Exporting Clean Mesh from Rhino

[Yourworstnightmare]

Have you tried the .obj format, It might work, the only thing that has worked for me is exporting the mesh at a very high resolution and then adding a smooth modifier, the draw back to that is that you will most likely have a 2 million polygo mesh, which is not easy to work with.

[Snecx]

That is not always the case. You just need to know how to mesh properly. :)


Maximum angle 0.0
Maximum aspect ratio 0.0
Maximum edge length 0.0
Maximum distance edge to surface **
Minimum initial grid quads 16

**insert scale appropriate value here. For millimeter-unit models try 0.10 to 0.01

Refine mesh checked

Jagged seams unchecked

Simple planes unchecked


Taken from http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/MeshFAQ.html under Quick Guidelines. :) Export as .3ds format will do.

[Mr-Bullfrog]

Hey,

Apologies for the late reply, thanks for the awesome info! Will definately check that out and see what I can manage.

Again, thanks for the help!

-Jeremy

[NiZu]

Hi, i've been modelling in rhino - exporting to max everithing i do,
About the file format i think the best solution are:


-DWG: clean mesh and you can get good automatic mapping ( check real-word textures coords. when importing) very useful for architecture. Just be sure to import using the first of the two max import plugins (the legacy DWG doesn't work very good)
-VRML: good too
-3DS: can crash i if the polycount is above a limit (not very high too..)


About meshing the main parameters (imho) are angle (of course) and aspect ratio.
Actually just always use 'advanced' for meshing options and play with it a little.

BTW if anyone as good advice on how to export nurbs rather than mesh would be very useful.. but i didn't manage to get any good result.

Good work!

[wedge]

export as IGES or STEP... I use Maya and can import those, but i'm not sure if MAX can import them. I would imagine it can.

[scrimski]

Oh yes, it can, but you have to deal with NURBS in Max then which is a real pita. Beside that, there is a good chance to loose cuts and trims when importing, sometimes max crashes even on that so you will have to split the model in several export files.
And if you are done with all that and have conveted the NURBS into a smooth mesh or poly object you have kazillions of tris.

[mrys]

Hi
I modelling in Rhino and rendering in PovRay, but it gives me not good effects, so I'am in the point of change soft. I choosed Max, and started to try import models from Rhino. I used three methods: native Rhino mesher and export by *.3ds, Okino Polytrans translator (via IGES for Okino into *.3ds) and PowerNurbs plugin for max.


And here are results after import object from Rhino to Max:

Native Rhino mesher:

Okino Polytrans:

Power Nurbs:


Best results are with PowerNurbs - not only mesh is good and need only minor tweeking, but also polygon count is low and visual effect good.

IMO the only way to get good meshes from Rhino is to eksport objects as NURBS, cause Rhino mesher is screwed up. PowerNurbs do it.

[Snecx]

Rhino's mesher is powerful and definitely not screwed up. Kindly learn it more before spreading false information.

While other translators will ease up the operation, they also cost more. Even if you do not care about the money, learning how to get proper mesh will makes your life easier when you need to analyze the surfaces in Rhino. In fact, the meshing options in Rhino is very easy to learn.

[mrys]

Rhino's mesher is powerful and definitely not screwed up. Kindly learn it more before spreading false information.

While other translators will ease up the operation, they also cost more. Even if you do not care about the money, learning how to get proper mesh will makes your life easier when you need to analyze the surfaces in Rhino. In fact, the meshing options in Rhino is very easy to learn.


I'am working with Rhino since 1.0 version and I know its mesher very good. And IMO Rhino's mesher is still working bad. Of course you can get good results, even in more complicated shapes, but it cost too many polys. I was rendering in PovRay, so had no choise. But it was something interesting and strange with. Meshes for PovRay was always very dense and gave me smooth result, but when was exported (with the same set up) into the Max results was bad, with the same density. Strange.

I know, Power Nurbs are not for free. More: are too expensive. But gives much better results.

