How do I unwrap this object for lightmapping/texturing/collision?

[gooner442]

Hi all,

I create most of my assets in Rhino before converting them to meshes and exporting to 3ds Max. This process creates lots of triangles and the topology isn't particularly clean, which I believe makes exporting out to UE4 a bit more problematic.

I wanted to ask if someone would take the time to show me how they would approach the mesh in the picture - I wanted to attach the .max and /fbx file to this email but wasn't able to - can someone tell me how I can attach it to this post or I could email it if someone wishes to have a look. - it's just a simple path created in Rhino. It would need light UVs/texture UVs and to have a collision channel. It would really be appreciated if someone could help or advise as at the moment I have a bit of a mental block on exporting from 3ds Max and haven't had much success so far.

Thank you

Gooner

[haldolium]

At the very first, I would look into the extreme polycount and reduce it massively. I don't know if it's just the perspective, but it looks way over the top.

For the unwrapping you should maybe considering breaking the mesh into several smaller meshes. You can still export it as one *.FBX file but you have more control over texture fidelity.

[gooner442]

That's what I mean by the process from which Rhino converts Nurbs to meshes. Unless objects are very simple it's hard to have great control over how it converts, which produces some many polygons.
So at the moment this mesh is going to be horrible to UV map?... I need to know if Rhino - 3ds Max - UE4 is not really a feasible workflow. I did ask in another thread if anyone had any tips regarding that workflow but had no response.

[gooner442]

Just found this, which might help:

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Rhinoceros

[haldolium]

Why not ditch Rhino entirely when you're even considering going through 3DSMax? I don't think NURBs are really feasible for anything game related, so it just creates a lot of extra work.

[gooner442]

I know 3ds Max too but only need to use it for the unwrapping process as Rhino isn't great at that. I work in a landscape architects and Rhino is integral to the workflow and much better working with CAD than 3ds Max. I thought when I joined I'd just do it all in 3ds Max but I understand why Rhino is used, it's a very good program.

I found this below and gave it a go and it seems to be the solution -

Kirk: I've played around with Rhino and making static meshes today, and if you have 3DS Max as well... they team up really well. You can just make yer NURBS in Rhino, easily and awesome, and then export it using the IGES file format. Max can import that, and it supports NURBS! So then you'll have Rhino-made NURBS in Max, which you can then UV Map is neccesary, or play with the Surface settings of the NURBS object instead. You can then use the automatic NURBS tesselation to generate a balanced number of polygons (doesn't have to be base 8 or anything), and then you just apply texture. You don't even have to collapse the tree or convert to Editable Mesh when exporting, from what I've noticed.