How to import to C4D from Solidworks?

[AdamT]

Welcome back! If possible import your objects into Cinema as .obj files. R8.1 added long-awaited support for normals import, but it only seems to work with .obj files. This eliminates many rendering artifacts from tricky normals in tesselated nurbs files.

[Iggy]

Okay, here goes. I've been playing with this for the last couple of days and I think that I have a good solution, with a few problems/questions remaining.

I'm using Polytrans from Okino. I really tried to find a free/cheap alternative, but I just can't seem to locate one. Solidworks simply does not offer many export formats useful for this kind of thing. I played with IGES and a few other formats, but the results were just awful. However, Polytrans will pay for itself it would seem, especially if I can work out the last bumps. It will import files directly from Solidworks, including large assemblies, keeping the heirarchy intact.

Here's a screenshot of the original file from Solidworks (not a render).

http://www.mechanolatry.com/images/cgtalk/tube-turns-assy-swx.gif

Polytrans has a lot of export options. The ones that I played with a lot were Lightwave, 3ds, and obj. Lightwave and 3ds formats both looked very similar. You can see in the render below the artifacts.

http://www.mechanolatry.com/images/cgtalk/Tube-turns-assy-lwo.gif

However, obj (thank you Adam!) looks great. The polygonization is identical (it's defined on the import). No artifacts to speak of, even as close as this. It's not perfect, but it will certainly work for my purposes.

http://www.mechanolatry.com/images/cgtalk/Tube-turns-assy-obj.gif

[Splitting the message cause CGTalk tells me there are too many images??!]

[Iggy]

[Conclusion of previous post]

Now the issues. The polygonization is pretty quirky. Polytrans seems to triangulate everything from Solidworks. I can't find quads anywhere, even on large square surfaces. There's also a *lot* of polys. This comes from my settings on the import, which I haven't played with a lot yet. But I think that I'm going to have problems balancing my desire for low polys with the need for clear, artifact-less renders. So: NEWB QUESTION: is there a quick way to clean some of this up? Suggestions for how this might be balanced? I need to import as assemblies, because there are a lot of individual parts in Solidworks. (This model is only a small part of the entire machine that I'm animating and it has more than 100 bodies.)

http://www.mechanolatry.com/images/cgtalk/flange-polys.gif
http://www.mechanolatry.com/images/cgtalk/hasp-polys.gif

Also, for some reason lwo and 3ds files maintain my heirarchy from the Solidworks assembly and obj does not. I just get a pile of "body #1", etc. This is annoying. I am not familiar with the wavefront format. Surely it has capacity for heirarchy? Anyone know why this might be happening?

So I think that I have been fairly successful. There's more playing around to be done, obviously. I'm going to spend a lot of today messing with my import settings to see if I can improve the polys and such. Any input of any kind is appreciated, esp. from anyone who uses/has used Polytrans before.

Thanks,
Iggy

[AdamT]

Hi Iggy,

Glad you're off to a good start.

You can eliminate many triangles using the Structure-->Untriangulate command. I suggest you download the BatchStructure plugin from http://www.studio-fabian.de/ (click "English" at the top of the page unless you read German). This will allow you to multiselect all your objects and untriangulate in one crack.

I'm not sure if wavefront supports heirarchy information, but it occurs to me that most times I've imported scenes in obj. format no heirarchy info. is preserved. You might check the Cinema manual on this, as it has some information on what's supported in various formats.

hth

[Iggy]

Okay, I got a reply from Okino to the effect that wavefront does not support heirarchy. So that's out of the question. That'll be some rework for me. Now I'm working on reducing the poly count of the overall model. One of the major assemblies comes in at over 15000 polys by itself. Some small components that could be maybe 50 come in at 500. I've tried the C4D polygon reduction tag, but it didn't work well for me. Untriangulate has worked in a few locations but not all.

Continuing to look for advice or comments on this. Anyone got anything?

[Iggy]

Got some interesting results this morning. I exported from Polytrans to VRML 2. It looks just as good as the obj. It kept the heirarchy, but for some reason it stripped out the names!?! Trying to see if I can find a way to keep them, but worst case renaming is definately easier than recreating.

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