Shape Merge / Edit Mesh

[Jonny English]

I'm stuck on this one!

 

I want to shape merge a road into a terrain and then extrude it -150mm. Then I want to change the extruded face and sides to a new material. Anyone know how to do this and how to save that selection for further editing later.

 

I have included a simplified image to show you what I am trying to do.

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/forum/filepush.asp?file=faces.jpg

 

 

Jonny English.

[Craig Ramsay]

Ok for the material use a multi sub object material. You can apply this to the whole object and change the material ID of the polygons to match the corresponding sub material.

 

If you want to save a selection of polys then select them, type a name for them in the named selection sets box in the main toolbar then press enter to save the selection. Remember that you have to be in sub object mode to use a poly selection set.

 

Hope that isn't to complicated Just ask if you have any trouble.

 

Craig

[xgarcia]

make a clone first b/c converting to editable mesh looses your modifier stack history.

[Jonny English]

Thanks for the advice guys, will try your methods, I think I like Craig's idea because the design is still in it's early changes so I need to keep flexability to change things.

 

Thanks,

 

Jonny English.

[Jonny English]

Is there a quick way to select all the sides once I have extruded my road into the terrain via shape merge (see my orginal posted image at the begining of this thread)

 

Jonny English.

[Craig Ramsay]

If you are using Max 5 you can hit the grow button after extruding as your original poly selection will still be selected. This will select all the connected polys (the sides) then just de-select the original selection. You could now save them as a selection set for quick selection in the future

 

If you dont gave max 5 then dowload meshtools from Scriptspot.com i'm sure that has the grow tool.

 

Craig

[Jonny English]

Craig

 

I can't find the grow button - is it because I create a shape merge then use edit mesh instead??

 

I know before you discussed how you model landscapes - please could you expand on this a bit more, as I find the shape merge / edit mesh not a very user friendly method.

 

Thanks,

 

Jonny English.

[Craig Ramsay]

Oh ok editable meshes are not as flexable as editable polys and don't have as many tools for editing them... I really would recommend you model with polys.

 

If you give us an more of an idea of what sort of model you are trying to create then maybe we could help you out with techniques etc. Modeling landscapes is not the easiest thing in the world.

[Jonny English]

I've attached 2 images - the whole site and a closeup so you can see the modelling. As I said it is modelled using the Terrain tool from contours as there is a 4 metre slope from top left to bottom right. Then I have used shapemerge to create the roads, etc. and finally an edit mesh modifier to control the extrudes and materials with a multi-subobject material.

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/forum/filepush.asp?file=site.jpg

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/forum/filepush.asp?file=closeup_1.jpg

 

 

Jonny English.

[Craig Ramsay]

So it worked then I hate using shape merge because it creates long skinny polygons which never render correctly. I tend to model sites from scratch starting with a simple box, converting it to an editable polly, extruding and tweaking it until I get what I am after, that way I get nice clean geometry that is easier to tweak or add extra geometry to in the future.

 

Here is a very simple example of landscaping with polys:

 

 

It's not as large as your model but I used spot heights on a survey to get the proper slopes etc in the land.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Craig

[Jonny English]

Thanks for your help Craig. I feel the same about using shape merge - I just feel there must be an easier and more controlable method to creat landscapes. I'll definately have a look into learning about using polygons...thanks for your tip!

 

Jonny English.