Theoretical SUB-D

#681

Strang-

You might be interested in my thread here: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80278

I started it after going through the 3D World tutorial you are talking about. The problem with the tutorial, is that you always used rounded extrusions (for example, you extruded the leg sockets, which were round, and the ridges on the top and bottom, which were rounded off). In other objects, you might have a curved surface, and then want to pull a hard edges panel out of it or something with hard edges… like a square or something. Anywho, so I posted some questions about this and have been getting good feedback. The dummy object I’m using is the 3x3x3 segmented box you start with in the 3D World Magazine…

It’s taken me a while to grasp the concept of control edges, but I’m slowly getting there. This thread might help since we both are jumping from the same tutorial.

3DZ posted an animated gif earlier in this theory thread that demonstrated adding in control edges. Very cool.

Good luck,
Sledge

#682

thanks a lot sledge…

-Strang

#683

Originally posted by BigBoy
Hi I’m new here and I’ve been enjoying this thread.

…

What techinque does he use to model the belts so that bend so perfectly around the rings and the body.

How does this tech. tranfer from mirai to max
(or AutoCad).

Sorry if I sound very noobish(cause I am).

The technique I usually apply to get this effect is to chip a peace of mesh off of my poly object… wait some pics will do better I guess…

Take a mesh and select an area (edgeloop would ne best I guess) you want to put a peace of geo on. Then detach it from the poly object but keep it in the object as a copy. This will be the base from wich to work from.

Now hide the unselected mesh to only keep this:

Now detach this again, same method. Extrude the result, extrude value= 0. Why because extrude does it by the normals, we don’t want that. After you extrudet it by zero, scale the selection! (in my case on the x and y axis). This will leave you with a something looking like this:

#684

Now select the back faces/element (this is why you should detach twice) and flip them. Now in vert mode weld them and a new element is born that fits exactly over the original mesh:

Now tweaking can take place, use edge constraints or whatever you like… It gives a good starting point I like to think:

Hope it helps somehow, and I don’t claim to have invented this technique, I just can’t remember where I’ve seen this before…

Hope my english is ok enough :slight_smile:
Cheers Johan

#685

I must again recommend the Solidify plugin. I don’t remember the exact url to find it, but you should be able to google it with 3dsmax solidify or maybe find it at maxplugins.de. It does exactly what Johan just did, although with a few spinners instead of having to extrude/detach etc. It adds thickness to anything you want thickness added to :slight_smile: VERY USEFULL PLUGIN

#686

i really should get that methinks

heres a link i found for me, incase your really lazy
http://www.gravitonic.com/software/3dsmax/downloads.php

#687

Originally posted by urgaffel
…
It does exactly what Johan just did, although with a few spinners instead of having to extrude/detach etc. It adds thickness to anything you want thickness added to :slight_smile: VERY USEFULL PLUGIN

No doubt a very usefull plugin, but it doesn’t do exactly the same as what I did…

  1. You need to completly detach the selection… mine works as subobject… (could give you more control) and when you’re done with solidify, you need to reattach if you want to move the vert or edges… and most of the time I think you do…

  2. Solidify pushes along the normal! With ‘carved in’ edges this is very problematic, scaling would be better here! This is also my biggest problem with solidify.

My 2 eurocents
JHN

#688

Phew! Just finished reading through the thread… took me a whole damn afternoon! :surprised
Anyhoo, after downloading all sample files and following the tutorial gifs, I have a couple more questions for anyone that might want to answer them… They’re actually regarding 3DZ’s last GIF tutorial. When you say subdivide faces, do you mean to use tesselation, slice plane or cut with midpoint snapping (or none of them :P).
The other issue is what do you mean when you say to subdivide the rings, and what is exactly happening?

Many Thanx! And lets keep this thread growing!

Carl :beer:

#689

I’m sorry, man. I knew that would probably mess someone up.

Ok, the term “sub-divide”, is simply refering to the use of the connect command. BTW, you don’t need to ever snap midpoints again. You simply select a “ring” of edges, and hit the conncet command. Good stuff.

