target welding ?

[Iain McFadzen]

There is target welding in Epoly, I suggest you look a bit harder.

One thing you'll have to bare in mind though, there are much more strict "rules" for welding verts in Epoly than in Emesh. Emesh will let you weld absolutely any vert to any other vert, wheras Epoly won't let you weld two verts if it will result in an illegal surface. Illegal surfaces include more than two polys sharing an edge, two polys which share an edge having opposing normals, and basically anything else which will break the unified, single surface.

Max can be a bit flakey with these rules though, and sometimes won't allow you to weld verts which should weld just fine (usually happens when you try to kill a poly by welding two of it's oppposite corners together). There are ways around this, such as connecting the verts with an edge first then welding them (a meshtools command).

Finally, if you are using Max4.0 then get the free 4.2 upgrade before you do anything else. Epoly was a nightmare in 4.0 and welding rarerly worked at all.

[hili]

i am absolutely sure target welding doesnt work in my version
it is not even activated (no plus sign), but i am using version 4.
so you say it all works fine in 4.2 ?
i wasnt aware of that, thanks

[DanielWichterich]

In addition I would suggest to install the EPoly 2 which enables edge extrusion.
http://www.maxplugins.de/r4_files/epoly_42.zip

[dvornik]

I think epoly2 extrudes each edge separately which makes it kind of useless. I use one of the "Jozef Tools" that lets you duplicate and move selected polys.

[DanielWichterich]

i think there are a lot of people who start modelling from an open shape, e.g. the shape of an eye. therefore epoly 2 is quite useful. i am note sure what you meant by "each edge seperately". can you explain more detailed?
right now i am testing these "jozef tools". thanks fo the hint!

[dvornik]

I agree that you need the ability to extrude edges in poly modelling. My teacher for instance switches from polys to mesh just to shift-copy edges sometimes. I think max 5 fixes it.

I tried to use EPoly 2 a couple of months ago, but when I extruded several edges together (like a closed shape for an arm or an eyelid opening) it creates separate edges - like, it looks one shape, but the vertices arn't welded. At least that's how it worked for me. Come to think of it I may have shift-copied them instead of extruding them properly.

So I stopped using EP2 - maybe I didn't use it right. Jozef Tools work well but unfortunately you have to click on it each time to activate - it doesn't stay active like "extrude". I'm surprized something like that isn't built-in into max.

Rudolf the reindeer - that's one nasty reindeer, dude.

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