With the launch of Advanced CAD Support, RapidPipeline can now process an even wider range of CAD formats, seamlessly converting them to market ready real-time models.
To showcase how RapidPipeline can enhance your CAD workflow, here is a step-by-step process of converting this month’s model of the month, an engine created in SOLIDWORKS, to a real time asset.
1. Import and auto conversion to real-time
To be able to import any advanced CAD models, be sure to have the CAD Plan added to your subscription.
Once that is done, simply import your assets into RapidPipeline. Any CAD models imported to RapidPipline are automatically tessellated and converted into GLB, GLTF and USDC formats.
Note that we offer three levels of resolution for tessellating CAD models. These are fine, medium and coarse. These can be thought of as high, medium and low resolution respectively. For auto conversion, RapidPipeline tessellates any imported CAD model to the highest resolution. Note that the resolution can be edited to fit the users' needs when processing the model with a preset.
CAD Input:
Auto-Converted Output Tessellation:
Depending on your needs and if your file is small enough, this auto-converted format can already be enough to meet your real time needs.
02. Topology Optimization
To reduce the general fie size, RapidPipeline offers various solutions for reducing a models face count. In this example we will use two that are very optimal for CAD models: Decimation and Occlusion Culling.
Decimation allows us to reduce the mesh complexity of model while maintaining its topology. Occlusion culling on the other hand cleans up our mesh by removing any invisible interior geometry.
By processing our model using these two settings, we can reduce our asset’s polycount from 1.4 million polygons to just about 220k polygons, making it much more efficient for real time use without losing detail.
While not used in this example, another feature we offer that is quite useful for optimizing CAD models is Small Feature Culling. As the name suggests, this feature allows you to remove geometry that is smaller than a customizable size.
Auto Conversion vs Decimation screenshots
03. UVs & Texture Optimization for CAD
As most CAD models do not support UVs, we can use RapidPipeline to generate a UV map for our real-time output.
For this we have two options, Generate UV Atlas: This generates a new atlas in a 1-by-1 UV space.
Cube Unwrapping: This works in a similar way to Blender’s cube projection.
For this example, we are using the former.
Additionally, we can use RapidPipeline’s baking features to not only bake the materials from our input CAD model, but we can also generate a normal map and an ambient occlusion map. For this case we will only be baking an occlusion map.
Without AO vs With AO
4. The Final Model
All these processes can be easily combined into one custom preset allowing for a very streamlined workflow for optimizing your models.
Processing our model with such a preset gives us a real-time output that is only 10MB with 220K polys, complete with baked base colour maps and an ao map.
Hover your mouse or click below to be able to interact with the 3D model:
Want to try it for your yourself?
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Meet the Author
Daniel
Technical 3D Artist
Daniel is a 3D and VR artist and responsible for QA at DGG. Working with leading retailers, DGG is on a mission to automate 3D asset optimization workflows for Web, mobile and XR targets - for e-commerce, and beyond. Daniel completed his studies in Expanded Realities at the Hochschule Darmstadt.
