Blocks, units, materials and edge softening weirdness

Rhino Rhino for Mac
1

This may be related to this issue but most topics are quite old so I wanted to create a fresh one.

I was working on a project involving lots of blocks before starting fresh, but importing the blocks from the original file. Somehow I created most of the imported blocks in mm, and one in feet. The new project was in cm.

All the blocks sized correctly, however it’s thrown out material mapping (in Cycles – Bella ok) and edge softening. I’m guessing they use proportional sizes. Adjusting edge softening on a block shows as expected while in editing mode, but changes when applying the edit. I suspect it rescales using the external unit.

When I tried to adjust the block units, the first option offered (change unit system only) the block maintains its physical size and the material is also unchanged.

When I chose the second option (change unit system and maintain object sizes) the object increased its size (I went from feet → inches as a test) while the material also scaled proportionally (i.e. still too large).

a) Shouldn’t these effects be the other way around?
b) Seems to be an inconsistency in rendering when editing / viewing blocks (plus related things).
c) Inconsistency in material mapping between Rendered mode and Raytraced (have encountered this multiple other times too).

I’m using Rhino Mac 8.11.24254.15002, 2024-09-10.

And just updated to 8.12.24282.07002, 2024-10-08 but problem (unsurprising) remains.

Interestingly, opening the same file in Rhino Mac 9.0.24282.12306, 2024-10-08 the unit change is still backwards, but the material scaling has changed.

Sorry for not providing a scientific breakdown of things individually. Doing something useful takes a whole lot of experimentation and I find that I end up just not bothering to list the problems as they are too numerous / too time consuming to document. I’d rather inform McNeel of a problem area then find out whether it’s a known issue first.

2

Can you attach a file or files that show the problem?

3

I’ve stripped my file down to something simpler. It still acts funny though – I couldn’t delete layers because they contained blocks which weren’t listed in the block manager.

In any case, here’s a file which should demonstrate two problems…

  • materials display differently between Rendered mode (looks good) and Retraced (looks scaled up)
  • changing the units on a block cause it to change size when I’ve asked it not to.
    Block problems.3dm (8.4 MB)

Let me know if you need more info (if for some chance it works fine on your machine).

Hopefully it’s not something stupid I’ve done. Hopefully it is something simple to fix.

4

I’ll check this in more detail tomorrow, but to get better results in the meantime select your W3a Block (or insert one and isolate), then _BlockEdit and hit apply. There is something funny going on with the material, but I don’t know yet what. The block edit appears to reset it - the texture doesn’t look exactly the same as in Rendered mode, but at least the bump map isn’t groteskly exaggerated.

5

Thanks for taking a look at this. Thought I’d throw in a bit more information to help for tomorrow.

The _BlockEdit does appear to reset a block instance but it is only temporary. I’ve attached screenshots of the original case, then _BlockEdit on one block followed by another. It may also be worth noting that I took screenshots as ViewCaptureToFile showed all bricks with the distorted material.

Stage 1
Stage 11024×768 646 KB

Fix block 1
Fix block 12972×1820 1.95 MB

fix block 2
fix block 22972×1820 1.95 MB

I also notice that the mapping appears to repeat on each block rather than be WCS mapping. Perhaps Cycles ignores that setting?

In fact, it looks to be the case. I’ve just changed to box mapping and the problem goes away (apart from each block repeating the same pattern).

6

Hi. Guessing you got sidetracked?

I’m continuing to work on other parts of my project, so not pushing. Just trying to avoid this issue being forgotten about.

7

Are you doing the _BlockEdit while Raytraced is active?

If I make sure I do this in a different mode then all the block definitions are update and look correct when I switch back to Raytraced. In the below I did _BlockEdit on one of the blocks. Saved as a new file, then reopened and switch to Raytraced. Looks quite sticky to me.

image
image1920×1293 296 KB

8

I had been doing it while in raytraced mode, although I wasn’t sure whether you were saying I should be or not. In any case, it doesn’t appear to make a difference.

I’ve attached a video of the process. Note that I’m doing this on my original file, rather than the one I stripped down to share. Let me know if you would like me to do it on that one.

Although possibly irrelevant, I don’t want the related issue of the blocks changing sizes when units are changed getting lost in the noise, as it does seem to be a scaling issue with the material.

1 Like
9

Hi @nathanletwory
This seems to be an old bug I reported on in V6 and sent in models but got no response. Texture mapping was lost even after block editing and saving, I’m still seeing this bug in V7. This is why I gave up on using blocks

And the scaling bug is still present in V7 for curve piping and edge softening that is in a block. If the original block is in inches and I bring it into a metric session then the block scales ok but the curve piping and edge softening units don’t convert and remain at their original input in inch units. So a 2 inch curve pipe setting doesn’t change and comes in as 2 meters.
RM

10

I was saying that you should not do it in Raytraced mode.

11

I’m sorry. I’m really at my wit’s end here. I’ve tried the proverbial “everything”.

During this last week, “everything” has consisted of…

  • executing _BlockEdit while in shaded mode / rendered mode
  • _ExplodeBlock then _Block (might have worked but the blocks all changed to be really huge)

Actually, I can’t think of anything else. I tried so many combinations of approaches I’ve become overwhelmed by it all.

I could post more videos of the results if that helped, but only if requested (for the sake of not cluttering this thread).