Sure, the workflow itself is pretty straightforward (and a work in progress). I’ll try to explain the logic used for this project below:
Modelling:
Before even finishing the 3D model, I’ll keep in mind how things will be worked/exported to Blender. For example, a sphere with a cylinder going through it may be easier to adjust/export/UV unwrap individually rather than boolean union them together into a single object (even if it’s more “technically” correct).
This is also why you shouldn’t add micro-bevels to every edge: it makes it harder to adjust the mesh later on, it makes them much heavier and you can often smooth all the edges in the render rather than physically modelling each one.
I keep this in mind when modelling details. Sometimes I rather group solids than to boolean union them.
Export:
The format I use is FBX with 1) welded vertices, 2) no triangulation (better yet exporting with n-gons), 3) good enough resolution (so that curved surfaces remain smooth but not too much that it slows down performance unnecessarily or makes adjustments difficult).
Exporting from Rhino as STP > importing into MOI 3D > and exporting as FBX gives me the cleanest, most usable mesh I can get - I pretty much don’t need to do any clean up or remeshing and it’s still easy to UV unwrap. You don’t get those typical nasty CAD meshes.
(I use MOI because it allows for great control when exporting meshes but you can do without it. I export each part/sub-assembly individually because each part requires different levels of detail.)
Remeshing:
Not done unless I really need it. I’ll only do it if I need/want the mesh to have perfect topology or there are weird shading artifacts. Usually this is not a problem as I only do still renders and don’t need it for game assets or complex mesh deformation/animation.
When I do unwrap, I’ve had great results with the Quad Remesher plugin. There’s other free plugins and these are just nice extras to have.
Even though I don’t typically remesh, I may do some quick cleanup to remove unnecessary vertices and or fix minor shading artifacts.
Texturing & UV unwrapping:
With a mesh with decent topology (easy with MOI!) it’s easy enough to UV unwrap without having perfect quad topology (specially for this kind of industrial/hard surface models).
I use “Smart unwrap” for everything I can and manually UV unwrap the rest. In Blender, it’s even possible to automatically select all the sharp edges and mark them as seams, which is almost like an instant UV unwrap.
Extras and closing thoughts:
There’s lots of things which are easier done in Blender (cables, string, cloth, duct tape, zip ties, etc.) Evaluate what each program does best and work accordingly.
As of right now I’m testing out a workflow to bridge Blender and Rhino together so that I can work on the same 3D model on both programs so I can (hopefully) work much faster and be less limited by certain workflows. I’ll still need to do an entire project with it to perfect it.
