[markps]

WHEN WILL WE BE ABLE TO USE THE PLUGIN WITHOUT HAVING TO TRIANGULATE EVERYTHING EVERY TIME?

It uselles to work with thousands of triangles... why don't the plugin or the Maxwell engine doesn't triangulate itself? That's not a problem only with light wave.. Importing OBJs on the studio is aweful until we have a true SUPPORT to those meshes.

Yeah.. I'll keep tormenting everyone untill I get an answer.. that's frustrating.. 10 times more work

[victor]

Hi markps, the plugin has not been designed to triangulate the objects. Lightwave has tools to triangulate objects. Trying to triangulate the objects internally would lead to new bugs and problems with textures, uv-mapping, etc. We prefer to ask the user to triangulate the objects inside Lightwave prior to render in Maxwell. It is more reliable.

.OBJ issues will be fixed for next update.

[markps]

Hi victor,

I have a scene with 450 posed objects in the scene, what is not uncommon on a complex image. If you know lightwave every object is saved on different file.

I'm having to keep two versions of each object. One triangulated and anther version with full meshes.

Every time I need to tweak an object. I have to open the full mesh model and then re-import the object on to the scene, adjust scale, rotation, everything.

It takes hours and hours of work just to be able to render.

Not to mention when an object is triangulated it adds thousands of extra polygons for the video card to process slowing everything down.

It is hard to assume that Maxwell supports Lightwave if it doesn't really support it. It only renders in lightwave after using a "trick" that slows the work flow adding two to tree times as many hours.

It is still very frustrating.

Thanks!
-Mark

[markps]

Even though the plugin doesn't triangulate... The render engine shouldn't render a broken file. If it understands that there are four-points or n-points triangles It knows it is going to be skeeping faces.

If the plugin exports an object that it knows that the render engine won't suppot It doesn't make much sense. Things should work right?

[Mattia Sullini]

We prefer to ask the user to triangulate the objects inside Lightwave prior to render in Maxwell.
.OBJ issues will be fixed for next update.

Is this meaning that we will not be able to use quads....ever?

[Hervé]

no quads... ever... it has been said from the begining...

[Hervé]

.... I have a scene with 450 posed objects in the scene, what is not uncommon on a complex image.....-Mark

and I thought I was doing large scenes...

[markps]

But isn't frustrating... If it doesn't support Multi point faces.. then at least it should give the option to "import" the objects on a way it reads (triangulate everything).

Herve,
I'm exagerating a little. but my 100 objects scene is still a pain to update because I have keep everything as 3 points.. but when it is time to change the geometry I have to go back to an old backup with multi point. what a pain. It takes several extra hours of work to make the change.

[markps]

Well the display subpatch level will work fine on the Layout but when editing on the Modeler you'll still have to handle the objects as subpatches.. since the display subpatch level is only available on the layout right?

[sms]

That seems to be a workaround but not a solution. The question is - why does it work for Max or whatever but not for LW? I really don't want to model everything subpatched. I haven't got such clients who are interested in what kind of modeling I was used to realise their ideas. They want to see results, not clean or crappy models or whatever.

Am I thinking in a wrong direction?

[markps]

Indeed it is not a solution... Nothing tells different that the plugin is still not working, since it DOESN'T Accept a STANDARD modeled mesh comming from Lightwave.

The maxwell engine doesn't need to be able to handle n-point polygons but the Plugin SHOULD export whatever is needed to make it work.

Victor talked about UV problems. well I'd heather have some UV issues with stuff that is not 3 point instead of having to Work everything as subpatches, or having the plugin not work at all for the n-point polygons. The average of objects on a scene with multiple point polygons is many more times gratter than objects with UV texture What a trade off. Non sense.

[markps]

That's the main mistake... You don't just save the model.. In Lightwave you have to save each model in a separated file to finally use them on the Layout. If you have 100 files and you have to save two versions of each and keep track of everything.. that's a massive work around.. It is like saying....

"The plugin is broken but since you can convert your objects to a format that it will eventually work we can claim that it works just fine." ---- What?

Yes yes let's everyone save 100 files as OBJ and import and pose them in the Stuidio. Oh no wait.. That doesn't work either because the OBJ import is also broken and doesn't support those n-points either... Something is fishy here.

You model as you normally do. You don't have to model everything subpatched. It is just before you save a version of the model for the use in maxwell.
But you are right it is a workaround.

[hdesbois]

There are workarounds indeed, but it means extra work. Support of planar four point polys (at least) would be a great workflow improvement. Seeing what has been achieved by NL so far, I'm sure they could do it.
HD

[Mattia Sullini]

no quads... ever... it has been said from the begining...

Well, it's time to change design concept, them....BACK TO PYRAMIDS!

[markps]

I have a house project with a LW model with about 160 layers. I saved every layer as a separate object as well with it's mxm's (materials) per object and it works just fine.

So, you don't really use the plugin, you could have exported to OBJ and it would have the same effect... That's another workaround. It quite clarifies that it really doesn't work.

Too bad the studio doesn't offer one cent of the capabilities that a mature application like the Lightwave layout offers right? And isn't that the whole purpose of the plugin, to harness the power of a mature application? Not even basic key frames..! It is very useless if you want anything besides a static large image.

The whole point of lightwave is to use things like cloth animation, objects collision, etc. I imagine that most people here work with architecture so... are you satisfied without the capability of a simple fly through?

What is sad that this could all be solved with a triangulation algorithm, just google "3d triangulation algorithm" where is the MAXWELL SDK anyway. I bet we would see much better plugins if the SDK was here.

This is a management decision.. if the SDK came first they didn't need to spend so much money developing plugins. And we would be happier.