I love Rhino, but could not say that it is soft without faults (as all). Sorry, but in my practice too many times Rhino mesher was not able to gave me what I want without killing my hardware. That is I could not say "good" about its mesher. As fillet and boolean operations also. There are weakest points of Rhino, but it is IMO stil one of the most powerfull modeler ever created. In NURBS of course.

[CLONEOPS]

Rhino's mesher is powerful and definitely not screwed up. Kindly learn it more before spreading false information.

While other translators will ease up the operation, they also cost more. Even if you do not care about the money, learning how to get proper mesh will makes your life easier when you need to analyze the surfaces in Rhino. In fact, the meshing options in Rhino is very easy to learn.
I believe that what most of the posters are looking for is a direct pure quad export from any
complexity nurbs models....this is to say the least problematic directly in rhino.Also we know you can get very smooth result to max for instance but the poly count is usually a bitch,and when handling hundreds'sss++ of objects things things can get a little frustrating.

[Snecx]

I've tried PowerNURBS translator myself. It does not translate to quads as far as I know. All the NURBS models I have tested are triangulated at render time. Correct me if I'm wrong and that PowerNURBS actually convert to quads? Maybe, but I haven't try that and the point is that the meshing tool in Rhino isn't screwed. Personally I have more control with it than PowerNURBS translator.

It is not necessary to come up with a huge amount of poly's in order to get it smooth. That's where the parameters play their roles. It takes more time to get things right of course. I am not saying that translators are bad, they are infact a huge time-saver! But to me so far I have no problems with meshing, even with complex shapes.

However majority of the people I've met did not even know what the meshing tools can do and they claim it sucks. I think that is bad because it is funny how most of them explain their model looks just fine in the viewport but then get screwed after they export. Isn't the viewport mesh generated by the same meshing tool?

I apologize if I got my points wrong to the people out there but I think it is a good practice to encourage new users to learn meshing tool properly instead of giving them the wrong idea that they need a translator for "proper" mesh.

I can be pro-Rhino at times but it can't be helped! I'm biased with people saying many things are flawed while I find it otherwise. :D

[CLONEOPS]

What you say is true,there is nothing wrong with the meshing tools and it's not really a huge,huge problem to get smooth and reduced mesh results to max on single pieces of a model but when its in the hundreds its a headache, I mean it can all adds up too so many and max really has issues with eating up memory and viewport display gets sluggish fast.
Right you are about the rendering meshes,depends on the mesh quality you set up and units accuracy i believe.
I just wish rhino rendered nurbs directly seems like a logical step,,should have been a plan from the start.
I wonder how vray,brazil and maxwell will handle texture mapping from rhino.:)

[mrys]

I've tried PowerNURBS translator myself. It does not translate to quads as far as I know. All the NURBS models I have tested are triangulated at render time. Correct me if I'm wrong and that PowerNURBS actually convert to quads?

Yes, you have right. Even PowerNurbs can't convert Rhino's models into quads meshes:sad:. On PN forum its authors wrote, that they not implemented quads in PN, cause... they were sure, that noone will use it!:scream:

Before I tried PN I was using native Rhino's exporter and always stand before choice: quality and very complex model or lower quality with smaller polygon count. But even with high quality models tweaking of imported mesh was necesary. Rhino was always very fast and precisely modeler for me - more precisely then low poly/subdivide method. But when I had to tweaking whole model after importing into render application I lost what I win - time.

Maybe "screwed up" was a little too radical opinion. It would be great if I could get similar results then with additional apps by native Rhino's mesher and maybe this one in Rhino 4 will be better for me.

By the way, I think that fault could be not in Rhino alone, but rather in Max interpreting of Rhino meshes. As I wrote: after importing model into PovRay it is understand as mesh (made of triangles) but looks very good. With the same set up in Max it looks worse.

[popoff]

... result using Power Translator ( Rhino-3DstudioMAX ) :

http://static.flickr.com/32/68175628_b7f041c491_b.jpg
... a lot of problemzzzz ...

... poly count - 13 000 000 ...

http://static.flickr.com/12/69206613_63ff71a068_o.jpg

...

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