Walls with windows

[Lanni]

I went to spline model some walls and I got to a wall with windows and I can't for the life of me remember how to make a wall with wondows using splines. I need it to one continuous surface. Could some please refresh my memory on how to do this. Thanx.

[nisus]

Hi Lanni,

 

1) Draw a rectangle in your front view as a basic facade.

2) Draw other rectangles where the windows are. 3) Select your basic rectangle and attach the other rectangles to it

4) next extrude or better: bevel (this way you got 45° edges, which render much nicer corners)

 

rgds

 

nisus

[Ken Walton]

I went to spline model some walls and I got to a wall with windows and I can't for the life of me remember how to make a wall with wondows using splines. I need it to one continuous surface. Could some please refresh my memory on how to do this. Thanx.

 

Just curious, but why are you choosing to make the walls in that direction (width as opposed to height)? From what I've experienced, that method is extremely time consuming (unless you need just a couple of walls) as compared to drawing your wall sections in the TOP view with the "holes" in the splines where the windows will be. Next you would place a separately modeled window (you can do these from extruded splines as well) in the "hole" at the right height, then you can add boxes above and below the window to fill in the gaps. Once the holes are filled in, I'd union the boxes and wall objects together, apply an edit mesh (or convert it to an editable mesh or poly), and you've got your solid, continuous surface. If you're choosing this approach for texture mapping later, another method I used once was to extrude the entire walls w/out the windows, place my photoshopped diffuse texture on it, and then use an opacity map generated from the same photoshop file to give my windows transparency. This method actually provides some decent results if you're good with Photoshop and prefer to add your detail there. The only real drawback is that it can be time consuming for large scenes, and you have to raytrace the shadows for the opacity maps to generate them - or use a renderer capable of calculating transparent objects, which is a little more expensive computationally.

 

Hope this helps, and I apologize if I'm completely missing the point of what you're shooting for.

 

Thanks,

Ken Walton

[Guest saturnfive]

How about making them with editable mesh boxes?

-Just create a box of 3x3 segments, convert to editable mesh and delete the two centre faces on opposite sides. You can move the window position by moving the verticiis. (sp)

[nisus]

Hi saturnfive,

 

If you model the way you describe, you still have to manually add four faces to the inside to get a nice retour. I suggest extruding/bevelling boolean splines.

 

rgds

 

nisus

[xgarcia]

I use the method of creating rectangles and then attaching further splines to create window apertures. Extrude, rotate...done. I avoid using boolens when possbile because after the first boolean the mesh starts to get "dirty" - you know what I mean - extra faces that have no business being there!

 

Just curious - Does having those extra faces or triangulations effect my radioisty calcs and renders? I saw a post a while ago, maybe on the autodesk viz4 newsgroup about lines showing up in renders from radiosy because of bad booleans.

 

Xavier

 

[ September 01, 2002, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: xgarcia ]

[Guest saturnfive]

Nisus / xgarcia: yes, that spline method is very nice, plus you can later go back in the stack and change the window position /size, which is great.

 

I've also started using a lot of renderable splines for balcony railings etc. keeps down the overhead in the viewports when you have a lot of them.

 

[ September 01, 2002, 02:33 PM: Message edited by: saturnfive ]

[nisus]

Hi saturn,

 

Personnaly, I extrude as much as possible from the plan, but for complex facades I change to bevel a facade/elevation. Beside the advantage to go back in stack, it's also nice to turn of a startcap/endcap and to draw an inner facade - don't know the correct english term - quickly.

 

xgarcia: it's a good habit to avoid boolean meshes because of uncontrolled edge-placement, but it's a great habit to adapt boolean splines!

Basicly this means that extrude/bevel is the last step in the modeling proces.

Just draw a rectangle and add several smaller ones for window openings (add boolean or draw them with the 'start new spline' chebox unchecked). The real power of boolean splines lays in the ease of which you can add doors - i.e. making a pattern like the top of the walls of old castles (don't know the english term too): draw rectangles that overlap your base rectangle and boolean subtract those from the latter, eventually bevel.

To be able to boolean subtract, you'll have to attach the new rectangles to your base-spline.

 

rgds

 

nisus

[xgarcia]

I agree completely. I've not tried using booleaned splines b/c it can get messy and my simple mind can't keep track of what's what. I just use nested shapes and extrude for final wall - if needed I delete polygons that won't show in render (if the model is an exterior rendering I would edit mesh delete the "inside" polygons)...

 

Xavier

[mbr]

Does anyone know of some good tutorials for learning to build architecture in Max? All the modeling I know is from the typical tutorials that miss a lot of what is mentioned here.

I build my models with Form-Z (which typically doesn't have any problems with Boolean operations), but I'd like to continue to learn and compare to find the most effecient method for architectural visualization.

Thanks.

[nisus]

Hi saturn,

 

Glad you like my tips

Inner leaf and crenelations... gonna try to remember... tnx!

 

rgds

 

nisus

[Guest saturnfive]

Nisus: that's another great tip: copying across the 'inner leaf' spline like that lets you get different internal / external finishes without having to use multi/subobject materials!- thanks dude

 

ps. the wiggly bits on top of castles are called 'crenalations'.

[nisus]

Another tip: set shape steps to 0 (instead of 6 default) when using rectangles and splines.

Especially when using curved splines, keep this value as low as possible, because otherwise max will add additional vertices in straight segments (where you don't need those).

It's always better to refine curved segments with more vertices and keep the shape steps lower, than to use a higher shape steps value.

 

rgds

 

nisus