CGTalk - Help on Lw to 3dsMax smoothing

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Chewey

01-20-2002, 02:00 PM

I've just started on a quest to add 3dsMax4 to my list of 3d ap tool set skills.

I'm saving out geometry from Lightwave as .obj and using Polytrans to import into Max and that works pretty nice. (the native LW 3ds max exporter works wacky) I'm importing lopoly cage geometry so that I can see how mesh smooth or Max's subd's work using that type of work flow.

Using mesh smooth isn't providing the nice smooth look I was expecting as it's looking a bit lumpy in places. I'm sure it's just my lack of experience but it appears there is some parameter tweak that needs attention. ( I'll admit I'm not too swift at navigating through the stack yet.)
Or perhaps there is a different modifier that's more appropriate to use.

Any tips or links to tutes on the subject would be appreciated. (I really like how Max allows the use of motion capture! I'm actually having fun discovering Max's capabilites. )

Taoizm

01-20-2002, 02:19 PM

Hey Chewey, have you tried importing the .lwo files into MAX using a script?

A couple of good sites for plugins and scripts:

Script Spot (http://www.scriptspot.com/start.htm)

MAX Plugins (free/commercial) (http://www.maxplugins.de/max4.shtml)

LW6 scene importer (untested by me) (http://web.dreamsoft.com/mymax/scripts/LWSImporter/l6/l6_imp_v43b.ms)

Old LWO importer (did okay on older LW versions) (http://www.max3d.com/plugins/r2/lwoimp02.zip)

Hope these help, and if one works better than another could you let me know. I don't often run across LW files, but it's nice to know from an experinced user which keeps the file in as close to orginal as possible.

Chewey

01-20-2002, 03:39 PM

Hey, thanks a bunch for those links! I'll check them out and see how they work. The one for the scene import looks interesting.

suck

01-21-2002, 10:40 PM

When you import your LW objects, are you seeing triangles or quads? Mesh objects in Max are composed entirely of triangles, and meshsmooth determines how to do it's thing based on "edge visibility".

If you feed a mesh to meshsmooth with all edges visible, you'll end up with a rather wonky mess. It needs quads to look nice. So a quad in a mesh is defined as two triangles with their shared diagonal edge flagged as "invisible". Hitting Ctrl-E will show/hide invisible edges (they will show as dashed edges in the viewport).

At meshsmooth iteration 1, max should turn each quad into 4 quads. It will turn each Tri into 3 tris. If you feed it a bunch of tris it will be lumpy. Quads = smooth.

suck

xynaria

01-21-2002, 11:03 PM

Try this to import your objects into Max.. If they are exported as quads from Lightwave then they should load into Max as quads too. and as far as I know smoothing should be similar.

MAX2OBJ and OBJ2 MAX, the free converter plugins form : http://www.habware.at/duck4.htm

:)

Chewey

01-21-2002, 11:41 PM

Those sound like tips that may help out. Prior to exporting my lopoly cage(quad poly construction) from Lightwave I tripled the cage as I thought that Max likes to see poly cages as tris. I'll try getting the geometry into Max first using some of the those other importers that xynaria suggested and then see how it works.

Thanks again for all the help!

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