EnMesh is Awesome! But - Can we bake objects for transfer between files?

[paul-twoatsix]

I've just started playing around with Enmesh - Wow - absolutely amazing!



But is there any way we can bake the objects into the VRMAT file for easy transfer between files/projects?

[nikolay.bakalov]

Hi,

unfortunately you can't store geometry to .vrmat. It is a shader-only by specs, although we usually put lights in too.
The problem here is host application. In this case Rhino. Mind that .vrmat is also used by V-Ray for SketchUp, Revit, Max, Maya etc, and it also powers part of the Chaos Cosmos.

Even if it could store geometry you will still not be able to "bake" it in. The problem here is that the unpredictability of the host application persistent id system.
Enmesh, and for that matter, Clipper, Scatter, Distance and Dirt textures store the geometry part as object ids. Whatever the host application is it provides some persistent object identification. For Rhino and Revit these are GUIDs, for SketchUp - an integer.
When you import a .vrmat with a shader that connects to a geometry, it expects to find the objects with the ids that are written to the .vrmat itself. If they are not found - usually the hostapp (the Asset Editor, in this caes) simply deletes the input.

And that is by design - objects ids are persistent only for a given document. If you copy and paste the objects to another document the assigned ids to the pasted content is different. This is the standard way to avoid collisions.

So in short - there is no way to bake it, atop of the fact that .vrmat was not created for baking geometry in a first place.

as far as I can tell. your only option is to trick the system:
1) Have a .3dm file with the geometry
2) Have a .vrmat with the shader (Enmesh in your case)
3) Have a script/code to connect the dots.

This is some sort of golden standard of how the things are done. Most scattering tools's libraries are build this way, however they usually combine 1) and 2) into one place.

[paul-twoatsix]

Thanks for the detailed response nikolay.bakalov.

Instead of vrmat - could you not use the vrmesh (proxy) format instead?

I guess as a workaround I could build all of the Enmesh objects into a hidden layer in my base rhino template file.