM files from MoI but ignores ObjectNames however it will import the StyleName and StyleColor. But does not support multi-style solids.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Thanks Martin and MARCO

KeyShot 5, what's new:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEEQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lino.de%2Ffileadmin%2F_lino%2Fprodukte%2FKeyShot%2FKeyShot_5_WhatsNew.pdf&ei=55O7U8KoNY3xoAT-zYG4AQ&usg=AFQjCNEVpTrsatnkvsXOAcs0hEkESTswRg

Brian

Now, my question is: which file is the best to be imported into KeyShot? The goal is of course the performance-keeping object names and colors

Hi Gregor,

> Now, my question is: which file is the best to be imported into KeyShot?
> The goal is of course the performance-keeping object names and colors

I'd recommend OBJ format, use the option "Output: Quads & Triangles" when exporting it out from MoI.

That I think has the best support for object names and style colors coming through.

- Michael

If you want to keep StyleColours with ObjectNames then OBJ is the way to go. KeyShot can and does handle Billions of triangles very well, so you don't need to worry too much about the mesh densities generated. Personally the setting i find works best to go to other OBJ editing tools are Angle 40, divide all larger than 5, scale to 0.1 - That works well going into Zbrush and Modo and Cheetah on the Mac to be subdivided and to sculpt textured objects for creating render maps such as normals and specularity etc.

If you are doing models that are paint, plastic, glass you're ready to go into KS. Remember when importing into KS that you need to set the Z is up option and to set your units in the Size section of the importer.

This way you get two options for optimal export.

1. Develop a colour - material type regime which has been adopted by many over the years - e.g. Cyan = Clear Glass
2. Use object names that describe the object and material in one - e.g. DoorHandle_BrushedAluminium

Don't use punctuation or special characters in naming conventions. If you need a space use an underscore ... It's the safest way

Martin Spencer-Ford

Many thanks for your hints

If you will have chance to have the Next Zbrush 4R7 ;)

Keyshot can import 3DM already but you need Keyshot Pro version to be able to render NURBs directly :)

Martin Spencer-Ford

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: