General Mesh Cleaning

[conio]

You can alter the vertice count by setting the interpolation in the spline shape. However, you will have to manually make quads by splitting, welding, etc. So, as far as I know there is no "short-time" solution for this....

[GearSpinner]

Nikronius

Hey there. I also use splines to create geometry sometimes so I've run into this same issue. I'm not sure if this will help but let me describe my splines to poly workflow.

After creating the spline, I go into the Extrude options and set a few things differently. First, I set If you use the 'general' tesselation method, you might get some pretty funky results. From the pic, it looks like you might be using either that or 'control points,' which uses the control points themselves to create detail. Personally, I use 'count.' The reason for this is that because count gives you a even distribution of polygons and you can set how complex the resulting geometry should be. Then I use the select edge loop tool to remove unwanted geometry (which it looks like you could get away with using there the example if those are quads). So you might try that. The other option there is to use the 'control points' method to your advantage and only place extra cps where you really want that detail on the mesh.

With this sort of thing, there is rarely a magic wand of sorts, but there are ways to make the work less tedious. The spline usually only gets me 20% of the way there, the rest is moving verts and adding/subtracting loops. With some experimenting you can find what method is best for you.

Of course, if any more experienced artists out there have advice, I'd like to hear it too :)

[Nikronius]

Nikronius

Hey there. I also use splines to create geometry sometimes so I've run into this same issue. I'm not sure if this will help but let me describe my splines to poly workflow.

After creating the spline, I go into the Extrude options and set a few things differently. First, I set If you use the 'general' tesselation method, you might get some pretty funky results. From the pic, it looks like you might be using either that or 'control points,' which uses the control points themselves to create detail. Personally, I use 'count.' The reason for this is that because count gives you a even distribution of polygons and you can set how complex the resulting geometry should be. Then I use the select edge loop tool to remove unwanted geometry (which it looks like you could get away with using there the example if those are quads). So you might try that. The other option there is to use the 'control points' method to your advantage and only place extra cps where you really want that detail on the mesh.

With this sort of thing, there is rarely a magic wand of sorts, but there are ways to make the work less tedious. The spline usually only gets me 20% of the way there, the rest is moving verts and adding/subtracting loops. With some experimenting you can find what method is best for you.

Of course, if any more experienced artists out there have advice, I'd like to hear it too :)

sorry but im not sure of what are you talking about... the extrude modifier? I dont see the options 'general', 'control points' or 'count', I am using 3ds Max 2010 just in case.

[GearSpinner]

haha... d'oh! :blush: I'm sorry, I assumed you were using Maya, and since I don't use Max usually I can't really help there. Hopefully that's helpful to somebody who passes through.

best of luck!

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