new user....Mesh smoothness?

#1

Howdy,

I think I finally cracked the learning curve with Wings3D this weekend and have made the beginnings of a new model…I wanted to try and get it into EI and wasn’t sure of the best method. First I tried no smoothing within wings and just exported the .OBJ and got lots of jaggies in EI …

So, I went to each part and smoothed twice to get the shape here:

http://orangepeelproductions.com/orbs/wheelbot_wire.jpg

Is this too much tesselation for these object? Is there a rule of thumb of how much to smooth within Wings before export? Can you untesselate after you’ve smoothed and saved?

Smoothing twice seemed to be the best with minimal jaggies…:

http://orangepeelproductions.com/orbs/wheelbot_GI_1.jpg

Thanks Wings3D users!

Ryan

PS…on another note, I could have sworn it was this site, but did anyone see that really cool contest winner of the knight on a horse fighting a guy below? It was a combination 2D/3D I believe and I thought Wings was used to model the 3D stuff…I cannot find it anywhere and I’d like to see it again.

#2

The general rule of thumb is to keep your models as boxy as possible, while allowing for localized detailing…

instead of subdividing your models quite so much try this… keep em boxier, and then…export>selected as say .obj, and click the little box beside ".obj option, and dial in the amount of subd steps you wish… and/or let the modifiers etc within your main solution do this task… :slight_smile:

hth’s

btw, nice concept and render :slight_smile:

#3

If you do that, would the file size stay the same as if you didn’t do that?

#4

If you hit shift+tab you can “preview” your model with one level of subdivision. However, it does not actually subdivide the mesh itself. If you try clicking on a face you’ll notice you’re still editing your boxy model. Hit shift+tab again and you’ll jump back to your boxy model. This can be kinda handy when you want to adjust your boxy model and still see how it will look once its been subdivided a bit.

#5

Thanks for the response! I didn’t get an email that anyone responded. I found that I need to smooth each object twice to get the smoothness in EI. I didn’t know you could set subd steps on export…I will look into that. I made some changes and additions:

http://orangepeelproductions.com/orbs/wire2.jpg

http://orangepeelproductions.com/orbs/wire3.jpg

http://orangepeelproductions.com/orbs/wheelbot_GI_Project_2.jpg

There are more in the /orbs directory if you want to see some other tests. The other models were made in EIM (Electric Image Modeler).

Ryan

#6

thats just freaking cool… :frowning: I dont understand why I cant pull of things like that.

#7

Thanks! Keep at it and you will…How long have you been doing 3D? I’ve been doing 3D since 1997-98…so I have a bit of practice with lots of different apps. However, Wings is the first Sub-d tool I’ve gotten my head around…cool stuff!

Ryan

#8

You shouldn’t smooth your object, let the renderer do that.
When you render you can set the amount of sub-divides. Otherwise you will have to sub-div and then render, then undo two steps. If you just want to see what the model looks like smoothed, hit Shift + Tab.

#9

But I’m not rendering in Wings…I’m exporting to another app for rendering. If I don’t hit S twice the models are too faceted when exported to another app.

#10

Oh ok. But that’s not very good either =P
Can you only export/import as obj?

#11

The method I use is to save the lowest poly (original) version in .wings format and then smooth after doing so for exporting purposes. Just remember to disable auto-save and not to click save when closing. (Otherwise the base resolution mesh gets replaced.)

#12

Then you just need to type ‘2’ in the ‘Sub-division Steps’ field of the Export dialog

#13

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