Obj to Vrmesh

[Thomaskl]

Hello Forum,

Currently i am working with a lot of High-Res Zbrush Meshes inside max. Most meshes have more than 2 Million Polys, so i am unsing the Vray-Mesh to handle my scenes. But there is one thing, whicht so time consuming, that i want to ask, if there is a better way. In order to get my Vray-Mesh i have to import my 300mb Objs into 3DsMax to export them as Vray-Mesh. This import/export process takes up to 3h for one single model. And Max likes to crash during this process. It would be so helpful to have a Obj to Vrmesh Command Line converter. I have seen, that there is a ply to vrmesh tool, but this would add another conversion step into the pipeline..and i would need additional software, too.
So, which alternative ways are there to get my *.vrmesh from an obj. The coolest thing would be to have an export-vrmesh Plugin for Zbrush, but this would be a question at Pixolator !

Thanks so far !

Regards
Thomaskl

[Thomaskl]

Hey, Vlado

If you read this..

A Obj to Vrmesh Converter based on DOS Prompt, which can Handle Meshes up to ...well 10Mio Polys, however, would fill a giant gap in the whole Production Pipeline..

I dont know, why Max cant import those Meshes, while Zbrush for Example can handle it as it was a Teapot..

PLEASE !!

Regards,
Thomaskl

[joconnell]

Cos the core of max is around 12 years old and probably didn't take into account what's being done now - Also most people would tend to keep using the low poly cage of their object, render a normal map from zbrush and then use micro poly displacement to get the detail at render time - If you're doing animated characters it'd be nigh on impossible to get responsive enough viewport feedback or skin a 12 million poly mesh :/

[Thomaskl]

Hey JoConnel,

well, Displacement and Normal Maps are great features which do work well. But sometimes, - mostly in my case - i have to do still renderings with Highly Detailed Objects. Direct Importing would be the way to do, if you dont have to touch the objects in 3dsmax. For animating purposes, this doesnt make sense.
The Low-Poly Cage sometimes isnt there anymore. With the new topology features of Zbrush3 ists quite easy to redo a LowPoly Cage.

Image you`re modelling a High-Poly Character and want to quickly render a nice GI Turntable in max. Generating Normal or displacement maps takes a lot of time....till you get the same Look in Max as you have in Zbrush..

As you say, the max core is old, directly OBJ importing doesnt work. Max freaks out. So, the vray mesh would be a great solution for this..

Thanks for reply !

Regards,

Thomas

[studioDIM]

there are a few tricks to achieve that type of thing without (or limiting a lot) max crashes.
First and foremost, make sure you are in a single view when importing, and that the view is set to BoundingBox display.
In the import phase, what takes ages is normally vertex auto-welding and auto-smoothing.
Turn those off, and insure your mesh is properly welded / smoothed to start with.

The OBJ format, too, is inherently huge, as most times it's in the text flavour, rather than in its binary format.

Of course, a 64bit system may be an easier way out...

Lele

[Thomaskl]

These tips might help ! Great ! Thx..

Where can i disable the Vertex-Auto-Welding and Auto Smoothing ? Is this in the Import Obj Dialog ?
I cant see a switch there to disable the Auto-Welding ?

Regards,

Thomaskl

[vlado]

So ply2vrmesh can now deal with .obj files as well...

Best regards,
Vlado

[dimo]

Looking forward to test this.
Perhaps with the vrmesh to max script this might be the best way to import objs to max

Dieter

[vlado]

Also, the initial purpose for this was indeed to bring a highly detailed zbrush model into 3dsmax without going through the displacement hassle and import/export stuff

Best regards,
Vlado