Testing Amapi 7.5?

[mykyl1966]

I have been testing Amapi using the demo of 7.5 and surprisingly I am finding it pretty simple although there are some niggles. However one thing I am trying to figure out is if there is a way to get amapi to export N-gons instead of tris or tris and quads. I have been testing Moi3d and the export using n_gons outputs really usable models for use within Carrara or Modo so I have been hunting for a way to do this with Amapi. Any ideas if this is possible? Cheers Mike R

[mykyl1966]

45 views. I am guessing someone must use Amapi from that group yet no repy. I guess its not possible then. Shame really as most test models have rendered with artifacts in Carrara and Modo and Truespace so far.

Or can someone out there who knows Amapi please help me out.

Cheers

Mike R

[Hugo]

Did you use the crackfree tesselation ?

[mykyl1966]

Thanks for that. Although not perfect I used Quick adaptive and crack free and that works much better. The adaptive and crackfree is a waste of space. .

Thanks for that

Cheers
Mike R

[Hugo]

I'm not shure to understood all, does it work better and wich one you dislike ?
I'm betatester, i'm always happy to read what the user think about some feature.
cheers

[mykyl1966]

There are three options for tesselation.
'Standard' which results in a very high polygon model.

'Quick adaptive and crack free' results in a nice clean model pretty much made up entirely of quads.

'Adaptive and crack free' which is pretty much messy. A mixture of quads and tri's and doesn't render cleanly enough most of the time.


I have included a screen shot from Modo showing the resultant mesh of each method of tesselation.

One of the best exporters I have seen is the way Moi3d does it. It has the option of exporting n-gons which in general are of no use but are easy to work with and do render cleanly every time.

Take a look at it and see how well it works.

Cheers

Mike R

[Hugo]

N-gons are cool on planar face of course, but most of the time the artifact you can see in your rendering engine come from some equal point or/and bad phong smooth (angle)

Can you create for me a quick model with the artifact you're talking about, please ?
One amapi nurbs file, on polygonal object from the nurbs and if possible the same model in Moi3D so i can check ?
Thanks, have fun

[mykyl1966]

Ok I hope these tell you what I mean. I put together a quick example of nothing in particular. .

The first image is a screen capture from my rendering applications main window.

1. This is an obj export from amapi using adaptive and crack free tesselation. Not much use. Lots of splits etc.

2. This is an obj export from amapi using standard tesselation. Notice the splits ringed in red and also in the small preview render. Once again no use without fixing.

Both of the above have something else in common. They are both not very smooth as the arrow on number two points to the jagged silhouette of the model.

3. This is an obj export from amapi using Quick adaptive and crack free tesselation. Pretty nice and no jagged silhouette. In fact good enough that if really needed you could sub-d the model without problems. (As I have done with some other experiments.)

4. This is an obj exported from Moi3D using N-gons. Fairly clean silhouette, no splits in the geometry and if really needed you can sub-d this model without problems. (As I have done with some other experiments.)

The second image is just a quick render of all four obj files within Modo.

Cheers

Mike