Anthony - I did a preliminary search with "Blender" keyword before starting this thread but didn't found your post.
Now I have the opportunity to thank you for this wonderfull import script.
It seems that rendering works perfectly now.
Blender + Moi can work together!
Thank you very much!

Hi,

this could be helpful: http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear/index.php/2007/08/13/88-how-to-solve-blenders-smoothing-problems


MfG
sk2k

Thanks sk2k, I am already familiar with this tutorial.
Here is a test render (look the attachment).
The model was made in MoI, exported as OBJ (with Weld vrtices turned off and level of detail 9, quads and n-gons). I also tried to export it as LWO and import with anthony's import script. The end results in both cases look nearly the same.

The render looks good but in some places you could notice distinct polygons. This could be reduced with increasing the polycount, but that makes my machine running very slow.
Overall result is very good!

Out of topic: Which is faster? NURBS rendering or SDS rendering?

There is very interesting topic started in Blenderartists:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=106714&highlight=NURBS
And fun to read:)

> The render looks good but in some places you could notice distinct polygons.

Do you mean you notice polygons in the shading, or in the silhouette of the object?

If it is in the silhouette, then yes you can only really solve that by creating more polygons on the export. If it is in the shading then make sure you are getting the good normal information in.


> Out of topic: Which is faster? NURBS rendering or SDS rendering?

Well in most cases both of them are converted into polygons at some point before rendering.

- Michael

I've spent quite some time fooling around with the MoI .obj exporter and Blender. I'm now generally achieving the best results by exporting unwelded vertices and using the Edgesplit modifier in Blender. In most cases, it deals with the smoothing issues. In case you really want to connect all loose vertices (for instance if you want to apply Subsurf or Sculpt your MoI mesh), use the "Remove Doubles" command in Blender, which will merge vertices that are in the same location. I use mostly Indigo for rendering, and it is sometimes picky when rendering flat surfaces generated in MoI. A flat surface would then show with shading differences, with parts of the plane appearing darker than others, even if the Edgesplit modified is used. In such cases, the only workaround I've found that seems to be working is to extract the flat surfaces from the mesh, move them to a separate mesh object and remove the smoothing option. Curved surfaces generally don't have problems. Hope that helps.
I will now try the LWO importer and see whether it works better.

Soooo. I've now tried the MoI-LWO-Blender importer and it seems indeed to be a genuine miracle! Wonderfully clean model!