steps to poly's for render purposes

[n_maasdijk]

Hi all,

I have been working in all my scenes with mostly imported .ipt/.step files. And the render time has always been pretty high. Where scene's who take about 2-5 minutes mostly have a render time of about 2/3 days.

Now i recently spoke with an animator who has been doing it for about 30 years and he told me that a reason that could have such an impact was because my imported steps are probably "nurbs" and that if they got transformed to poly's it would probably decrease the render time very much.

But he did not know if that also was the case within 3ds Max.

So here is my question, do we, within max also have "nurbs" and if we do, what would be the best way to convert them?

Thanks already!

-Nick

[wernienst · Accepted solution]

When importing a STEP file into Max, you have the choice of converting it to a Mesh Object or not. If not, you'll get a so-called Body Object. Then you set the mesh quality at rendertime here:

If yes, there is a Mesh Resolution ruler in the Import dialog. Leave it at the default of 0 if possible.

In the following case, I've set it to the maximum of 10 which gives me a mesh of about 1.4 million faces!

(left: Mesh Object, right: Body Object)

I have a render time of 14 seconds.

[n_maasdijk]

Thanks!

Sometimes thinking is hard apparently.