Masterful Booleans? Methods?

[KiboOst]

Funny, just finished a complew mechanical modeling. I do it in edit poly, and as max booleans totally sux, the finest way to do it was to find a way to do only one boolean operaiton a the end of modeling. Then of cours,e you need to clean the mesh, also adjust some smoothgroups. Even shapemerger totally suxe, take a 5 vertices spline, shapmerge it, you get randomely near 10 vertices on the shapemerdged... So the right method is : don't use it, or go for a big mesh cleaning party !!

If this kind of modelling is usual for you, maybe you should have a look here : http://www.npowersoftware.com/npPowerBooleans.htm
Never seen it working, but seems great. Do know if it also solve the shapemerge problems, don't think so.

Cheers

Kib

[Dave Black]

Hey, thanks, KiboOst

Your method sounds pretty cool. Back in my autocad days, I lived and died by booleans. I now hate them. Only reason I'm asking about all this is that I'm afraid that someday I will be asked to do something very complicated, such as vehicle, like a plane or space craft. Especially if it has a smooth body but with lots of doors, hatches and seams. I'm actually going to order power booleans and see what it's all about.


Thanks for the tips, and good luck to us all!



:beer:

[Hec]

I've never heard anything good about booleans. I think you should be able to model it on your own and if you can't.... well, yah. Thats my thoughts.

[CapnPanic]

there is a demo of powerbooleans available on their site, which you should definitely download and give a try. i did so myself and was not disappointed. i found i could layer up boolean operations without the dire consequences that i get with max booleans. seems to me that this is DEFINITELY the way to go if one needs booleans in 3ds max. check it out!

[Dave Black]

Just a note about this topic in regards to Hec's comment.

There are some operations that require booleans. Such as cutting an exact shape out of a mesh. Or cutting a mesh period. Think about the Deathstar from starwars. A perfect sphere cut out of a perfect sphere. But there are other uses.

Can you model animation? Like a door being cut open by a laser?

Booleans have their place, and are a valuable tool in our box. I personally was only asking this question because I want to find the best methods to utilize them.

If you follow the link I posted at the begining of this thread, you will see a ship made with many booleans. It's totally awsome. I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how I'd go about doing that with sub-d.

Perhaps you can shed some light?

[3rd Dimentia]

I don't understand that if you can model the positive part that you're cutting out of another mesh, then why can't you just model the same thing in negative into the model to start with? All you have to do is sort out the intersection. I've avoided booleans since real 3d back on the Amiga. They worked very nicely. So when I switched to 3ds DOS I was appalled at the mess they made (if they actually worked at all.)
I can't remember what book it was in, but they had a page heading "Booleans are evil" and I totally agree.

[Iain McFadzen]

You should be able to model absolutely any shape without using booleans. If you can't, you can't model. Simple as.

If you are after super-accuracy then you probably shouldn't be modeling with Max subdivs anyway, you should be using a CAD program or even a nurbs modeller such as Rhino.

[KiboOst]

iain, you think this because booleans are unusable into max, but cutting volume from volume can make you model really fast in certains case. Sure you can do it by hand, but it's longer then. Anyway, I talk about mechanical modeling, organic modeling sure don't need booleans, or there is a problem lol !

Kib

[ToddD]

3DZealot, that guy used Maya to make that, if that was done in max I would have been amazed as well! I read the whole thread just to see, someone mentioned max, he said it wasn't max, but Maya!
:eek:

[Erka2]

You want to tell, that in Maya it is possible to use Boolean because they there work... And in Max is not present, because all can be made and without them. And I have not understood as it is possible to cut out from a sphere a sphere without Boolean?

[Dave Black]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Tbonz816:

Um, I never said that the guy modeled that ship in max, but was asking if anyone knew any tricks to get the booleans in max to work properly.


Iain McFadzen:

I agree that you can model most anything with sub-d, though you did just sort of contradict yourself. If I need a CAD program to model with accuracy, than not all things can be modeled with sub-d.

