Hi guys, I'm an occasional Carrara user and I do all my modelling in Rhino. One of the things that is holding me up is the size that models get when I export from Rhino. This can make models impractical for use in other apps. We had a tutorial posted recently on modelling clothes for Poser. At the end there was this suggestion: "I like to take my .obj mesh into Carrara and use a detriangulate polys routine. This can knock the final file size down from 1/3 to 1/2 the size. Also, Poser plays better with meshes which have fewer triangular polygons." I was wondering if anybody had come across this and could shed a little light? Any help very welcome, thanks in advance, Smallworld.

Smallworld, As I use Carrara exclusively and for the most part making otems for Poser I have to agree that Poser likes four point Polys better tahn three point polys (of course some times you just have to make do!). Carrara does have an untriangulate command in the Vertex room, how well it would work with imported objects I can't atest to, but I don't see any reason for it not to work. I find it does a decent job on native meshes, although I haven't had to use it as much since Carrara 4 came out, There is also a Decimate command that can help reduce poly count, but I find that it requires an bit of "hands on" correction to mke the mesh really suitable, once used. I'd grab the Carrara demo and give it a try with some of your meshes. mike

Smallworld, I tend to agree with trav in that Carrara will do some wierd things with tri'd meshes. For the most part if the polys are coplanar, then the algorithm will de-tri a good portion of the mesh and save you a lot of time. If, however your meshes are based upon a lot of splines then there may be a lot of manual clean-up to make it look right. I re-did some of my older meshes with the untriangulate command and one of them was based on a polyhedron to begin with. That one was a mess to clean as the co-planar faces were in areas that I didn't want to un-tri. I ended up re-doing the mesh, but before I did, the command had shaved the poly count by almost half! This is not to say that it won't work for you. Like trav said, demo it and see what it can do for you. Ken

Thanks guys, I'll have a go and let you know how I get on. I havn't yet figured how to even edit a mesh in Carrara, is this done in the model room? Sorry to be a pain, very new to Carrara :)

Smallworld, Open your obj. file (or other compatible file type) in carrara. Since it's coming out of Rhino I'm not sure about scaling but if I was opening a Poser file I'd use the setting shown in the attached pic. If you've already cut the objects into groups use the exact settings. If not you can change the red circled settings to single object for ease of editing. This opens your object in the Assembly room. double click on a portion of your object. If it's cut into groups it will open the GROUP object, or the entier object if only one object;s been loaded, in the Vertex Modling room. Perform your editing, hint the Untriangulate command is in the Selection menu, and return to the Assembly room. Use save as to save your model as an object. That's the basics. If you ahve any problems drop a line. I or one of the better Carrara hands will help. mike

Thanks for the help Trav. I have got the de-triangulate thing to work. It doesn't really make the file any smaller though. I tried playing with the surface fidelity setting on re-export but it didn't seem to do anything at all, even turned down to 5%. Basically I would like to reduce the poly count of an existing model in obj format, but I don't really know how to achieve it.

Smallworld, What version of Rhino do you use? Have you done any searches on using the detailed export options out of Rhino? I use Rhino 2 and there is some good info out there on export. Using the simple slider controls is not a good idea with a Rhino file that is complex. Everything gets meshed to the same level. There is also an option to force Rhino to export mostly quads so de-trangulating might not be needed as much. If you can't find what you need, let me know I have it archived someplace on my hard drive. I've kind of moved from nurbs to poly modeling with Hexagon. wayne k guam usa

Smallworld, I'de recommend looking into the info in whkguamusa's post. Since I don't use Rhino I'm not sure how files act when imported for it. I do know that Pose DOES NOT like triangles. I hesitate to ask but if you want to send a small sample mesh to me I'd be willing to see what I can find out. However it seems whkguamusa knows both programs and has some good ideas. PErhaps your detriangulationg but then using Carrara's "smoothing" command, which pushes the poly count right back up? mike

Thanks for the time whkguamusa and trav. I am goin to spend some time over the weekend getting to grips with meshing and exporting. whkguamusa, I mostly do aircraft at the moment and I find taht although they give big files, the Rhino simple settings work best, although I do mesh seperate bits at different settings, depending on their shape. With wings in particular I find the advanced settings not to good. To keep the leading edge smooth you need to reduce the max edge length so much that you get a hyper dense mesh in the relativly flat bits and the file size gets huge. It the single thing that Rhino people seem to hate the most, meshing and exporting. trav, thanks for the offer, but I think I'll spare you the trauma :) I can open a Rhino nurb file in Carrara 4 pro. I am going to see how the file size works out if I do this and export the mesh out of Carrara before I map it. I'll let you all know how I get on.

Smallworld, I didn't mean it would be any problem on my part to look at you files. I just hesitate to ask some one to trust me with their hard work. PLease keep us informed on how you make out. Any information it valuable, in my opinion, and I certainly am willing to help in any way. mike