question about poly subdivision

#1

this is probably a redundant question, but i’m not exactly sure where to look for an answer.

i was just wondering if there are any plans, or plug-ins, or even if it is currently possible to do subdivisions of polys similar to the way C4D and the other programs do it? it really slows things down for me when i have to cut edges, connect v’s, tweak stuff, and delete stuff, all to maintain a clean mesh. it would be great to just be able to add the poly’s i need by selecting a few faces and working from there.

maybe i’m lazy, but after about 5 weeks of playing with wings, that’s probably one of my biggest gripes, and i hate griping about a great, free modeling solution.

any information or efficient work arounds people have figured out would be great to know.

thanks for sharing,
Skip

#2

are you saying you wish to do poly by poly modeling with a create poly type tool? if so, this isnt really the way wings is meant to be used.

wings3d is a volume based modeler. The faces are always sealed and the only way to export a hole is to use the hole material.

#3

Please be a bit more clear as to what the nature of the problem is… perhaps a pic of the before state and after state. I have spent a bit of time with C4D and with the exception of a few things like the up coming mesh surgury pack, Wings is a vastly more efficient modeler.

#4

i don’t have webspace to post before and afters, but i think i can fairly efficiently explain what i’m missing.

first off, of the various programs i’ve used, wings is by far the most intuitive for me to use.

i probably don’t have the terminology correct, but what i’m wondering about how to subdivide portions of the mesh surface more efficiently. i’ve been working through various head modeling tutorials to get a feel for a few things (like edgeloops, the various problems of maintaining a smooth surface across a curve, and trying to make sure my surface reflects the underlying structure of the form.)

i’ve played a bit with c4d, xsi, and i think lightwave’s free demos, and they have been extremely challenging to me when it comes to picking up how to model an object. mostly due to the complexity of the interface, as opposed to wings.

this morning i was playing with c4d, working through a face tutorial, and i figured out how to subdivide certain faces. the subdivision function maintains quads throughout the process. i guess i could sit around and stare at subdivided faces to memorize where vertices need to be to maintain quad polys, but that just seems tedious when most of the other programs out there have some form of this.

hmmm

as i was typing i went back and looked at c4d and what it was going on and i was wrong. don’t i feel silly.

so maybe it’s not a function offered in other programs, although i seem to remember some program that doesn’t let anything but quads be created.

what i would like to see is a tool that will automatically subdivide selected faces into only quads, or some tutorial about the theory of working only with quads. having no training in 3d modeling, i feel like i’m missing what might be basic theory about working on meshes. i know enough to recognize a great mesh when i see one, but i don’t really have a deep understanding of what hat the steps are to work my way out of a triangle or an ngon, or when it’s okay to keep them around.

sorry for being unclear, and for basically being wrong…i’ll try not to do it again :stuck_out_tongue:

as always, any info will be greatly appreciated.
skip

#5

this is annoying…

reading farther thru the tutorial i didn’t finish, i did come across the ability that c4d has to “untriangulate” a poly/face.

is there any chance of something like that making it into wings?

thanks
skip

#6

Can you post the link to the tut ?

#7

http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~mimura/tutorials/index_e.html

untriangulate shows up on page 3, i think.

Skippy

#8

Okay. I think i sorta understand you. I’m really not sure why you would want to quad just a few faces though. You can do that by simply smoothing the selection, but as you’ve probably notices, this messes with the surrounding mesh.

I never really bothered with any of these quicker solutions, so I’m probably not the best to answer this, but here goes…

Hanging vertices (verts chillin in the middle of an edge, unconnected to anything else)
Select->By->Vertices With->2 edges
Delete

Faces like what the untriangulate tool does. I didnt find an exact match.
You can either select the edges and delete
or select the faces on either side of the edge you want to kill and delete
neither are great solutions, but I never found having excess tris to be a big deal to cleanup. Puzzlepaul will probably have a better solution.

As for the quadrangulating you seem to want to do
there is a tesselate option in the face’s r-click menu. you can either triangulate or quadrangulate. this does not untriangulate nor does it subdivide quads. It will tesselate ngons tho.
there is smooth if you want to do the entire thing. harden the edges to retain the planarity of the faces.

    or there is just smooth which works fine for my purposes.

increased control over subdividing:
edge loop->bevel for two subdivisions replacing the original. creates tris at the ends
edge loop->extrude edge. 3 edges.
edge ring->connect (or numerical subdivide and then connect. this has issues with connecting to the right verts tho).
extrude and intrude work well.

hope that helps.

