I am such a patient noobie :)

[Chris]

I'm not too sure what you mean, isnt that what meshsmooth is meant to do? :) Perhaps you could post a screenshot - then we might be able to shed some light...

[jsharratt]

Here is my mess up mesh smoothed :wip:

[jsharratt]

Here is the wireframe :wip:

[jsharratt]

Notice the ripple bits why oh why is it doing this i am tracing the side of a dodge viper blueprint so it should of been flat faced more or less on the sides, well that was the intention :confused:

[Chris]

Thats pretty much what Meshsmooth should do, what are you trying to acheive? [edit] didnt see your post about it being for a viper :)

If you are trying to get it 'less rounded' - go to the modifier tab & under the meshsmooth settings activate 'edge' subobject mode, select all the edges & increase the 'crease' setting - that will pull all the edges towards the mesh control cage (which you can have a look at by checking 'show control cage' (or show control mesh - somthing like that...)

:)

the other thing you could do is add more geometry. The way meshsmooth works is the more gemetry is any given area, the more closely it will follow the low-poly mesh. If you chamfered all the edges you will end up with sharper corners...

[jsharratt]

Im trying to achieve a smooth overall look as I am trying to end up with a dodge viper car model :cool: I was hoping to get the sides not rippled but smooth all over as one etc and looking more solid rather than cut into as it is at the moment makin it look like ripples.

[Chris]

try those crease settings on any edges you want sharper, hopefully that'll do the trick!

err, just to check, you do actually want those 'in & out' bits, that make it look a bit like a heatsink? or is that the problem?

[jsharratt]

Thats the probelm those heat sink look alike bits, its meant to be all flat basically on the side.:wip:


Please say people who start are meant to be this crap *lol*


Thanks for your help maybe i am being to ambitious :D

Thanks

Jonathan Sharratt

[Chris]

aaah! righto then, the problem is that you have geometry inside the object. It should be hollow (like an eggshell)

at this stage it will probably be faster to start from scratch unfortunatley. Rather than extruding to get the shape try creating a box with enough segments already that you could then move into position...

(the diagram is done in photoshop, so excuse the dodgyness of it) :D

[jsharratt]

Thats Kewl, Im never going to pull this model off, ahh well here we go again 5th time lucky :p Youve been very very helpful i do appreciate this.


Thanks alot

Jonathan Sharratt (me = Noobie + 3dsm) :shrug:

[Joel Hooks]

personally, I would set the bar a bit lower myself. Cars and humanoid faces are some of the hardest 3d to accomplish, IMO. It can get frustrating when you are learning to get past the concepts and learning the interface.

Model some toy cars, or just try and model out specific shapes.

The link in my sig has some links to different 3ds MAX tutorials and tutorial sites. There are a couple good car tuts in there.

And yes, everybodies starts with crap 3d. hehe

[Chris]

Yeah, definately don't stress about starting off crap - everyone does, it takes a long time unitil you can get what you want on that monitor - but when you do its better than... well, actually, its not - but its a pretty good feeling nonetheless! ;)

[ToddD]

Lowdown is 100% right! I've been reading and responding to your posts all week. Again, when we start out we are all anxious to create, but you really need to familiarize yourself with the program and it's toolset a little more before trying something soo ambitous. I personally believe that if you do some basic tutorials, your progress will be faster. These boring, sometimes laughable tutorials do serve a purpose, without them you will be driving into a brick wall again and again. Patience is a Virtue!:D

[ToddD]

Oh and if you are using Max4, look into polymodeling with meshtools. You can go to Trinsica.com, and READ his tutorial on this technique, this is how I approach car modeling. There is no reason you should be aligning vertices for hours, you could mass out an entire car in a few hours! Good luck, and read, read, read!:)

[xynaria]

I think at the moment you shuld play as much as you can, so you can learn in a more fun fashion. As for the Viper I would have that as an ongoing project that you used what you learn on rather than frustrating yourself with trying to get it right immediately. On the subject of the heatsink.. there is another method apart from creasing which doesn't distort the mesh but will (with no small amount of practice)get you what I think you want and that is using Smoothing Groups. Some programmes allow you to set whether an edge is hard or soft.. Max does it by smoothing groups on faces. Read the online help on smoothing groups then try playing with selecting the faces you want to be flat and assigning them low smoothing angles. Alternatively.. chamfer the edges slightly that you want to be sharp and they shoudn't smooth as much as they are at the moment. :)

[jsharratt]

Wow this forum rocks, thanks for all your responses I am very apprecitative. YOu have given me the insight to get some where now :cool:


Thanks alot everyone


Jonathan Sharratt

[Marc Andreoli]

regarding the 'radiator look':
make sure you select all side faces and extrude them at the same time. If you select rows of faces and extrude each at the time, it will create 'pillars' which might look like a single surface because there is no gap inbetween them, but cause those ridges when you smooth it out as the end faces are not connected.

And a good thing to do when you have those ridges showing up, is go back to the unsmoothed geometry, area select a vertex and make sure it selects only one if it says '2 vertices selected' (or more) in the menu panel on the right, then there might be something you want to check.

hope this makes sense, let me know if something is not clear, I'll try to post an illustration.

-marc

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