"StephenS" <sshonfield(at)ottawa(dot)net> wrote:
> ...
> > Mesh2 objects are huge compared to udo's, the pov file size
> > in one recent rendering grew from 3kb to over 10,000kb just by converting
> > a single udo to mesh2.
> ...
> The udo file is only for displaying in Moray, it's the accompanying include
> file that's rendered. When you convert the udo to a mesh2 the information is
> stored in the pov file instead of the separate include file. Another thing
> about udo to mesh2 conversions (in Moray) is that the surface normal
> information is lost, the udo format was not designed for conversion
> purposes. Are you using surface subdivision?
>
> Stephen

Basically I'm using a 3ds model, a triangular mesh of good quality, editing
and posing it in 3ds Max and want to use it (12 times) in a Moray/Povray
radiosity scene.
Poseray offers a 3ds to udo conversion which works fine as I'm not editing
the model in Moray anyway. I don't know of any other software to do this
kind of conversion.
The only problem are these artefacts, but they (almost) dissappear as soon
as I convert to mesh2.

Are you saying that udo was never ment to be used for scene objects? It
smoothes the surfaces nicely in rendering.
When I convert to mesh2 I use surface subdivision level 1 to get a similar
level of smoothness as in the 3ds, so it's not that I've overdone the
subdiv level.

I have been joggling with this for some time. Higher AA settings don't have
any effect, I've tried all sorts of combination of conversion optimation
settings in Poseray and I've tried to change mesh density in the original
3ds file so far.

Another problem is the texturing issue. When you convert to mesh2 you lose
all original texures and have to make a UV map instead. Which always
crashes Moray by the way.

Using udo you can keep the original textures from Poser or Max and they
convert with the model to Pov textures which then can be edited later.

Maybe this isn't a big problem, except for the fact that the mdl file will
become enormous with 12 figures in it and probably will be prone to crash.

The rendering times are a little bit slower for mesh2,
in the posted example (see above) the udo rendered in 5m00sec and the mesh2
in 5m19sec. Not too bad.

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