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kmwhitt

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Attached is another simple example.  This time I did not pre-mesh in FormZ prior to export - kept it smooth.  Trying FBX and OBJ with High Quality Smoothing at export, I still have problems in C4D.  TechSupport - I would really appreciate someone showing me how to go about this successfully.  Thank you.

 

Kmwhitt,

 

Have you tried this:

 

Draw your smooth cylinder or smooth 3d circle.

Select the top edge and perform your blend.

Convert to faceted.

Yes, there will be a small area with diagonal facetting.

Select the object and use the unmesh tool on it.

I think you will find that removes the diagonal facetting.

Does it now import properly?

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Jon - thanks for the reply.  I am aware that everything comes down to triangles, however, my goal was to get N-gons in C4D.  This way I am able to perform other subdivision operations within Cinema.  Export works perfectly in V6.6.2 regardless of whether or not it's smooth or faceted - see attached.  This is what I am after, but don't think it's possible with the newer versions of FMZ as polygonal modeling has been removed.  I cannot use the normal tags in C4D as they don't play well with Vray (my main render engine).

post-10687-0-69089400-1453297841_thumb.jpg

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Alan - we were posting at the same time.  Yes, that technique does work in V7.3.4 (I don't have the newer 8 here at the office).  Thanks for the suggestion.  Although an additional step, I think I can make this work, however, I wonder how it fairs with more complicated geometry...

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I don't think it does after all, unmesh cleaned up some segments, left at least one and introduced some other small ones. It will not go back to smooth.

 

Once you Mesh something it cannot be returned to a smooth object. As I understand it, unmesh only functions on planar faces. Your object is still a mesh object but planar faces are turned to Ngon's (the underlying triangles still exist but you don't have to view them in the viewport). 

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Jon - thanks for the reply.  I am aware that everything comes down to triangles, however, my goal was to get N-gons in C4D.  This way I am able to perform other subdivision operations within Cinema.  Export works perfectly in V6.6.2 regardless of whether or not it's smooth or faceted - see attached.  This is what I am after, but don't think it's possible with the newer versions of FMZ as polygonal modeling has been removed.  I cannot use the normal tags in C4D as they don't play well with Vray (my main render engine).

 

Rendered with V-Ray in C4D (R15) without problems. And you should be attempting to avoid Ngons if you want to use SubD modelling techniques as SubD's hate Ngons (unless you think carefully about the topology). Your feature request for polygonal modeling tools to be returned to FormZ is fair but some of your other points are less so. If you wanted to create geometry similar to your model but one that functions with subdivision surface modelling, the caps would need to be generated with quad polygons. This type of operation is only available in specialist polygon modelers (mine was created in Modo).

 

1kzpD.png

 

16X6B.png

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I should have said quadrangles (not N-gons) which HyperNurbs in C4D does favor.  The normal tag issue in complex scenes is one of calculation speed for Vray.  At least that is what I've read on the Vray for C4D forum - to ALWAYS avoid them.  Further, I have seen strange artifacts with Vray when rendering with normal tags that simply disappear when removed.  Thanks again for all the input.  I will stick with V6.6.2 until such time AutoDesys returns with faceted modeling (if that happens).

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The normal tag issue in complex scenes is one of calculation speed for Vray.  At least that is what I've read on the Vray for C4D forum - to ALWAYS avoid them.  

 

All good. Happy to help.

 

With regards to the deleting of normal tags this advice is one of those things that has spread throughout the wider community (pops up on the Maya and Modo forums as well as the C4D ones). And at one time it was the only way to work with polygonal models that originated/were translated from a CAD package. In truth that Normal tag/map is essential as smoothing angle alone is a very blunt tool. Most decent CAD packages now have a similar option to FormZ's 'Hi Quality' smoothing option so it's advisable to keep the normal tag/map wherever you can. It's also advisable to avoid modeling operations downstream in your DCC package as this can break the smoothing information in the normal tag/map. I think this is just the nature of the beast when working with assets originally modelled in a CAD package. Even a high end plugin such as Power Translators (which imports all quad geometry from IGES or Step files) created weird topology which can be difficult to work with. And power translators is a $500 plugin.

 

So all in all I'm grateful for the the improvements that Autodessys have made but would agree that a few of FormZ's v6 tools got thrown out with the proverbial bathwater. Their return would improve FormZ in a future update.

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