I think my original question was not clear enough. The hull of that ship is smooth as silk, with all the organic curves we expect from a ship or plane, but has many, many sharp and angular cuts into the hull. Though sub-d is my modeling choice, I was simply attempting to further understand the nature of Max's booleans.

It would seem that it really is just Max, and that perhaps places Maya up a notch in my brain. It's easy to think about these things in abstract, but when my boss comes to me someday and asks me to make something like that ship, and I have to do it quick, I'm not confident enough in my abilities with sub-d to actually come up with something of that quality.

Looks like I have some work to do...

Thanks all!

:D

[Wiro]

Iain McFadzen wrote:

"You should be able to model absolutely any shape without using booleans. If you can't, you can't model. Simple as. "


I'm sorry but I think that is total rubbish! Any trick in the book is allowed if the model looks and works great. There are many things that are too tedious to model without booleans, some are even impossible to just do by hand and "eyeball". On the other hand booleans can produce messy meshes so don't use them if you really want a clean mesh.

Now max's booleans do suck but that doesn't mean booleans are bad per se. They work great in Rhino and I've had luck in other polygonal software packages too.

Wiro

[ToddD]

The question wasn't clear, a boolean question in the MAX section of the forum, with a reference to another thread made me believe you were under the impression that it was done in max. :shrug: Sorry for the response

[halo]

imho subs or meshsmooth or whatver yoiu want to call it can model pretty much anything, however accuracy and time play a major factor in how useful the method is...thats why the car manufacturers still haven't decided between polygon and nurbs for the description of their designs, each method still has it's drawbacks.

as for booleans...max's booleans are arse, but yes powerbooleans plugin is better....

scale also plays a part in max's boolean success as does mesh density, theres no written rule, just play with them a little if you dont get what you like....but in max its best to try and model around them unless there is absolutely no other way (practical way)

[riley_ag]

do the booleans still suck in max5?

[KiboOst]

I've just tried power booleans demo, and it's work like max boolean should, really nicely ! No extra vertices, that's astonishing seeing this under max :cool:

I've heard that algorhytm for booleans are known and open source, so why discreet have never fix them ??

Kib

[gaggle]

I think we're all waiting for Discreet to go huntin' down all MAX source-code files they have that haven't been modified since, like, 1992 :)

[Dave Black]

riley_ag:

Just got my Max 5 upgrade last week, and yes, the booleans suck.


Wiro:

Thanks for your comments, I agree 100%.


To all:
For those still reading at this thread, perhaps everyone could go and have at the thread I posted at the beginning of this debate.

Maybe everyone could pitch-in and talk about how they would go about modeling that ship. It's easy for us to talk about the impossible, but maybe it would be better to talk about the work-arounds.

For those of you who have said that anything can be modeled with sub-d, please offer a link to something you have done that is similar to what is displayed in that thread(and I say this not to be a jerk, just want to see something like that in sub-d...I am honestly interested).

-3DZ

[Iain McFadzen]

I wasn't having a go at booleans either, I was having a go at max booleans. The original question was specifically about Max booleans after all. I stand by what I said. If you want to model an object in Max and subdivide it don't use booleans, if you want to use booleans or need more accuracy than non-boolean modeling would allow then use a better modeller like rhino. I wasn't being judgemental, I was being pragmatic (though I'll admit I was in a terrible mood when I wrote it and I have a tendency to come across as a bit abrupt at the best of times :) ).

[xynaria]

Booleans in Max are .. er.. not perhaps the best....but.. you can get them to work and even Rhino can fail on booleans. The trick if you must use them is to think topology in exactly the same way that you would when performing any other kind of mesh editing, after all..... do you really want to have to have and to clean up loads of unneccessary polys. :)

[Rmortis]

hi,
some one nokw a boolean plug in freefor max 4,
the discret plug in have a time limit?
Un saludo,
sorry mine english :hmm:


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