Best practices in importing 3d studio max mesh to sketchup?

Atrian

I'm working with a splashpad supplier in our park design and asked for sketchup models of the splashpad elements for use in our model of the park.

The only files they have are .3ds and a 3D .dwg. I imported and found that the max version is slightly smaller, and retains the materials (simple red/blue/yellow colours). Problem is that the pole of the model they sent is a mesh, along with the dump buckets and falling water (in both versions).

My question is: are there any best practices when converting a meshed 3ds into sketchup?

For instance:

A way to auto-smooth all of the mesh lines for when I want to use a style that shows edges.
This model is 4MB. If I start adding all of the features the file size will increase quickly. Is there a way to reduce the polygons in the mesh, and reduce the overall file size?
I don't have 3d studio max, but I might be able to tell them how to export the files for me. Is there something on their end that they can do to make this easier/faster on my part?
Or is acad better to export from, just with different settings? I have AutoCAD 3D and would be able to do this myself.

Thanks!
A

brodie

You can see a description of my process of exporting here

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=41942

There are a couple polygon reducer scripts but I've never used them. You could try Whaat's script for starters

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=9789

I'm not sure i understand the question regarding smoothing. I'd just using the normal Soften Edges tool and maybe try turning on Profiles in the Styles dialogue with a value of 1 or 2 to outline the edges for organic shapes.

SU can handle quite a few polygons without getting terribly large file sizes. But make sure you use texture files with a small footprint (a 20mb .png file will increase your sketchup file by 20mb).

-Brodie

kmead

Generally for simple things it is much better to remodel the parts (such as a column or other basically simple object) in SU. They will have much less geometry, will likely look better within SU and will take up much less disk space (file size will be less).

Most imported models I deal with have way too much geometry for what they are being used for so I remodel them. Often my models look much better than the original did in the originally authored file.

Karl

Atrian

Thanks for the tips, Brodie. I tried out Whaat's polygon reducing script, but the geometry is just not suited for it. There are WAY too many edges (~30k in a simple pole with a base, 3 dump buckets and water), and a lot of places where only 1 face next to an edge - I believe Whaat mention this will mess the script up and that the model had to be a completely closed off volume. I tried to just do the pole's inside faces, and it never seemed to finish processing, even overnight. But thanks for the heads up, I'll probably end up using that in my own models.

Luckily play equipment tends to come in simple colours, so that's covered.

I ended up not reducing the polygons at all and just smoothing. Thanks for reminding me that I can right click and choose to smooth the whole model. I was thinking I had to do it all with the eraser tool. I'll just power through the lag.

Kmead, I think that is what has to happen, just remodeling from Sketchup. Unfortunately our office doesn't have the budget to do it so I'll try and get into more discussions with the supplier for them to produce it. Although, since they've already made it in their other modelling program they'll likely try and keep searching for a better conversion method.

I've attached the dump bucket example in case anybody wants a crack at figuring out a quick conversion method without remodelling.

The main reason I'm looking for this instead of sticking with the remodelling method is that once I get into Playground structures, it's huge - around 500k edges, and every one we do is different to suit conditions. It'd be crazy to remodel it every time, or even stick templates together twice for their 3ds model and my sketchup. I'll keep looking around and post here if I find something.

Thanks to the both of you for your suggestions, and the great simplifying Ruby.

Partially Smoothed Playground with Stats

simple dump bucket

Alan Fraser

Sounds like your office could do with investing in something like Deep Exploration. A huge number of polygons in the dump bucket component is in the water...which isn't really necessary. I opened the 3ds in DE, deleted the water, reduced the polygons in the buckets by 90% and spat out this version which is reduced to a mere 2K faces. The entire process took about 1 minute.

vor-0103_bucket-trio.skp