[brodie_geers]

Max, very interesting. I'm curious though how this operates within Maxwell. For example, if you open up the same file in Studio with and without these PSub edges, what would the difference be?

My (limited) understanding of Maxwell is that at export everything gets turned into polygons with some sort of smoothing factor. Beyond that there are no tricks. So, for example, when a Rhino user exports nurbs will get turned into polygons. Here, I'm not sure I understand what sort of maxwell parameter would allow for this (other than adding polygons, which apparently isn't the case).

Any idea?

-Brodie

[Maximus3D]

I think that Maxwell only handles the data it's given, which means that it can't (yet) work with edgeweights such as PSubs from 501 and subdiv meshes in general. If you would export a psub mesh from Modo directly to Studio you would get a lowpoly mesh without any subdivisions whatsoever, it would look horrible rendered. This can be worked around by freezing your mesh in Modo before exporting it, however this has some drawbacks such as increased polycount, possible conversionproblems with edgeweighted meshes, possible UV issues once the meshes are frozen.

The only thing Studio applies to your meshes once imported is the standard smoothing angle value on the entire mesh, no other special trickery which is a shame because it limits it's usage a bit.

I'm not sure if my description help anything but to put it short, psub meshes into Studio is a big no-no at the moment. It will not work well.

/ Magnus

[brodie_geers]

I'm a little confused. Marton said that subdivision surfaces aren't a problem and the way I read what you're saying, it sounds like it doesn't work. I'm not sure where the disconnect is. Are you saying that they work, but only if you render directly from Modo (can't go through studio)? Or was Marton saying that they don't work, but they won't cause an error? Or something totally different that I'm just not grasping?

-Brodie

[Maximus3D]

Hm, i see.. ok what he might be saying (i guess) is probably that the Maxwell plugin for Modo can render classic subdiv surfaces and it would do that by first freezing the mesh before exporting it to the renderengine. It's done during the voxelizationprocess.
But exporting a psub model directly from Modo 501 and then importing that into Maxwell Studio to setup your scene there will not work because Maxwell has no (as far as i know) way of subdividing imported lowpolymeshes, except ofcourse during displacement but that's a different thing.

Edit: Here is a combined screenshot with the original teapot model in Modo to the right, it's using standard subdivision surfaces. It's exported out as obj to Maxwell Studio and you see the endresult on the left side. It's not only lowpoly, it's triangulated also.


/ Magnus

[Marton Day8]

Sorry if I was not clear. Maxwell can't handle subdiv surfaces, only polygons. But you can work with subdiv surfaces inside modo, and the plug-in does the conversion for you in the background.
If you work inside Maxwell Studio, you will see these surfaces as polygonal meshes.

[brodie_geers]

Thanks guys, that was what I was expecting was going on. Thanks for the confirmation. Honestly, I could care less about some extra polygons at render time. So long as there's not modo magic going on here, it gives me hope that I'll see this feature in my more native modelers - I don't know if this would work in SketchUp but surely 3ds Max (hell, maybe it already does and I just don't know).

-Brodie