Simple Poly edit question??!

[MarkC-UK]

I'm sure there must be an easy way to accomplish this, can anyone point me in the right direction??

I created the wall opening using a Boolean subtraction and the box I subtracted had multiple segments (I read somewhere this gave better results).

So.........the subtraction worked fine and left a nice clean hole but instead of a single polygon making up the side of the opening I'm left with loads and loads, making it really difficult to select.

Can I convert these multiple polys into one big one???

[ITryMyBest]

1. first make sure the object is an edit poly

2. delete all the faces on that side of the wall (do not delete both horizontal and vertical at the same time)

3. go to the border subobject level

4. select the border that was just created by deleting the faces

5. select cap

 

another way to do it is go to edge or vertex subobject levels and remove them individually, but this takes too long

 

not sure, but to avoid this in the future make sure the box object you subtraced doesn't have all those additional faces. max will find all those edges and interpolate them into the new mesh, you want this on a curved object, but you probably won't need it on a straight edge object.

[Gus_Rayvus]

That seems like a really bad way to make a wall opening. There are a ton of ways to make that same shape with out using a boolean operation(which sucks in max) You could draw that shape with a spline then extrude it or just make 3 boxxes. Or extrude the "legs" of the wall from a box with 2 segments.

Or add you edges using the connect in editable poly, then delete the faces you don't want and drawing in the missing polygons. Any of these would be 10 times faster and probably cleaner than that.

[lecameleon]

That is what I thought too, except that I have noticed that a majority of people do it that way (ie, the boolean way).. When you end up with really complex geometry, booleans can get real nasty..

I guess Gus has made some nice suggestions.

[MarkC-UK]

Thx for the help. I can't yet see why you seasoned Max users are so anti-Boolean. I come from an Inventor/Mechanical desktop background where Booleans are pretty much the corner stone of any model you could create.

It's early days for me with Max, but I'm slowly getting to grips with connecting edges, then chamfering them, then deleting the new poly etc etc to create cut outs.

I guess it's what you feel comfortable with at the end of the day.

Cheers all:cool:

[notamondayfan]

i think everyone would use booleans more if they were more reilable. as people say, they can cause messy models.

 

personally id use box modeling techniques to make holes in walls. that way you have direct control over your mesh.

 

but if you really want to spend time cleaning up that booleaned object, id sugest using weld -

 

either select a vertex, using 3d snap, position in directly over another vertex, and select both, and click weld.

 

or in vertex selection, click target weld, and click the useless vertex to one next to it until there are only the outside verts left. work using the same method, ie, right to left, so you aviod diagonal edges.

 

personally id create a simple box, convert to editable poly. goto edge selection, select the 4 edges from top to bottom in front view, and connect them twice. then select the bottom two outer faces, and extrude.

 

poly modeling will save you so much time in the long run, and its cleaner, and its pretty universal. a good skill to learn.

[MarkC-UK]

Cheers Dean,

Thanks for the tips. I've been working on a toaster tutorial (from the 3DTotal site:eek: ) that uses box modelling but it takes some getting used to.

Can you answer this please:

Creating the opening in the manner you describe, does it give you control over where the opening is and it's size?? Once the additional edges are created is it a case of selecting them and then moving them to suit your dimensions before extruding??

 

This is why I used a Boolean in the first place because it gives you control over a) the size of the opening and b) it's position within the wall.

Cheers.

[Gus_Rayvus]

I just did a screen capture video of the technique notamondayfan and I both discribed and the spine method. Its 20 megs, sorry I don't really have time to compress it. Right click save target as

http://www.wildman3d.com/demo_wall.avi

[Brian Smith]

Personally I think booleans are one of the most important features in Max and one that I wouldn't do without. Yes they can produce bad results if not done correctly, but done correctly they should never produce bad results. I had many problems the first few years using them til I figured out all the things I was doing wrong. I haven't had a single problem in years and I use them all the time.

[notamondayfan]

mark, everything is totally editable (editable poly )

 

its all about maths when it comes to being accutate. if you origionally make the gap say 2000, and u want it to be 3000, simple drag the vertexs that control the opening, and move both sides away from the centre by 500, in which ever axis is appropriate.

 

brian, what would you say you do differently now? what have you learnt that means booleens are usable? jus interested to know.

 

deano!

[Gus_Rayvus]

Even if booleans worked in max, it seems like a really slow way of modeling. For most of the work I do I have the cad in my file and just snap to it. So typing in a value is not really necessary. I'm really surprised Brian uses booleans in his workflow. Except for an ocassional shapemerge I never use them. I'd rather have full control over the mesh that is created.

[Noiré]

I must agree with Gus,and I am also curios as to why Brian thinks booleans are indespensable. Whether you control booleans to the extent that they become clean or not, you still get meshes that have either one or several of the following: Long, thin triangles, polygons with more than four vertices,unwelded vertices.

As long as you do nothing to your objects after it became a boolean this can probably be of no consequence, but all subsequent modfications to the boolean object, be it meshsmoothing, modifiers or displacement (especially rendertime displacements,such as vray´s), will present problems.

Nothing beats a good, orderly, clean quad-mesh, and such a mesh is not made by using boolean operations.

If you do like booleans, at least use the new Power Booleans.