Imported Objects

Position

Imported objects are not visually placed at the origin of the World / Object Coordinate System. In fact, they’re placed quite a distance away. Unfortunately the object’s axis is still placed at the World / Object Coordinate System’s origin. So, if you want to rotate the view around your freshly imported object you will be out of luck – by default you will rotate around the active object’s origin. The solution:

In the Axis mode move the object’s origin to the object.

Shading Errors

Several factors can contribute to the quality of an imported mesh being very bad: The model itself that was imported, the format used, the software’s export options from which the object was exported. It very often happens that very long triangles are created that lead to poor render quality. To keep this from happening, try to optimize the import & export settings of all importers & exporters involved. Some alternative solutions:

• Vary the Phong tag’s Phong Angle . Every polygonal object has its own Phong tag.
• If the object was imported as separate polygon objects it can be helpful to bring them together to a single polygonal object (Object Manager: Object / Group Objects). If you try this, don’t forget the following point:
• Optimize the object (main menu: Mesh / Remove / Optimize). This eliminates unnecessary points and optimizes polygons.
• You can manually define Phong edges in the event you need to make edges along specific (geometric) edges visible (main menu: Mesh / Normals / Unbreak Phong Shading).
• Regarding the importing of *.obj and *.vrml files: normal tags will also be imported which help in shading. It can occur that the vertex Normals have the wrong orientation. In the Normals tag you will find several buttons with which you can "remedy" this.
If none of this helps a last resort would be to edit the mesh with Cinema 4D’s structure tools, i.e., delete points and or polygons at the trouble spots and create them anew. This is, of course, more work but can’t be avoided in some cases.