2 Problems I need help with

[Bayley]

This is a rendering of the reception/waiting area of my new office (now under construction). I am using it to figure out Maxwell and am getting pretty close (I think). I model in AutoCAD (I am familiar with it), export to Sketchup for setting materials/cameras/etc and then export to Maxwell Studio to tweak materials/projectors/etc. I have updated a couple of modeling issues from this but the two problems I can't figure out are as follows:

 

1. I CANNOT figure out how to get the arched soildure to work properly. I am using a cylindrical projector on this one but have tried EVERYTHING I can think of. My material is a straight solildure course and I want to bend it to match this arch. By doing it this way when I have multiple arches on an exterior rendering I assume I can use the same material with different settings. Any ideas?

 

2. Is there any way to smooth the arches (left side of the room)? I have changed the curve options in AutoCAD and smoothed it in Sketchup. Is there something I am missing here?

 

Any help on these issues will be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[womble]

In sketchup maybe try selecting the arched curves, and going to the 'entity information' window, and setting the 'segments' field higher. Not sure if you've tried that, or if itll work on an imported autocad model but worth a shot.

[AJLynn]

Sometimes you can do this in Maxwell Studio by selecting the faces you want to smooth, setting up smoothing for them and recalculating their normals. This might be a bug - I've done Sketchup -> Max -> Maxwell and had my round columns come out faceted, even though when I opened the file in Studio smoothing was already on, and I know there was nothing wrong with the normals, but recalulating them fixed it.

[Bayley]

womble: Sketchup doesn't give me a 'segments' field in the Entity Info for this object. It's probably because I did it in AutoCAD. The Entity Info lists the Layer, object name, geometry, and the hidden/locked/cast & receive shadows options. Am I missing it?

 

AJLynn: In AutoCAD, it looks fine but when I import it to shetchup it looks blocky. I think it's a Sketchup deal but don't know. I did what you suggested (recalculated norms in Maxwell Studio) but it didn't seem to help. What exatly is meant by the "Smoothing Angle" in Maxwell Studio?

 

Thanks for your help...any other ideas?

 

Anyone have any ideas about the brick arch projector or whatever may be messing up there?

[womble]

I'm no expert at this, but what Im guessing is happening is that sketchup is segmenting your curve when you import (as sketchup doesn't 'do' real curves). The only thing I can think of is to delete the wall and redo it in sketchup, using an arc as per the attachment, but then increasing the number of segments from 12 (the default) to something like 64 or 128, and then extruding your arch out.

[AJLynn]

You can turn some segmented surface into a Sketchup "curve" by selecting the edges you want "smoothed", right-clicking and choosing soften/smooth edges. The smoothing angle here works the same way as in Maxwell - it's a threshold, the higher the number the sharper the angle that will be a curve. If that sounds counterintuitive, it's not the angle between surfaces, it's the angle between surface normals.

[Bayley]

Thanks for the help on the arches guys but I still can't figure out how to make the projector for the arched soldier work correctly. Any suggestions on that?