Hi Michael ...

I just ran into a difficulty I had not experienced previously. I was assigning render materials 'on the fly'

1. I use Octane for Rhino as my rendering software ... so, drawings/models created in MoI have to be opened in Rhino in order to render them. I have a newly made materials template that holds all the materials I usually use.

2. These can be thoroughly edited in Octane for Rhino. But if I open this template in MoI, create a model using my typical styles, and then open this file in Rhino then all the editing capabilities have been lost in translation. (not all, but the materials are now 'basic' and almost all the subtle editing capabilities are gone).

3. On the the other hand, if I open my template file in Rhino and then 'import' MoI objects it doesn't mess with my established materials and I can assign them to MoI objects with no problem.

So, there is a work around but if there were a way to keep the materials assigned in the template, do the model in MoI and then just open the file in Rhino for the rendering process it would be good. I suppose it could be a lot of work to preserve those materials through MoI but if it is easy it would help me considerably.

and a belated Happy New Year!

cheers,
eric

Hi eric, could you maybe elaborate a bit more on what specific "subtle editing capabilities" get lost during this process?

Are they things that are specific just to Octane or are they regular built in Rhino properties?

MoI does try to preserve the materials table in a 3DM file when it opens up a file originating from Rhino, but maybe there is some other kind of Octane specific data that does not get preserved. But that's just a guess, if you can be more specific about what in particular gets lost like a specific property that I could try to examine that might make it possible to make some progress on it.

It could also be possible though that if it's Octane specific data that the Octane plug-in may need to be running in order for it to be processed properly, if so then that may be difficult to solve since that plug-in only runs inside of Rhino.

But if you can give some specific steps, like "go set up a material with this particular property, open it in MoI, save it out from MoI and then open it back in Rhino and then this particular thing does not work" that could maybe help figure things out.

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

I'll try to do that later this afternoon ...

thanks,
eric

I think I understood what Eric is asking.
Of course if you use the same file lots of informations will be lost once you open it in moi again and save.
My solution is to have a separate .3dm file that you will use only with Rhino+Octane (eg. MyProject-Render.3dm); if you need to make any modifications to the model, you can use moi and then replace\add only the part that you changed into the render 3dm file.
M.

Hi Michael ...

Here are a couple of screenshots that show the difficulty. One is the material as it appears in Rhino after the material from the Octane database is attached to the file.

The other (screenshot 2) is after this file has been saved in MoI and opened again in Rhino. It has lost its attributes. Yes, as wastzzz points out, if the primary file is Rhino/Octane one can use MoI independently to create objects that can be imported into the primary file.

I hope for a time when MoI will retain the material information when one uses the same file for flipping back and forth. As I said earlier, if this is a big job or impossible just let it go as the workaround is an OK way to handle the problem.

cheers,
eric

Hi eric can you please e-mail me (at moi@moi3d.com) the 2 3DM files that correspond to each of those screenshots so I can examine them? Thanks.

- Michael