Untriangulate

[AJLynn]

One of the things I miss about working in C4D is the Untriangulate button, where you select an object or a bunch of polys, hit Untriangulate, and within certain tolerances it changes your mesh into n-gons. Really useful when you get some model in 3DS format. Even Sketchup has the ability to do this as part of the importer.

 

For the life of me, I can't find an efficient way to do the same in Max. What do you guys do when, for example, somebody who works in FormZ gives you a 3DS file that's triangulated all to hell and you need it clean?

[Horhe]

Did you try the 'optimize' tool?

[BrianKitts]

Did you try the 'optimize' tool?

 

specifically the 'Auto Edge' function of the optimize modifier works great....

[AJLynn]

Excellent. Thanks guys.

 

We should have a subforum called "simple Max things you've somehow never learned"

[Chad Warner]

Good tip! I use optimize all the time, but never new what "autoedge" did.

[Koper]

AWESOME, o my word, missed that litle tick box. this is helping me allooot right now, ya'll have no idea

thanx

[Brian Smith]

try these

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/detriangulator-0

http://scriptspot.com/3ds-max/quadrangulate

[Dave Buchhofer]

the autoedge is also in as part of Edit Mesh and Editable Mesh.. in edge mode, select your tolerances and poof.

 

Keep in mind that this doesn't REMOVE the faces, it merely hides them. to then remove them, you'll want to probably use a Convert to Editable poly, then a Turn To Poly modifier, with the 'remove mid edge vertex's checked, then collapse.

 

messy? yea

 

This is mostly visual, to actually convert to QUAD polygons, you're sort of out of luck in max. easiest is to use the Power Booleans (or Pro?) and have the output to be Quads. this is really only uber useful for say, radiosity, or exporting out to a game engine where you need to milk every bit of speed/looks you can get out of it.

[AJLynn]

It's not like I worry that much about the file size or it makes much difference in mental ray, mostly it's for how much clearer the viewport display is without all the extra lines and it makes modeling easier on the brain. What's the best thing to do when a priority is to preserve material IDs?