Hello,

I got a very complex model and want to save it as mesh, like the viewport it show. If I save it as 3ds, than I will be asked of mesh settings. How can I get the mesh of the viewport? The meshing is very slow for the model and my first 3ds save was bad looking. The shaded model at the viewport looks perfect. Any chance to get the same mesh?

Best regards,
Micha

Hi Micha,
Moi3d is a Nurbs modeller. Nurbs usually show a very clean mesh.
When you export to 3ds (or obj or lwo and so on) you are converting the nurbs to polygons.
Polygons can look very nice as well, but detailed objects require many polygons which can make your model look messy.
Also, the more polygons you need, the larger the file, the more memory you need.
When you export using ngons, your model should look better. (playing with the export options can result in a cleaner mesh)

In short, your model, when exported using polygons, will never look like the one in your viewport which uses nurbs.

However, when you render the model it should, ofcourse, look nice and smooth again.

Are you shure? MOI can direct view NURBS? I thought, graphic cards can show polygons only and MOI/Rhino convert the NURBS to polygons for shaded view.

Hi Micha, there currently isn't any way to export the display mesh.

The display mesh is calculated very quickly, but also takes some shortcuts. Normally the display mesh is not quite as good of quality as the export mesh.

If you have a bad-looking export mesh, that might be due to a bug, can you please send the model to me at moi@moi3d.com so I can debug it? If the model is very large maybe you can extract just a small portion of it to show me some problem areas.

- Michael

<The display mesh is calculated very quickly
calculates display on the Moi screen are made from "polygons" based from nurbs or directly from "nurbs" ?

> calculates display on the Moi screen are made from "polygons"
> based from nurbs or directly from "nurbs" ?

The display is made by polygons that are calculated from the NURBS surfaces.

But the shading information at the corners of the polygons (called "vertex normals") does come directly from the NURBS surface though - that helps the polygons get shaded to look more similar to the true surface.

3D video cards basically are built around processing polygons, there is generally no way to send the NURBS surface data directly to the video card, they are just not really constructed with that ability.

- Michael