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Trestkon
07-24-2003, 04:40 AM
This is related to the 3dbuzz 3dsmax course, in which the first project is to construct an office scene out of only primities. To get various eye pleasing shapes, I've been having to overlay multiple primities.

In the following pictures I've just combined some cylinders and boxes to the the desired shape, this leaves visible seams, which I usually fix by applying the smooth modifier, but in this case it seems to have made the edges of the cylinders more pronounced, any way I can fix this?

This is the shape without smoothing, notice the seams, but also notice that the edges of the cyliders are smooth.

http://www.planetdeusex.com/tnm/trestkonstuff/Renders/lampbottomwithoutsmooth.jpg

This is the shape with the smooth modifier applyed, notice that the seams are gone, but the edges of the cylinder have become much less smooth:shrug:

http://www.planetdeusex.com/tnm/trestkonstuff/Renders/lampbottomwithsmooth.jpg

Any help is appreciated, and sorry for the image quality, I wasn't thinking when I shot those:P
Trestkon
07-24-2003, 05:16 AM
Acutally, the cylinder edge smoothness difference is not very clear in the pics, but you can see it if you look at the left cylinder right where it joins the box.
EricChadwick
07-25-2003, 02:41 PM
To avoid seams like this, model it as one object instead of overlapping different objects or elements. It takes a bit more time with the tools to understand how to do this, but once you do it is quite easy.

The thread Theoretical SUB-D Discussion! is a good read, worth your time I think.
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40373
Trestkon
07-25-2003, 04:36 PM
Originally posted by posm
To avoid seams like this, model it as one object instead of overlapping different objects or elements. It takes a bit more time with the tools to understand how to do this, but once you do it is quite easy.

The thread Theoretical SUB-D Discussion! is a good read, worth your time I think.
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40373


Thanks for the advice, I should have mentioned that for the project we are only supposed to use primitives:) And no converting to editable mesh or poly.
chrisdejoya
07-26-2003, 06:52 PM
I don't think the point of the exercise is to model a perfect scene but to get you thinking in terms of general component shapes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the people at 3D Buzz probably kept the limitations of modeling in all primitives in mind,

have fun.
Trestkon
07-26-2003, 07:25 PM
You're quite right, they did, but I'm rather a perfectionist, and want to make sure I learn everything I can along the way.
EricChadwick
07-28-2003, 02:43 PM
Most people don't model with primitives, except as a starting point.

Only benefit I can see with using unaltered primitives is with a system like VRML, where certain primitives can be used to greatly reduce your file sizes (but they can increase poly counts, since they use a fixed tesselation. It's a tradeoff).

So this seam is mostly unavoidable, except for some material tricks, like laying a plane on top of the sema then carefully creating an opacity map. A real waste of time though.

My 2 cents.
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