#9

thanks for the reply, Goon,

you basically got it in one at the start… i sorta would like the ability to quad only selected faces. maybe it’s not needed, but i see it as a way to add spot detail, while keeping the rest of the mesh as simple as possible.

i have been running into problems deciding which loops are more important to keep, such as the areas near eyes, or the nose, where the articulating loops cross into detail creating loops. i know some of that ends up being decisions about where poles are acceptable, and that’s also a part of my problem, but i’m not sure that’s something i should throw into this thread.

as far as deleting edges when it comes to tris, and adding edges with ngons, that’s where the core of my question stems from. it seems like there is a fairly straightforward mathematical solution to fixing areas of my mesh geometry, but i don’t know it, and i don’t remember all of what i should recall to solve it.

i hadn’t figured out the tesselate option yet, thanks for mentioning it. i mainly work with edges and vertices, so that’s a new tool to add to my box.

i always forget about hard edges, too. i wonder if i can use that with smooth to get some of what i’m looking for. i also didn’t realize to use extrude on an edgeloop. that might speed things up a lot…

bevel, i did know about. i also found that selecting the internal edges created in a bevel and then connecting them, you get all quads. i haven’t played with it to see what happens with various levels of smoothing tho.

thanks for the great tips, i appreciate it.

Skippy

#10

are you aware of the poly proxy mode?
this might help you keep an eye on the smoothing solution for your mesh.

to use it, select any component of the object (body, face, edge, or vertices), view->toggle poly proxy.

#11

I’m not sure that I really understand what it is you want but you can smooth a selection of faces (select required faces and press s)

The problem with any “automatic” modelling method and really Cinemas problem as a subdivision modeller (I love Cinema, it’s great for poly by poly and has a superb renderer but it’s lousy for sub-d!) is that you have very little control over your mesh.

The key to working with a box modeller like Wings is to work with as few polys as possible then subdivide to smooth the model. The beauty of it is that you can control the poly/edge flow very easily just by adding or deleting edges without worrying about creating n-gons, they can be sorted out later. The structure of the mesh is more important than maintaining all quads in the earlier stages of modelling. Once you get used to it you’ll find Wings FAR more efficient for box modelling than Cinema, probably better than anything with the possible exception of Mirai.

It does take some getting used to if you learned a totally different system first though! - Baz

#12

thanks for more replies guys.

Goon, i do switch to the “tabbed” view and the “shift+tab” view a lot too look at how things are coming. is that what you’re talking about? i guess i haven’t ever tried “poly proxy” mode…?

BazC, wings is really the first modeller that i’ve gotten to know very well, and there’s a lot more to the program that i probably need to learn. maybe that’s why wings is “intuitive” to me :stuck_out_tongue:

i think BazC pointed something out to me without realizing it. I’m not sure how much detail i should create at particular levels of “smooth.” how much should i leave to the smoothing process, and how much should i worry about myself?

when you can say you don’t have to worry about tris and n-gons until later, can you explain that a bit? i’ve had lots of “traditional” art training, but absolutely zero 3d modelling training, except for some AutoCAD about…9 years ago when i was in high school.

i’ll post a couple wires and a quick render of the head i’m working on (it needs a lot more work, it’s way to idealized right now, but hey, i’m learning as i go…sometimes i learn best while trying not to drown). i appologize for the size, but i’m still waiting for my ISP to set up my webspace… :rolleyes:

these are with no additional layers of smoothing.

the original object has 632 polys at last check. how does that compare to the norm, if there is a norm…

#13

front

#14

side

#15

Yea, I get it… you want to subdivide (smooth) a selected area, but this affects the immediate faces to said area… this is where planning your modeling approach better, comes into play…

you are on it re- cut and connect those rings which you need more verts for say beveling out a square from said verts for say perhaps a pipe coming out of a side, or whatever, in a better position than the current set of verts allow for…

edits… haha, just looked at yuor examples and know now that you would probably not have any pipes coming out any sides lessen of course you were attempting to make Herman Munster or something hehe… but non the less the therory still applies eh…

just knowing that now that you have the new edge loop(s) and the chosen vert(s) beveled, you go on to another area to add more detail in this still boxy state model, then upon smoothing, that you will know this new square/quad poly will round out to enable you to go back and now extrude region, flatten, rotate, etc… what ever you are attempting to go for… in other words, there are times to work on this detail or that one, and times to hold off further on said areas until the next subdivide… :slight_smile:

#16

“I’m not sure how much detail i should create at particular levels of “smooth.” how much should i leave to the smoothing process, and how much should i worry about myself?”

