Hi Michael. I am working on a project where i need to export about 150 polysurfaces as a single mesh entity to Modo via LWO. I have hit 2 roadblocks. One is that i can't export multiple objects as one disjoint mesh. The other is that i can't disable the exporting of object material to LWO. So when importing to Modo I've got 150 seperate meshes and 150 material groups. UGGGGHHHH... The 150 material groups can be deleted manually. But there is a bigger problem because each mesh also has it's own normal smoothing map. With native Modo objects, polygons from one object can be cut/pasted from one mesh item into another. This is very time consuming for 150 meshes. But the bigger problem is caused by each MoI object having it's own vertex normal map. The maps also cut/paste from one object into another as I cut/paste the polygons. So I end up with 150 maps in the consolidated item. But the pasted polygons are not smoothed by their respective maps anymore. They render as faceted mesh. What to do? =(

Is there any way around this problem? I need to tackle this for a render tomorrow. I could use Rhino OBJ export, but this is already a heavy object. I need to keep the mesh as light as possible using MoI's n-gon export...

Also i would like to request these 2 options for LWO export:

1) option to export all items as one disjoint mesh (with one vertex normal map of course)
2) option to discard materials

Thanks!
jonah

Hi Jonah,

> But the pasted polygons are not smoothed by their respective maps
> anymore. They render as faceted mesh. What to do? =(

This part sounds like a bug in Modo -- from what you describe it sounds like they don't merge the vertex normal data properly when merging polygons together.

I was thinking that some kind of scripting inside of Modo would probably help to automate the process of merging and deleting things, etc..., but I guess that if the merging just doesn't work right then scripting won't help.


I should be able to figure out some method to help you out though.

One question - will OBJ format work for you in this case? Can you do a small test and see if that seems like it will work?

If that looks like it will work, it should be really easy for me to make a little utility program that strips out the object/group label directives in it, which should make the whole file appear as one single big mesh object. It is not quite as easy to do this for LWO format, but if OBJ does not work for you I can figure something else out.

- Michael

Hi Jonah - I have attached here a MergeOBJ.exe utility - you can run this and it will pop up a file dialog and ask you to pick the .obj file. It will then edit the .obj file to remove the grouping and object label directives so it should appear as one single mesh object.

It seems like this might do the trick for you...

Let me know if you run into any problems and I can try to figure out a different way instead.

EDIT: removed the attachment and moved it to here:
http://moi3d.com/download/MergeOBJ.zip

- Michael

Works perfectly! Thanks so much Micheal. You saved me a few hours on this job alone... :)

jonah

That's great Jonah, glad I could help! Please let me know if you run into any snags.

I have also put your requests for LWO export on the wishlist.

- Michael