Comments on: Comparison of CAD and animation tools for modeling http://www.juhavalimaki.com/3d/cad/comparison-of-cad-and-animation-tools-for-modeling/ Computer Graphics, CAD, Photography, Coding, ... Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:27:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: Juha http://www.juhavalimaki.com/3d/cad/comparison-of-cad-and-animation-tools-for-modeling/comment-page-1/#comment-18 Juha Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:35:31 +0000 http://www.juhavalimaki.com/cad/comparison-of-cad-and-animation-tools-for-modeling#comment-18 Hello Lars, Yes, that really was a looong time ago :-) I switched to Maya and never finished the plugin. Maya can import vertex normals and there is the PolyTrans-for-Maya plugin... Deforming surfaces can be a little tricky as Maya locks the imported normals and this isn't compatible with deformations, but usually there aren't that many deforming objects. With LW I would try asking on Newtek forums. The plugin/node could be a good challenge for someone... (the shader node system looks promising for implementing this) Hello Lars,

Yes, that really was a looong time ago :-) I switched to Maya and never finished the plugin. Maya can import vertex normals and there is the PolyTrans-for-Maya plugin… Deforming surfaces can be a little tricky as Maya locks the imported normals and this isn’t compatible with deformations, but usually there aren’t that many deforming objects.

With LW I would try asking on Newtek forums. The plugin/node could be a good challenge for someone… (the shader node system looks promising for implementing this)

]]> By: Lars Herold http://www.juhavalimaki.com/3d/cad/comparison-of-cad-and-animation-tools-for-modeling/comment-page-1/#comment-15 Lars Herold Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:57:48 +0000 http://www.juhavalimaki.com/cad/comparison-of-cad-and-animation-tools-for-modeling#comment-15 Hi Juha! Years back in 2001, you addressed a shortcoming of Lightwave 3D, namely it's inability to use vertex normals and smoothing groups in a Wavefront .obj file: "Perfect" geometry imported from CAD applications renders incorrectly, with seams and wavy areas, needing post-render touchup. Very annoying. You are touching the problem again at the end of the article above... Where I work, we're into industrial design, using Pro/E, UGS NX, SolidWorks and Rhino to design and model precise product data; shell thickness, small roundings and so on. Rendering is done primarily in Max and VRay for Rhino, but also in Lightwave. Apparantly the problem is persisting. In the forum back then, you mentioned developing a bump map shader that replaced the LW generated normals. Is your solution available to the public? Has the problem been solved in other ways to your knowledge? Maybe Lightwave 9, with it's new node based shader offer a way around the problem? PolyTrans v.4.3 can output "Luxology MODO" compliant vertex normals to an .lwo file, but they are probably only useful in MODO, not in LW as it is... Any ideas or hints? BR Lars Herold Industrial Designer Hi Juha!
Years back in 2001, you addressed a shortcoming of Lightwave 3D, namely it’s inability to use vertex normals and smoothing groups in a Wavefront .obj file: “Perfect” geometry imported from CAD applications renders incorrectly, with seams and wavy areas, needing post-render touchup. Very annoying.
You are touching the problem again at the end of the article above…

Where I work, we’re into industrial design, using Pro/E, UGS NX, SolidWorks and Rhino to design and model precise product data; shell thickness, small roundings and so on. Rendering is done primarily in Max and VRay for Rhino, but also in Lightwave. Apparantly the problem is persisting.

In the forum back then, you mentioned developing a bump map shader that replaced the LW generated normals. Is your solution available to the public?

Has the problem been solved in other ways to your knowledge? Maybe Lightwave 9, with it’s new node based shader offer a way around the problem? PolyTrans v.4.3 can output “Luxology MODO” compliant vertex normals to an .lwo file, but they are probably only useful in MODO, not in LW as it is…

Any ideas or hints?

BR Lars Herold
Industrial Designer

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