I think that’s something that only experience will tell you, but if your mesh pics are unsmoothed then your working with way too many polys. If they have been smoothed can we see an unsmoothed cage?

My best recomendation is to look at some of Bay Raitts animated gifs. His low res cages are REALLY angular but when smoothed they have all the detail you could want! This takes real skill though but it’s a good guide though and something to aim for. There are some great modellers around who add a lot more geometry to their control cage so it is a matter of style/taste. The advantage of working very low res is that you don’t have the nightmare of tweaking dozens of verts trying to get the shape and smoothness you want.

“when you can say you don’t have to worry about tris and n-gons until later, can you explain that a bit?”

Hmm, well suppose you start a head and you’ve established a basic poly flow but then you change your mind and decide a different topology would be better. In cinema you’d have a real problem and would probably end up deleting a load of polys and rebuilding them, a pain in the backside and easy to get confused. In Wings you just delete edges you don’t want and add the new ones. You can alter one area or edge loop at a time so you can keep some of the structure to keep your remodelling on track because Wings doesn’t freak out if you create n-gons! Agreed?

Well it works the same when you’re constructing the mesh in the first place. You can for instance add one important edge loop without affecting the rest of the mesh then think about the next one. You can construct a nose for instance, without concerning yourself with how the edges should connect to the rest of the model, you can figure that out later. If you chose a bad structure for the nose you can modify it however you want. Then once all the edge loops are working as you want and your shapes are looking right you can worry about getting rid of n-gons and poles

Take a look at Bay’s work, his topology sometimes changes quite a bit between the start and end of a model, he feels his way round the form and allows it to develop naturally. It’s a style that’s been described as digital sculpting and allows you to be much more flexible in your creation process. Hope that helps! - Baz

Spiraloid (Bay Raitts website)

#17

i think i’m finally starting to understand a couple things! yay!

BazC, the mesh has been smoothed once before the wires. although that was a long time ago, and i can’t step back now. i guess i smoothed too soon.

i’ll have to play around with some lower poly cages to get a feel for how to work that way. that’s sort of one thing that nurbs is nice about…you have the cage and a smoothed object visible at once.

i really like bay raitt’s work, and i’ve been looking at his stuff to try to learn what to do, but it can be hard to try to interpolate some of the theory by only seeing wireframes. :stuck_out_tongue: i think one thing i haven’t remembered is to keep it simple, apply his ideas about loops and topology, and then smooth out from there.

i just run into problems with detail around the eyes, the lips, and the different ways to shape a nose. i guess i need some time to learn how to combine everything i’ve seen and develop a “style” of my own.

(since you linked me to Spiraloid, i’ll take some time to read thru a lot of that a try to glean some nuggets of knowledge. basically all i’ve looked at in depth of bay’s stuff is the subdivision modeling page, and that pdf file he and someone else did about it.)

thanks for the pointers
Skip

**edit: i dun spel gud

#18

Yeah it can be difficult to learn from Bays gifs, they move too fast and he changes his mind all the time LOL! They’re probably more useful to more advanced modellers. What I find interesting is the way he’ll split a poly and not worry about working the new edge into the mesh immediatly and how his edge loops move around and change direction as the model develops. It almost like sketching and is lot more natural than the disciplined way you have to work with Cinema.

I’d like to repeat here that I’m not knocking Cinema (I’ve been flamed for that before LOL!) I think it’s a great app which I use in tandem with Wings, but until it gets n-gon support it’s going to stay waay behind the other major packages for box modelling! - Baz

#19

I never actually smooth the model permenantly. Maybe once or twice to get a good look at it, but never in such a way that I cannot step back. This is because having a high poly mesh with unrequired detail is wasteful and a pain to work with.

If you were going to modify the smoothed mesh, it might be useful, but at the same time, you will have detail that you did not desire.

This is where the poly proxy idea comes in. Because the unsmoothed, low rez polygon cage controls the smoothed surface, you can simultaneously have a smooth model and have easily edit it.

Basically all 3d software supports some version of this, be it wings simple poly proxy, or a full fledged subdivision surface (sub-d) mesh.

So try an keep you mesh as light as possible, only adding detail when and where you need it. You are doing quite well as it is, but as you improve you will start seeing redundancies in you mesh htat can be removed.

#20

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