With help from many, I became reaonably skilled at moving data from Rhino to Bryce. Now that I've got C4D, can y'all tell me what you've found that works? - file format - bounding boxes? - layers/groups If this has already been dealt with in another thread, just point me. thanks!

heres a cut and paste of what I wrote for another post. Welcome to the forum hope you enjoy your stay. I got Cinema to render my Rhino models and haven't been disappointed. A couple of helpful hints. Label everything it also helps to give each item its own color. Reason is when you convert to 3ds the color will transfer as a separate material. 3ds file formate will only take 65k worth of polys for any one object if you have an item named ball that is 250k of poly's it will brake up into 4 objects and label it something like ball001, ball002... If the item isn't label then you will get object001, object002... Learn the art of converting nurbs to mesh. A simple sphere in rhino will save as 13k in 3ds at default setting 14k and when you bring it into Cinema and save it will explode to 57k. One other thing if you have Flamingo. Go ahead and set up the material in there

Let me use a simple car for example to export: I select the body, then select "File | Export" and export using 3DS. I leave all items just slightly past the middle in the Poly Mesh. If I find it needs more poly's, I'll come back. Export out to a file called body.3ds. Then I select the tires, wheels, bumpers and such and do the same thing. It might take a little more time, but it gives me the freedom to select how detailed the Poly's will be for each feature I export. Good luck

Glas: I saw the earlier post and did the separate names which persisted in C4D. Nice. When you say 'art of converting nurbs to mesh', are you referring to doing this within Rhino, or during the export? mm: For Rhino>Bryce, I learned to use a bounding box to make sure the separate export/imports are all aligned within Bryce. What do you do to make sure the separate import/exports (body/wheels/bumpers) are aligned when they come into C4D? I've seen discussions here about scaling Rhino objects imported into C4D. Is the scaling change different for each drawing or is there a consistent scaling factor? One nice surprise: compared to Bryce, the import step is fast! thanks, guys

If I am not worried about file size I just do a single 3ds save and change the nurbs at that time. But if its ahuge file and I will often convert to meshes as I model. Just make sure you do a Nurb backup copy. Either in the program or during export the converting to mesh is the same. I prefer to do a quick preview before I export. A bit longer a less faith in my abilities. As far as scale is concern. Everything seems to come in at a defult size. I haven't had problem with mixed scale sizes but i haven't mixed Rhino files yet. Meaning if I have to bring something in or make a change its been from the origional rhino file and exported as it own 3ds format

You don't have to worry about alignment, it all ends up in the correct place, don't worry about this. As far as scaling goes, I group each item I import and name them the same as the filename, then once everything is imported in, I then group everything and scale that group up as needed, usually someplace around 5 to 10x. Here's a tank I'm working on and you can see it is normal size in Rhino, but once you export it and then use "File | Merge" to get it into C4D, it is considerably smaller, so you simply group it as I did and scale it up.

thanks

Last thought on this zarth... make sure and get your model placed in the final location you want it in before exporting it into cinema and then don't move it once you have merged it. That way if you need to make a change to a wheel or something, you will only need to delete the old object from the C4D file, re-import that single object into the file and scale it up. The new object will fall into place where the old one was at. I would create a file with a few objects in it and mess with exporting and merging before doing it with something more complex... that way you will have a method down to how you want to do it... my way isn't the definite way of doing this, you might find a better way from your own discovery. good luck buddy :-)

I'm using the render challenge to learn C4D lighting/rendering. Rhino: selected the wine bottle (1 surface), exported to .3DS (slider to middle). C4D: FileOpen or FileMerge the .3DS. See the pic. The bottle is now perfectly cut into two pieces...along the quartile. Wass happenin'? thx

yeah, I know C4D is a very clever program...so clever that it cut up my bottle very nicely. Bonus! Did I do something wrong in export or import?

When exported as an OBJ, it arrives in one piece. Hmmmmmmmmm.

The board also comes in funny. Although in Rhino, it is one polysurface, it is two pieces in C4D (shown here moved apart). Wassup? Not everything comes in split or cutup. Any insights?

Nice looking cutting board! ;p And bottle too :]

zarth: I can't explain the strange split with the bottle... I don't worry about it because it renders all the same.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12400&Form.ShowMessage=1227673

mm: see the thread at the link. Seems that there are too many polygons. I'll try it and see.

Sorry I thought I explained the splitting better in post.

Glas: you were right on the money. I don't think I 'got it' at the time. Thanks for the help. Is there a definitive document on the .3ds format somewhere...what it includes, limitations, etc.?