measurement unit

[jarmenkell]

i just can't understand - why do they say (in the technical manual) that i need to model that glass of water in meters? i suppose that all the fine adjustments of realistic light materials and stuff are made in millimeters, or am i mistaken

[Borgleader]

I could be wrong but i think the point here is to model it using meters as your measurement system inside your 3d application to make sure that the model's size is accurate upon export.

the reason being that some materials will somtimes look a lot different if your model is 2m wide instead of 2cm wide.

tl;dr; model your things to their real world measurements and it should be fine.

[jarmenkell]

that's what i mean!)
i'm now modelling (what a high-sounding word!=) a simple ikea-glass of water. should i use millimeters (e.g. 60mm - diameter of the bottom of the glass) or meters (0,06m).

there has to be a slight intersection between the glass and the body of water (as they say in that tech manual - you surely know what i'm talking about), and the measurements there are kind of ">0,2mm". it will be difficult (in Cinema 4D) to convert it to meters (0,0002m) =). or do i misunderstand something?

[lycium]

Hmm maybe we should change the Indigo world units to lightyears

[fused]

Hmm maybe we should change the Indigo world units to lightyears

Thats a good idea. That way the gap between the glass and the water can be specified in kilometers

[Borgleader]

@jarmenkell: the point i was trying to make is that your exporter probably "expects" you to be working with the metric system you could probably refer to the cinema 4d forum for the specifics on what you should use between millimeter or meters, my guess is meters would probably be more handy depending on what you are modeling.

i think what the manual meant by meters wasnt that you shouldnt use millimeters (because you could just adjust the scene scale value) but rather to steer away from the imperial system. because well 1.2 meters and 1.2 feet are two totally different measurements, where as you can easily switch between 1.2m and 1200mm by using a factor of 1000 or 0.001 depending on where you want to end up.

tl;dr; re-post your question in the cinema 4d forum, theyre bound to be able to help you with such specifics.

[PureSpider]

If you're working in C4D just use the unit you want to, in your case I assume it is mm.
Then set the unit you are using in the Cindigo options, all your measurements get converted to m on export time then.