As for sub-dividing the rings, you can just do what I mentioned above. Select an edge. Hit the “select ring” command, and the hit the connect button. It’s really no big deal, but I totally should have worded that better. Sorry, man!

-3DZ

:smiley:

#690

so do you use the “cut” tool at all?

#691

The results are OK but I still feel I’m not doing it as quickly as I could… Have to go to dinner now, when I get back I’ll list all the steps I’m taking. Oh yeah, and how about a walkthrough on square whole on spheres/rounded surfaces?
Thx for the help!

Carl :beer:

#692

Originally posted by JHN
[B]No doubt a very usefull plugin, but it doesn’t do exactly the same as what I did…

  1. You need to completly detach the selection… mine works as subobject… (could give you more control) and when you’re done with solidify, you need to reattach if you want to move the vert or edges… and most of the time I think you do…

  2. Solidify pushes along the normal! With ‘carved in’ edges this is very problematic, scaling would be better here! This is also my biggest problem with solidify.

My 2 eurocents
JHN [/B]

1, you can apply modifiers on selections, so you do NOT need to detach completely, you can detach as element and have solidify applied to said element. That goes for any modifier btw, for example Push, which I use together with softselections to inflate/deflate areas. For example muscles. Bigger/smaller biceps :wink:

2, Yeah well… Not much I can say about that other than this: You could scale the edges of the outer faces (er… hard to describe with words, sorry no pictures yet) using edge constraint to get the result you want. It would probably work fairly well, I just can’t test it here (no 3d soft).

My 0.02kr

#693

@urgaffel: I’m not flaming or anything, at least it’s not my intention, but solidify doesn’t work in a subobject selection, at least with me it doesn’t. And this is offcourse pretty logical in my p.o.v. Since you’re creating new geometry, what if you have edges as selection, how will it build new geometry from that. I know about push mod’s etc on subobjselections… So check your version and tell me if your’s does work on subobjselection!?

Well with the above limitation, it’s almost as much work as the method I use :stuck_out_tongue:

Can you confirm this? Maybe I can wright a script that does this in one click…

Cheers Johan

#694

but solidify doesn’t work in a subobject selection, at least with me it doesn’t.

nope it doesnt, not for me anyways.
:shrug:

#695

Oops, my bad. Didn’t work here either :slight_smile: I should learn to check first and tell later. Oh well, I’ll do my homework next time. (I was a week away from any computer with max, I wanted to reply asap :blush: )

Anyway…

So, you have to detach the faces to a separate object, but that can be a good thing! If you want to work on the belts alone that is, without worrying about selecting verts/edges from the rest of the model! (Peter tries desperately to justify the use of solidify so as to not lose face completely)

(and it’s not as much work as your method… Detach-solidify-scale (and reattach if you want them as one object instead of separate) vs detach-detach-extrude-scale-flip-weld)

Sorry, I’ll stop bickering.

#696

:stuck_out_tongue:

But now I want to move the belt along the surface…

I think I will write a script that does my method in a click… I think I will call it “Local solidify or how Urgaffel does like solidy better” :slight_smile:

Cheers Johan

#697

Er… If you want to move the belt along the surface it’s going to create a whole world of new pains regardless of how you made the belt in the first place :wink: I mean… The end results would be the same using our two (competing! :p) methods so moving the belt is another topic altogether… Or?

#698

So is the belt the new edge loop that you move along to the meshes edge to make corners sharper? Or is that maybe farfetched? :beer:

#699

@Urgaffel… true, I ment to say, move the belt and the edgeloop(and surrounding faces) together… Not sliding but moving… point is that I like to be able to edit all my edge/vert/face selections in one model. When times come to rig or texture, I then will break my model in peaces… Just my workflow… So you’re observation is right, but I feel that as an element it’s easier to mod the poly’s then as different object… Workflow convention created over time I guess… :slight_smile:

@CC, I don’t really understand your question, the belt is an separate element and does not really interact with the other geometry, so I guess not!?

#700

Oh… never mind then :smiley: I though “belt” was a term for some sub-d work… I didn’t know you were talking about your mesh, sry